A Stitch in Time Saves Nine : For Managers

Management is not sexy - its a boring and routine job. Its also not an adorable role. A Manager is generally not perceived as an interesting or friendly figure. In the role of a “Project cum People Manager”, you mostly end up playing the role of a Bad cop. You are accountable for Results, you have to enforce Processes to achieve the Results, and, in between the “Result” and “Process”, your “Relationship” with your direct reports starts suffering damage.

A good Manager is the one who influences his team to attain desired objectives. He can get things done (through his team) today and tomorrow. He is collaborative, he is flexible, and he is receptive. He demonstrates that he cares about his team members – Engagement is the key to success. And to engage, he conducts regular 1:1s with his team members.

The 1:1s are a very structured format and framework for maintaining robust communication and strong relationship/bonding with your direct reports. Regular 1:1 (preferably 30 minutes every week) with your direct reports is one of the most effective management tools. It will keep you connected and informed. Remember that you control their organizational success and they’ll feel miserable if they think they are not getting enough of your time.

You may argue that you talk to your team members all the time; OR you don’t have enough time to have individual 1:1s with all of them; OR there won’t be enough agenda to discuss everyweek; OR this will be boring; OR etc. etc. But, as a Manager, investing your time in your people is one of the safest and most profitable investments you can ever make – low risk and high gains. When you start spending dedicated time for individual 1:1s, you’ll start receiving lesser unplanned interruptions and will actually have more time for Strategic thinking. You may think that there won’t be items to discuss in weekly 1:1s, but you will be surprised to receive Too Much Information from your direct reports. Also, just think about it - When you currently talk to them on daily (or hourly) basis, don’t you just talk about nuts and bolts of work? The purpose and focus of weekly 1:1 is different. It is (should always be) – Your Direct Report, His development/growth plan, his myTimeline, his mySWLD matrix, and, last but not the least, Establishing stronger relationship/bonding between the two of you.

Schedule in advance. Book 30 minutes weekly slot (avoid Monday morning and Friday evening slots). Design specific agenda for your 1:1s – 15 minutes for employee, 5 minutes for you, 10 minutes for future. Agenda should be result oriented and focused on things which are valuable for the Direct Report. Help him play his strengths (fill his “strengths” quadrant of mySWLD matrix), help him maximize the conversion ratio between his potential/abilities and his productive output, help him improve in the needed areas (empty his “weakness” quadrant of mySWLD matrix), help him get opportunity to contribute in his liking areas (address his “liking” & “disliking” quadrants of mySWLD matrix), and help him come out of his comfort zone. If you don’t know who your Direct Report is and what’s most important for him, you can’t inspire him because he won’t believe that you care about him. But if you can demonstrate that you care about him, he will do anything for you. He will become more loyal, more disciplined, more efficient and more effective.

Prepare for five minutes before the 1:1 starts. Ask yourself:

1. Was there any action item for me from the last 1:1?
2. What positive feedback can I give?
3. What adjusting feedback am I going to give?
4. What checkpoint(s) am I going to discuss against his quarterly goals?
5. What is one thing “new” that I am going to coach/mentor/guide him on?

If you observe that your Direct Report is not interacting enough in the meeting (and the meeting is becoming more of a monologue/lecture/preaching than the desired two-way-communication/ interactive dialogue), you may encourage him to come prepared with the notes to take full advantage of this session. How? Encourage them to use the tool I have provided in my next blog, “5 Minutes Self Analysis a Day Keeps Professional Diseases Away”...

A Stitch in Time Saves Nine : For Managees

When is the last time you got sick or broke your leg or cut your finger? How long did you wait before you visited a Doctor? One day? One week? A year? Sounds weird, right? You don’t wait to get worse, and rather rush to the Doctor to seek help. But when it comes to your professional sickness (i.e., “weakness” quadrant of your mySWLD matrix - you may call them limitations or shortcomings or areas of improvement), you generally forget to follow this practice. Instead you opt to wait for the appraisal period, scheduled at the end of the year. And in doing so, you end up wasting 52 precious weeks of your professional life. With this article, I would like to put emphasis on you having regular 1:1 (weekly 30 minutes) with your Manager, and discuss how it’d keep you professionally healthy.

I recently asked few people at random how frequently they have 1:1s with their Managers and why. Many of them actually didn’t have any regular 1:1 setup. And they also gave me interesting reasons for not doing so – “My Manager may be very busy, and I don’t want to waste his time”, “I anyways talk to my Manager on daily basis to discuss project status”, “We won’t have anything to discuss if we meet regularly”, “I’m not missing anything by not having regular 1:1”, “I’ve more interesting things to do”, “How would it make any difference to my life”. And the most shocking comment was - “I will come under closer watch and my weaknesses would be more exposed, if we meet regularly. I don’t want to take this risk with someone who controls my organizational growth.”. I sensed two different emotions emerging out of this last comment – Fear of the consequences of exposing one’s weaknesses to his Manager; and Lack of trust between the direct report and his Manager.

Let’s first analyze the lack-of-trust part of the concern…

Have you ever thought what kind of people you interact with on a daily basis? These people would generally fall in one of the following 3 categories:

1. Those who you know are your well wishers. They have proven this again and again. Your family, your close friends & relatives fall in this category. This is the reliable and trust worthy category. They are caring, they are affectionate, they are appreciative, and they always speak high about you. They generally ignore and unsee your shortcomings. You may have heard your mother saying, “My son is the brightest among all his cousins”; or your wife consoling you on your falling hairs saying, “You have most beautiful hair in this world and I love’em”. You trust them blindly.
2. Those who you know are NOT your well wishers. They have proven this again and again. Some of your competitors, some of your colleagues, some of your neighbors, some of your cousins, etc. etc. will fall under this category. No matter what you do and how you do it, they will always criticize you. They will always try to find and highlight your limitations. They are jealous of your success. To humiliate you, to demotivate you and to make you fail is their sole mission in life. You never trust them.
3. The third category is the most rare and precious one. And it is many a times difficult for you to identify people falling in this category. Chances of you wrongly putting them in the second category is usually high. These are the people who actually are your well wishers but they show you “mirror” time to time. They try to show you the Real you. They, when required, will criticize you – but criticize with positive intent. Generally your Teachers, Coaches, Mentors, and Manager fall under this category. They will encourage you, appreciate you, but would also give you timely candid feedback. To keep you going, to improve you in needed areas, to take you to the next level of accomplishments, and to make you successful in achieving your goal is their sole mission in life.

The problem is that sometimes you trust third category people (aka your Manager in this context) but sometimes you don’t. But in reality, it is even more important (and critical) for you to trust them than trusting the first category. These are the people who will show you the vision, help you set your ambitions, and help you achieve them. These are the people who will help you professionally grow, and grow in multi-dimensions. They are your growth catalysts. They help to convert your unutilized potential and abilities into productive output. You need to assume (though I always believe that “When You ASSUME, You make ASS of U and ME”, but in this context I myself am requesting you to assume this) that these people also care about you and that their intentions are pure. Give your Manager a chance, and trust me giving him this chance will open lots of new chances for yourself. Yes, sometimes they are little hard on you, but it’s all for your own good. When you go to a Doctor, he either gives you bitter pills or an injection. But you thankfully accept his treatment (and also pay him heavy fee) because you understand that it will cure your physical sickness. If you have enough trust in your Doctor, why can’t you have trust in your Manager? If you start coupling your Manager’s intent with his actions, the most of the things (perception and trust) will start falling into right place. Unless you couple a Judge’s intent with his action of ordering to execute a hardcore criminal, you won’t find any difference between him and a murderer. So, remember next time when your Manager is giving you candid feedback or forcing you to come out of your comfort zone that he is trying to cure your professional sickness. A noble profession… isn’t it?

Now let’s come to the “I am scared of exposing my weaknesses to my Manager” part of the concern…

When you visit a Doctor (yes I am very fond of Doctors :-)), you tell him your symptoms to help him diagnose your problem. So, if you don’t hide your symptoms of physical sickness from your Doctor, why would you hide symptoms of your professional sickness (i.e., “weakness” quadrant of your mySWLD matrix) from your Manager? When seeking help, it is always helpful to be open and honest with 3 categories (yes, again 3 categories :-)) of professionals – Lawyers, Doctors, and Managers. Unless you really open up in front of them, they won’t be able to use their experience, expertise, tools, and tips & tricks to help you come out of your problem.

So, come out of all your fear zones, and be in regular touch with your Manager thru your regular 1:1s with him. The 1:1 is a powerful platform, where you can discuss anything and everything with your Manager. There are many other forums to discuss project schedules, technical issues and red flags. You might be talking to your Manager on hourly basis. But the purpose and focus of weekly 1:1 is different. It is (should always be) – You, Your development/growth plan, Your myTimeline, Your mySWLD matrix, and, last but not the least, Establishing stronger relationship/bonding between the two of you. The 1:1s are a very structured format for maintaining robust communication with your Manager. When you talk, perhaps you’d get to know some information/facts that will justify few of his past/current actions. Perspectives would become clearer and perceptions would come closer to reality.

And you please don’t worry about wasting weekly 30 minutes of your Manager’s time. They get paid to invest their time in their people. Just think about it - You can get weekly 30 minutes of your Manager fully dedicated to think and discuss about you and just you! This is the most effective way of reducing the turnaround time for taking needed corrective actions to put your career graph line back on track. In most of the cases it will be reduced to just one week (vs. a long wait period of 52 weeks). Yes, I said that your growth is your responsibility. But if you make good use of your 1:1s, you may make your manager co-responsible for your growth. So, reach out to your Manager, setup your weekly 1:1 with him, and make most use of this opportunity and platform.

I will discuss and address other concerns I heard (like, “periodic 1:1s would become boring”, or “there won’t be enough agenda to discuss”, etc.) in my next blogs, "5 Minutes Self Analysis a Day Keeps Professional Diseases Away", and “A Stitch in Time Saves Nine : For Managers” where I would try to help you set agenda for these meetings, and try to make them interesting for you and your Manager…

Who am I?

Have you ever asked yourself, “Who am I?” If not, you better ask it. And ask it sooner than later…

Effective management starts with self management. And self management starts with self discovery. Each manager is his or her own best resource. As with any resource, managers should put sincere effort into the development and improvement of that resource. But, unless you know who you are, you won’t know what you can do and where you need help. Knowing your strengths as well as your weaknesses can help give direction in life, can make you much more effective in setting and reaching goals, and will make you a more well-rounded person.

You may argue that it is your Manager’s responsibility to identify (and provide you feedback on) your strengths and weaknesses. But is your life so insignificant for you that you’d throw it on mercy of someone else? Remember that your growth is your responsibility. Also, how many hours do you spend with your Boss every day? Every week? Every year? You spend 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and 365 days a year with yourself. So, who else can know you better than yourself? Once a while having a date with yourself, your inner self, could be an eye opening experience. Your Manager can just provide you few pointers, mostly generic ones. But you are different from any other person who has ever lived in the history of the universe. You are the only one in the whole of creation who has your particular set of abilities. Finding the Inner You is something that only you can do – Who else but you can know which abilities you possess and what kind of limitations you have. You know for sure that you are your well wisher; you know that you are not jealous of yourself; and you know that you are on your side. So, you can’t go wrong in judging yourself.

Knowing who you are means knowing what you can do (your strengths) and what you cannot do (your weaknesses). But identifying your strengths and weaknesses won’t be an easy task for you. It is really hard (and requires total truthfulness) to be completely honest with yourself about yourself. We think that we know right off what our strengths are. But trust me, mostly we don’t. We think we do, but we don’t. Unless we make a conscious effort to know, we won’t. Knowing your weaknesses is even harder to come to terms with. It’s easy to get confused between what you don’t like to do, versus where you’re actually the weakest. Knowing who you are also means knowing what you like to do (your likings) and what you do not like to do (your disliking). I will be talking more on all these in my blog, “Creating Your SWLD Matrix”.

After you know what’s there inside your toolbox, it is important for you to know what you want to do with your tools. A life without an aim is lame. Unless you know where you want to go, you will never reach there. Ambition drives motivation, determination, and all the ingredients to achieve success in your life. No matter how successful you are or a big loser you are, your dream or goal is there inside your mind. You might just hide it from everyone (including yourself), but it is there. And when you know who you are, your goal becomes crystal clear. I will be talking more on how to reach your professional goal in my blog, “Creating Your Career Graph Timeline”.

After you know who you are, help your team members also to know who they are. Encourage them to create their mySWLD matrix and their myTimeline. Remember that your organization invests money in you (the Managers), so that you may invest your time, your experience, your passion and your soul in your people (your team)! Ask your team to use these self analysis tools, and bring the notes to their 1:1 with you. Also explain to them how it would help you to help them even better. I will be talking more about this in my next blogs, “A Stitch in Time Saves Nine : For Managees”, and “A Stitch in Time Saves Nine : For Managers”…