The-Effective-Manager

Scheduling your O3s is actually more important than having them weekly. That's why it's first on our list. It is more important

Weekly It is best to conduct your One On Ones on a weekly basis. The simplest reason for this is that you probably think about your work life in weekly increments.

How DO you “stay in touch” with those in your organization who are “below” your directs? First, insist on your subordinate managers doing One On Ones with their directs. Your immediate subordinate managers are responsible for their relationships with their directs. The way you maintain your relationship with your skips (and even levels below that, if it applies to you) is by keeping a strong relationship with your directs and relying on them to maintain relationships with theirs. Any other model for this just doesn't scale.

What this means is that you won't be able to have the same relationship with people who are two or more levels down from you. You won't, but it's okay, because you're not supposed to. Efforts to do so are a waste of your most precious resource as a manager: your time. Build an organization of effective managers

The moment you switch to a future focus, however, you free yourself up to focus on something that you (and they) can do something about. *Regardless of whether your direct was ineffective or effective this morning, the true purpose of any performance communication about either situation is exactly the same: you want more effective behavior in the future*. If your direct made a mistake, you want different behavior. If your direct did something well, you want more of the same.

The Manager Tools Feedback Model has four simple steps:

1. Ask: Ask your direct if you can give then some feedback. Also, it's an important managerial rule to never ask a question of your directs if you don't intend to honor their answer.

2. State the Behavior: How should one pass it's messages to one's peers.

   • The words you say: The words you choose to say out loud to others are a

   choice, and different words produce different results. Your choice of words makes a difference in business results. Furthermore, certain words are known to produce distinctly better results in certain situations.

   • How to say words: Watch your tone, tenor and inflection.
   • Your facial expressions: Non-verbal language actually accounts for most of the perceived meaning in normal conversations.
   • Body language: Same as above.
   • Work product: What you do and how well you do your job are behaviours as well.
     • Quality
     • Quantity
     • Accuracy
     • Timeliness
     • Documents

   Here are is template on how to start: "When you <behavior>…", for instance:

   • "When you are ahead of schedule…"
   • "When you stay an extra hour to find the root cause…"
   • "When you respond politely after the customer insults you…"
   • "When you make that extra call to keep the customer informed…"
   • "When you promise it to me yesterday but don't deliver…"

   Would you rather have a 15-second negative feedback discussion or a two-minute negative feedback discussion with your boss? Shorter is better. Saying “When you” will help you be

3. State the Impact of the Behavior

   (…) effective feedback isn't about waiting until there's a pattern, and it doesn't get better with age. And wouldn't you rather know sooner rather than later that there's a problem?

4. Encourage Effective Future Behavior

   When we are giving negative feedback, we are asking the direct to behave differently. We're not punishing the past mistake, because we've already forgiven it. Remember that our focus is on the future, not the past.

5. Ask

Feedbacks should be given as early and often as possible, if you can give feedback right after noticing positive/negative behaviour that's ideal, of course, make sure you do so without others overhearing.

If you keep in mind that sooner is better and that there's no appreciable decline in value during the first three to five days, you have a lot more time and a lot more opportunities to deliver what it is your directs want—and tell us they want.

• Encouraging feedback can be given in front of other people, unless they don't like attention.

Systemic feedback changes what you are talking to your direct about and raises the level of consequences associated with a continued failure to change. Systemic feedback addresses the direct's combination of continued failure to change with the direct's stated commitment to change. It addresses the greater failure to meet a repeated commitment. Failure to meet commitments is a systemic failure that no organization can long

Here is the fundamental difference. Standard feedback is about small behaviors. Systemic feedback addresses the moral hazard of a direct committing to new behavior but then failing to follow through. We can tolerate directs who make mistakes. We cannot tolerate directs who repeatedly make commitments they don't keep.

Cover the purpose of feedback talk to your directs about the purpose of giving feedback, which is to "encourage effective future behavior".

• Counteract their possible fear by explaining (plainly) why you're using the feedback model

Don't give any negative feedback as you're learning to use the feedback model. If you try to slip in some negative feedback, you run the risk of doing it poorly because you haven't yet mastered the model and the delivery. You may hurt the feelings of your direct.

• Start with one feedback per day
• If you can go five days in a row giving feedback, then raise the limit to two.

• Don't overdo negative feedbacks
• Positive feedbacks are much more powerful tools than negative ones

If you believe you should be "vigilant" against "mistakes", two things will happen gradually: you'll start seeing all the mistakes, and you'll stop seeing all the good behaviors.

Delegation, on the other hand, is you turning over responsibility for one of your regular responsibilities - something you routinely do - on a permanent or long standing basis, to one of your directs.

• Not a good idea, since you don't know how to do it, how are you going to help your directs to do it?
• You need to understand the work before you can delegate it.

Don't ever delegate a new responsibility your boss has just given you to one of your directs. Learn it first, master it, before

One of your small balls is a big ball to your direct.

• Splitting a big ball wouldn't work either, since you'll have to coordinate the task anyway.

1. State your desire for help
2. Tell them why you're asking them
3. Ask for specific acceptance
4. Describe the task or project in detail
5. Address deadline, quality, and reporting standards