Is your manager your best friend? The benefits of managing your manager

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Posted on 30th August 2011 by Andy Britnell in Managing your manager |Self Directing Professional

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Manage your Manager - your best friend!One of the aspects of becoming a Self Directed Professional is the skill of managing your manager. This is something that was impressed upon me when I worked for BT and it becomes more important as you rise up the corporate ladder. I had a very successful career because I realised that you had to work with the system rather than against it. In my later years I had a 5 year plan to leave BT and start my own business and I used the system to help me get the right experience that would assist me in achieving my aim.

Some people fear that they will be seen to be ‘sucking up to management’. I certainly had that issue and was accused of being self-promoting. Funny that a couple of years later the person who accused me apologised and said that he had recently achieved promotion by following my example.

So why would you want to manage your manager?

1. You’ll make your life easier – if you make your manager look good and help them out in sticky situations they will cut you some slack when you make a mistake.

2. You are more likely to be mentioned in dispatches – if you help your manager achieve their objectives by doing the right thing you are more likely to get talked about in meetings with senior managers.

3. You are more likely to get promotion – your manager is going to be the individual that makes or breaks your career. They will be the one who puts your name forward when promotions are being discussed.

4. It gives you bargaining power when asking for a rise – the first question you will be asked is ‘What have you done to deserve this?’ A gentle reminder of how you have helped your manager will make your case stand out above anybody else’s.

5. You improve your visibility and credibility – your manager’s manager will notice your name being mentioned by your manager, your peers and your clients. I remember a famous occasion when two senior managers went to see one of my customers. They had a meeting with the managing director who said that the only reason they were doing business with BT was because of what I was doing on the account. He then added ‘and I hope you are giving Andy a big bonus this month’. Unsolicited and priceless praise which got me mentioned by our senior director, and my manager got the reflected glory of having a top performing executive on his team.

6. You’ll be given more development opportunities – either more interesting and challenging work or training that will add useful skills to your CV.

This has been my experience and I have found it has worked well for me. You build positive relationships with your clients and your peers but often forget to do the same with your manager. At work they can be your best friend.

The 8 Barriers to Delegation

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Posted on 23rd March 2011 by Andy Britnell in Delegation

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Barriers to DelegationIt’s surprising that many managers and leaders often find the delegation step in Leading and Developing High Performance difficult and uncomfortable. They are often reluctant to make the mindset change required to enable their team to perform brilliantly and beyond expectations.

In order to understand this you only need to hear how they express and rationalise their unwillingness to delegate wholeheartedly:

The 8 barriers to delegation are:

1. I can do it better myself

2. My people are just not capable enough

3. It takes too much time to explain what I want done

4. If it goes wrong I’ll still be accountable

5. Delegation reduces my own authority

6. I’ll be shown up if they do too good a job

7. My people prefer that I make the decisions

8. Team members want to avoid responsibility (at least at work)

As you go through this list what do you notice?

They are all limiting beliefs about the team or the manager’s ability, which will prevent them from delegating effectively! No doubt the team members will pick up any incongruence within the manager or leader when they do attempt to delegate and maybe seen to slip into micro management.

You might want to ask yourself which one of these, if any, apply to you?

‘The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done, and self-restraint enough to keep from meddling with them while they do it.’ Theodore Roosevelt

Surviving the Micro Manager

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Posted on 2nd March 2011 by Andy Britnell in Leadership Style |Micro Management

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I am delighted that we have a guest post today from Anita-Clare Field director of Round Peg Learning & Development. In this post she describes how an inflexible, micro management style can derail performance and provides a strategy to manage upwards if we are on the receiving end.

What does the term Micro Manager mean to you?

It fills me with absolute dread. What on earth is to be gained by making people feel inadequate and mistrusted? Why do these people exist in management roles? It seems senseless that this breed of archaic dinosaurs still exist and it is high time they were put out to pasture and replaced with vibrant and innovative leaders of people.

If you have ever worked for a micro manager then you know all the signs, but if not, here are a few:

  • Constantly asks you what you are doing all day
  • Interrupts you every hour to ask you the same questions
  • Picks holes in everything you do
  • Takes back delegated work to finish it themselves, if they find mistakes
  • Refuses to allow you to make decisions without consulting them

These are just a selection, most are familiar to me. I had a manager once that would hover around my desk incessantly and ask me ‘What I was doing’ . If you are highly competent in your work, as I was, this sort of behaviour can be highly demotivating and lead to high amounts of stress.

I have known highly skilled individuals, with years of experience, walk from their jobs because it became too much.

So how do we try and work with such behaviour?

It is a difficult task as one of the main traits of a micro manager is their refusal to listen. Their ‘my way or the highway’ attitude may never be 100% fixed, but it is possible to alleviate the situation:

    1. When meeting with a micro manager remember to keep calm at all times. There is nothing to be gained by demonstrating your frustration. It is what they want as it feeds their overwhelming sense of self importance. Do not react, even if you feel like screaming – simply document meetings.

    2. Ask for information – a micro manager is always on the look out for mistakes to gain control of the situation. If a project has been delegated to you then ask open-ended questions in order to get the full picture. Document this and then get sign off on it. This will ensure that both parties are in agreement.

    3. Ensure that you keep the micro manager updated to avoid unnecessary questions and to stem any opportunity for them to interrupt your flow.

    4. Always deliver everything on time and in the right order. When you deliver it, either by email or in person, back it up with facts and refer to the notes from previous meetings.

    5. Ensure that you feed the micro manager’s need for information at all times. Have facts, figures and anything else you feel that they will need at your fingertips at all times.

Micro managing is a serious issue in the workplace, if you like me you decided not to abandon ship and work with your manager, resolve to manage upwards. Now there is another blog!

What have been your experiences of micro management and how have you dealt with it?

Visioning – The first step to effective management

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Posted on 20th May 2010 by Andy Britnell in 4 step process

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The Visioning Stage - The first step to effective managementIf you have viewed the video on The 4 Step Process for leading and developing high performance you will know that the first stage is called Visioning. So what is this all about and how does it help you to become an effective manager?

The Visioning step is made up of 4 competencies:

1. Providing consistency of approach and personal style which means the manager displays a clear personal style and a strong sense of who they are which is clearly visible to their team. People need to know where they stand so making it clear what the ‘terms of engagement’ are and setting clear boundaries about acceptable and unacceptable behaviour helps people understand this.

Any inconsistency of approach or incongruence will create stress. They will be more comfortable if they know what to expect from you in any given situation. This action creates this response. Simple and effective!

2. Observing and collecting information which involves active listening and skillful questioning to establish the facts and information about the current performance of the team. It also includes consultation with others to get their views and being perceptive in observing differences about what is being said and done.

You will need to review and analyse current directions and levels of performance carefully in order to separate what is good and what is not so good so that you keep what is already working and change that which is not.

You need to be careful to make sure that you establish what needs to be done rather than putting in ‘quick fixes’ and implementing ‘off the shelf’ solutions. This leads to the next skill:

3. Analysing the present situation accurately All that information gathering is for a purpose. The skill here is to see above the waves to sort information and form views without jumping to conclusions. Withholding judgement until the path is clear and managing complexity without getting submerged.

Sounds exhausting if your preference is for immediate action!

You may find that the team is performing well or needs developing. Even if the team is a high performance one there is always a case for enhancing their effectiveness even further. Whatever the situation once the information has been analysed their is the need to start visualising future possibilities. And we need the next competence to help us do that.

4. Creating a future vision is about developing a crystal clear future vision of the direction you need to take to succeed as a team. What needs to be done and what adds value?

You not only have to have that vision for yourself and transmit your passion for it and commitment to it, you also need to create a vision of everyone in the team performing at their peak and being the best they can be.

This is a challenging task as it raises the bar about what we expect from ourselves and the team. Changing a vision into concrete reality requires us to focus our energies into doing the right things and sustaining our direction and persistence when things don’t go to plan. We require the resource of resilience within us and within the team.

Because what effective leaders and developers know is that when it comes to achieving peak performance and full effectiveness, it is people who make the difference.

What’s your preference? High Challenge or High Support?

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Posted on 11th May 2010 by Andy Britnell in High Challenge High Support

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Personality profiles - what is your psychological preference?One of the guiding principles in Leading & Developing High Performance is that of High Challenge and High Support. Have a look at Ali Stewart’s video for an explanation.

However we recognise that this concept creates a challenge in itself due to our unique psychological preferences. Some people value challenge while other people value support. Since many people follow the creed that what is good for me is good for others, they will often have a preference for using one style more than another.

Once engrained into someone’s habitual unconscious behaviour a preference or overuse of either style becomes a weakness. Too much challenge creates stress and poor performance in a team, too much support creates inertia and inaction as the team becomes too comfortable.

This is the reason for the use of personality profiles in the introduction to a Leading & Developing High Performance programme. It helps people to understand what their preference might be, understand strengths and weaknesses and identify where they might need development to maintain a high support and high challenge mind-set.

They will also realise that what is good for them is not necessarily good for others and that their preferred behaviour might be counterproductive. A focus on each individual and their need for different approaches, different motivations and reward and recognition requires the manager to have behavioural flexibility.

There are also diagnostic tools available to determine the preference towards challenge or support in their management style. These help managers to understand how they can achieve the delicate but powerful balance of high support and high challenge required to lead their team to outstanding performance.

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