1. UNDERSTANDING YOUR NEW ROLEFOUNDATIONS

What Does Being a Manager Mean?

Perhaps you've recently earned a promotion to a managerial role after serving as an individual contributor. Or maybe you have a business degree and you're entering the corporate world as a manager. Your role may involve full-time management, or you may have assumed a senior position that involves some management activities along with continued responsibilities as an individual contributor. Whatever your situation, to succeed in your new role you'll need a firm grasp of what it means to be a manager.

As many businesspeople have discovered, being a manager is surprisingly complex. It requires you to widen your focus—to look beyond the immediate tasks at hand and consider the needs of people within and outside your group or unit. It also demands a markedly different set of skills than those valued in individual contributor roles.

Consider these unique aspects of becoming a manager:

You work through others

An individual contributor is responsible for accomplishing specific tasks. In contrast, a manager focuses on managing people and processes. Even if you continue to be responsible for producing a specific body of work—whether it's being responsible for a number of accounts or developing a new product—you will also need to make things happen by working through others.

As a manager you rely on others and their abilities, not yourself and your own skills, to accomplish your company's goals. Moreover, you get things done by managing interactions with a broad range of people. These include not only your direct reports, but also your boss, peers, and people outside your organization.

Many new managers are surprised by how much time they need to spend on handling the personal interactions required to get work done through others.

You play multiple roles

As a manager, you're more than just a leader who hires, trains, and motivates employees and provides needed resources. Managers play a variety of additional roles as well. These are just a few:

Spokesperson: You represent your group to the larger organization.

Liaison: You ensure positive networks between your group and others both inside and outside the organization.

Disseminator: You feed crucial data about the competitive environment and your company's vision and performance to subordinates. You also relay information about your unit's performance and needs to senior managers.

Entrepreneur: You initiate projects to improve your unit's processes or profits.

Mediator: You deal with crises, resolve grievances, and promote agreement within your group and between your unit and others in the organization.

Decision maker: You ensure that decisions are made (either by you or in collaboration with others) and then communicated, coordinate the impact of interrelated decisions, and are held accountable for the day-to-day operations of your group.

You network and cultivate relationships

Because your success depends on working through others, you spend considerable time networking and cultivating relationships—on several fronts:

With your direct reports: You forge supportive bonds with your employees—recognizing their achievements, supporting their career aspirations, and showing interest in them as individuals.

With your peers: You get to know other managers of units on which your group depends, as well as those who depend on your group. Through these connections, you act as an advocate for your group—procuring the resources your people need to do their work. You also act as a buffer, protecting your people from unreasonable or unnecessary requests made by other departments or teams. Likewise, you work to understand your peers' needs and communicate them to your employees so they can support other units' efforts.

With your superiors: You demonstrate your commitment to meeting your unit's short-term goals as well as the company's high-level strategy. And you accept personal accountability for your unit—managing it as if it were your own business.

Tools: Identify Your Crucial Contacts and Beginning to Build Your Network

To identify key contacts that you'll need to establish within your organization and to begin to build your network, see the "Identify Your Crucial Contacts" and "Beginning to Build Your Network" tools.

You develop a strategic perspective for your group

A key part of your job as a manager is to develop a strategic perspective for your own group. That means understanding your company's high-level strategy and crafting a strategy for your unit or group that supports the corporate plan. All this requires you to:

Be aware of your company's "big picture"—its competitive challenges, its long-term plans, and its major strengths and weaknesses.

Adopt a long-term view of the future—for example, what will your group need to contribute to the company three or five years from now?

Set the agenda for your unit to ensure that your people focus on what's most important.

Balance your company's needs and expectations with your staff's emotional and developmental needs.

You develop a new mindset and skill set

The mindset and skills that served you well as an individual contributor differ markedly from those needed in your new managerial role. To develop the right mindset, you need to:

Think strategically—developing a compelling vision and strategic plan for your group that enables it to support the company's strategy.

Think analytically—gathering information systematically, identifying patterns in the problems that crop up, and seeking input from others.

Use judgment—making decisions under time pressure and with incomplete information.

Innovate—generating fresh ideas and combining ideas in creative ways.

In addition to thinking and making decisions differently, you'll need to hone these skills:

Communication—fostering open dialogue with bosses, peers, and employees; listening to others' ideas; delivering effective presentations; and preparing well-written proposals and other communications.

Leadership—providing direction, influencing others, fostering teamwork and collaboration, motivating others, and coaching and developing others.

Interpersonal effectiveness—building relationships, leveraging networks and diversity, and managing conflict and disagreement.

Tool: Identifying Desirable Managerial Traits

Clearly, being an effective manager is no small feat. But by taking the time to understand the many different dimensions of this challenging role, you can boost your chances of succeeding. While this list of competencies may seem overwhelming, if you have led projects or teams in the past, you probably have already practiced some of these skills. Use the "Identifying Desirable Managerial Traits" tool to help you identify managerial qualities that you've encountered in your previous job experiences and that you may want to demonstrate in your current position.

Using Stepping Up to Management

The remaining modules in this program help you build and strengthen your managerial skills. Although the modules of this program are presented in a linear fashion, you may want to visit them in a different sequence, depending on the specifics of your situation. Use the results that you received after completing the introductory Priority Assessment to help chart your course.

Working Through Others: Learn how to support your direct reports, develop quality relationships with each member of your team, balance conflicting expectations, and adapt your managerial approach to specific circumstances as well as individuals that you oversee.

Managing Performance: Build your skills for managing performance, delegating, setting goals, coaching your direct reports, assessing performance, and creating opportunities to help employees grow.

Organizing Resources, Meetings & Time: Examine the administrative responsibilities that come with your new job, learn how to make meetings more productive, and develop an effective time management strategy.

Cultivating Your Team: Discover the key elements of creating a high-performing team—establishing clear processes, clarifying communication standards, developing team norms and group culture, protecting the team from illegitimate or unnecessary requests from the organization, and determining team performance measures.

Supporting Your Boss & Organization: Learn how to support your boss by understanding his or her agenda, fostering an atmosphere of partnership, agreeing on group and individual performance goals, and aligning those goals with the company's strategic objectives.

Networking with Colleagues: Discover the importance of cultivating relationships with people both inside and outside your organization, and developing influence strategies to build and strengthen your network.

Evolving as a Manager: Examine your transition into management, evaluate your role as a manager and a leader, reflect on how you relate to others, and create a continuous learning path.

Common Misconceptions About Management

Many first-time managers enter their new role with inaccurate assumptions. When they discover the surprising truths about management, they may feel dismayed and disillusioned. How can you avoid this scenario? Familiarize yourself with these common misconceptions about management:

Misconception 1: You'll need the same skills as a manager that you needed as an individual contributor

The skills that spark success for an individual contributor differ markedly from those needed to manage. For example, successful sales representatives understands the features and benefits of the products they sell, are knowledgeable about the market and competition, and know how to close deals—valuable skills indeed.

But as sales managers, they need an entirely different—and far more extensive—set of talents. They have to know how to work through others, create an environment in which direct reports can excel, and set the agenda for their region. They will also need to cultivate positive relationships with peer managers and represent their group to the larger organization. Dealing with crises, initiating projects to improve unit performance, and putting the spotlight on their people's success—not their own—constitute additional required skills.

Misconception 2: You'll have a lot of power as a manager

It's easy to assume that managers have far more power than individual contributors. After all, many managers have more formal authority; for example, control over budgets and staffing. They also have higher status—better offices, expense accounts, and other perks. And they have more access to important resources, such as the attention of top-level executives and professional development opportunities.

In truth, managers have far less power than they might expect—for these reasons:

Formal authority has severe limitations. Subordinates don't necessarily follow their manager's direction or do as they're asked.

To compete in a global economy, many companies have replaced the traditional corporate hierarchy with horizontal networks and cross-functional teams. Managers have less formal authority in these structures than in the traditional hierarchy.

Managers have no formal authority over their peers—individuals who greatly influence whether managers obtain the resources or support they need.

Misconception 3: You'll have a lot of autonomy as a manager

Many new managers believe they'll have immense freedom to make decisions and take action. After all, they have subordinates to do all the work!

In truth, managers have far less freedom than they might have anticipated. That's because, in addition to their employees, they depend on numerous other people—peers, supervisors, customers, suppliers—to get things done. They also shoulder a whole new set of responsibilities that bear little resemblance to the challenges individual contributors worry about. A manager who is accountable for the group's performance can't freely make unilateral decisions or take immediate action when a problem arises. Instead, the manager must carefully consider the complex, long-term implications of each decision—for the unit, the company, and outside constituents such as customers and suppliers.

Misconception 4: You learn to be a good manager primarily through training

To increase your chances of succeeding in your new role, you can certainly prepare by taking advantage of training opportunities. However, you can learn only so much through training. Your best teacher will be the on-the-job experiences you accumulate as you begin serving in your new role.

Be sure to gather feedback from peers, supervisors, direct reports, and other people on how you handled various challenges, so that you can better see the connections between your actions and their outcomes. Also, take the time to reflect on these experiences, analyze what went right, what went wrong, and what you could do differently the next time. These steps will help you improve your performance and build your confidence.

Misconception 5: You'll always feel smart, in control, and satisfied in your managerial role

Even the most self-assured managers have their moments of frustration and uncertainty. This is normal. Owing to the complexities of the role, you can expect to feel some or all of the following once you start the job:

Constrained by limited resources and time

Unsure about whether you can handle the job

Overwhelmed by the challenges of leading others

Frustrated when direct reports don't do as you ask

Annoyed by all the "politicking" you need to do to build influence and get work done

With practice and experience, these emotions become somewhat less intense. You'll find yourself feeling more excited, competent, and fulfilled in your job—though not every minute.

First Step: Thinking About Your Expectations

By understanding common misconceptions about the managerial role, you can start your new job with a clearer picture of what to expect. The payoff? You'll be less likely to experience disappointment when the realities of management hit home.

If you haven't already done so, complete the First Step assessment Thinking About Your Expectations (under Overview) to assess your susceptibility to some common misunderstandings about management.

Avoiding Typical Mistakes

Anyone starting in a new role or taking on a new challenge is bound to make mistakes. New managers are no exception. But for first-time managers, the typical mistakes fall into some all-too-recognizable categories. By familiarizing yourself with potential pitfalls, you can increase your chances of avoiding them. The table below shows typical mistakes, their consequences, and some approaches that may help you avoid making these mistakes.

Mistakes in leadership skills

Typical Mistakes

Consequences How to Avoid

You lose sight of the big picture: You let fire fighting eclipse strategic initiatives.

You focus on short-term problems instead of long-term goals. In terms of your team, you don't teach them how to think strategically or handle challenges themselves.

Ask yourself strategic questions, such as, "What marketplace trends are we seeing that could affect my group this year?" and "What resources does my group need in order to accomplish its goals?"

Prepare written plans for your boss, documenting strategic goals and concrete, supporting actions.

You don't set clear objectives: You establish ambiguous or unrealistic goals for your group.

Your team cannot hit its targets or achieve its objectives.

Early on, create explicit objectives that include descriptions of the desired end result.

Set objectives that are SMART: specific, measurable, actionable, realistic, and time-bound.

Define objectives that directly support your company's strategy.

You fail to network with other managers:

You remain ignorant of the issues that managers in other parts of the company face. You

Attend management meetings that are open to you and introduce yourself to

Typical Mistakes

Consequences How to Avoid

You neglect to build relationships with peers and colleagues in the organization.

lack a set of contacts to rely on for support and resources.

your colleagues.

Schedule individual lunches with managers from other parts of the company.

Through meeting with other managers and getting to know their problems and concerns, find ways to offer help.

Mistakes in dealing with direct reports

Typical Mistakes

Consequences How to Avoid

You fail to delegate: Under pressure to produce, you take on subordinates' tasks because you fear losing control or overburdening others.

Failure to delegate blocks your staff's advancement. They can become resentful—then disengage.

Break complex projects into manageable chunks with clear milestones.

Take small risks in playing to your staff's strengths. Early successes will build your confidence in them—and their confidence in their own abilities.

Empower your direct reports by delegating projects or specific tasks along with the requisite authority to complete them. Doing so will engage your direct reports and build mutual trust. If you are unsure of their abilities, start with lower risk projects.

You fail to give constructive feedback: You

Good performance goes unrecognized and positive work

With a trusted colleague or coach, role-play giving feedback centering on

Typical Mistakes

Consequences How to Avoid

neglect to applaud good performance and avoid correcting inadequate performance.

behaviors are not reinforced.

Performance problems don't get fixed, and you lose your credibility in the minds of your boss, peers, and direct reports.

behaviors and their consequences, not personalities.

Remind yourself that constructive feedback strengthens employees' skills and encourages more effective ways of working.

You don't keep your group informed: You provide incomplete information or fail to share knowledge with your group.

You deprive your staff of information they need to do their jobs effectively.

Establish a formal communication system to keep track of decisions that are made and action items that are pending.

Ensure that your group receives information about your company's competitive situation and challenges.

Mistakes in dealing with your boss

Typical Mistakes

Consequences How to Avoid

You neglect to keep your boss informed: You keep your boss in the dark about problems or issues facing your group.

You destroy some of your boss's trust and confidence in you, and you fail to garner the help you need to accomplish your goals.

Ensure that you have clearly communicated your goals to your boss and peers.

When you have information that your boss needs to keep from being blindsided, deliver the information to him or her as soon as you can.

When you have information about impending problems, give your boss a "heads up."

You don't ask for help: You view yourself as in servitude to

You fail to gather the resources and support from your boss that you need in order to be successful in your job.

Bring up problems during meetings with your boss. Offer possible solutions and be prepared to engage in joint problem

Typical Mistakes

Consequences How to Avoid

your manager, rather than in partnership. To avoid seeming vulnerable, you don't ask for help.

solving.

Network to meet other managers in the organization so that you can turn to them later for help.

Prepare agendas for your regular meetings to help organize your thoughts about what you need.

Mistakes in personal development

Typical Mistakes

Consequences How to Avoid

You fail to receive feedback: You do not gather feedback about your performance.

You can't see the connections between your actions and their consequences. Therefore, you can't modify your behaviors to achieve the results you want.

Be open to feedback and acknowledge that you can learn from mistakes.

Create a system for gathering feedback about your performance from your peers, supervisors, direct reports, and other people with whom you work.

Resist any temptation to get defensive if someone gives you critical feedback.

You don't project confidence: You come across as timid, uncertain, or nervous about your role.

You don't energize your team. Your peers may take advantage of you or fail to respect you.

Cultivate constant awareness of the image you're projecting.

Express any feelings of insecurity to your boss—behind closed doors.

Explain the purpose of initiatives you're pushing—rather than saying, "Senior management has mandated these changes."

You neglect your personal life: Consumed by your new

You put family, community, and spiritual commitments at risk.

With family and community members, clarify priorities and define strategies for ensuring that your nonwork

Typical Mistakes

Consequences How to Avoid

job's demands, you fail to protect your personal life.

commitments are fulfilled.

Review your calendar periodically and determine whether you are devoting enough time to personal matters.

You don't cope with stress: You don't spot the symptoms of debilitating work-related stress.

You suffer mental, physical, and emotional exhaustion and become internally focused (focused on how you think, feel, etc.) rather than engaging in the events and activities taking place around you.

Learn the symptoms of "bad" stress—such as headaches, sleeplessness, irritability, and inability to concentrate.

Try to determine the root cause of the problem. Make an observation about your situation and then continue to probe with the question, "Why?" For example, "I just snapped at one of my direct reports." Why? "I'm tired and was not thinking clearly." Why? "I've been working late and have too much to do." Why? "I'm not delegating enough."

Master relaxation techniques that work for you—whether it's yoga, meditation, or playing a vigorous sport.

To learn more about common mistakes and to think about your potential vulnerabilities to some key pitfalls, be sure to complete the Activity section in this module.

Learning From Experience

As a new manager, you need to master the many nuances of your role. Formal training helps. For example, management training programs can acquaint you with corporate policies, procedures, and resources, as well as help you forge valuable connections with peers in a classroom setting.

However, formal training can only take you so far. You will want to apply the theoretical frameworks that you learn to your actual job. Thus, your best teacher will be the on-the-job experiences that you accumulate as you transition into your managerial role. But learning from experience isn't easy: It requires its own set of attitudes and skills. The best experiential learners apply these practices:

Adopt a learning mindset

Adopting a learning mindset means seizing learning opportunities that come your way—or making your own opportunities. It also means being willing to move out of your comfort zone into unfamiliar areas. For example, if your negotiating skills need improvement, you might take the opportunity to observe expert negotiators in action and note their approaches to managing the different stages of a negotiation. After that, you might work with a mentor to try your hand at managing a smaller scale negotiation, such as a meeting between you and several fellow employees whose collaboration is needed to get a job done.

Assuming a learning mindset will not only help you master new challenges, but also push you beyond your current skill set.

Practice the art of reflection

Learning from experience requires the ability to reflect on workplace events in a structured, disciplined way. Events make sense only when you stop and think about what they mean, how they connect, and what patterns they reveal. Reflection puts events into a new and clear perspective and enables you to identify ways to improve your performance.

Admittedly, it's difficult to take the time to reflect when you're facing an already overwhelming workload. But without reflection, you fail to evaluate and systematically learn from your performance. To take a disciplined approach to reflection, regularly ask yourself what you've learned from your day-to-day experiences. Be sure to reflect on events that were carried out well in addition to ones that didn't go so well. For instance, at the end of every week, analyze your key experiences during that time. Ask yourself, "What went well? How can it be sustained? What didn't go so well? How can it be improved? What lessons can I extract from this experience and apply to other situations?"

The Reflections section of this program is designed to help you take the time to reflect and learn in a periodic and structured way.

Find and exploit valuable learning experiences

Seek out workplace experiences that will help you better contribute to your company's strategy. Such experiences might include managing a special cross-functional task force that's exploring a new technology, or leading a team that's investigating new sales techniques.

Look especially for experiences that allow you to master and apply skills that your company values. Linking your learning to your organization's strategy makes you a more focused, effective manager. As an added benefit, you will probably find it exciting to have a clear line of sight between what you're doing on the job and how your company is performing.

Be open to feedback

To learn from on-the-job experiences, you need feedback—from superiors, peers, direct reports, and external constituents such as customers or suppliers. This broad and deep feedback can help you better understand your strengths and weaknesses, and how others see your leadership style.

Of course, feedback can be painful. For example, one new manager was shocked to learn from an internal survey that his employees viewed him as aloof and intimidating. But feedback is an essential tool for extracting lessons from your workplace experiences. It helps you see gaps between what you intended to accomplish in a particular decision or situation and what you actually accomplished. Once you've identified these gaps, you can more easily modify your behavior to produce the outcomes you desire.

To get the most honest, valuable feedback, you need to make others want to give it. Send the signal that you're willing to hear—and seriously and consistently consider—what others have to say about you. Ask for specific comments, suggestions, and feedback in areas that you are attempting to improve. Avoid becoming defensive if what you hear is disturbing. Most important, express your appreciation to those who give you feedback and put relevant feedback to use. If others see that you act on the feedback that you receive, they will be more inclined to give you constructive, candid feedback in the future.

Learn from your peers and mentors

Forge mentoring relationships with peers outside the usual reporting hierarchy. You'll encounter diverse leadership styles and viewpoints, gain opportunities for reflection, and gather additional feedback on your performance as a manager. Indeed, some experts maintain that new managers learn the most from their peers.

Former peers who have moved on to other organizations can also help you learn from experience. In fact, some new managers feel more comfortable asking these individuals for their insights. Why? In a highly politicized organization, a manager may fear revealing shortcomings to current peers who might intentionally or inadvertently use the information against him or her.

Tools: Finding a Mentor and Developing a Support Network of Peers

Mentors or coaches can also help you master the art of reflection and experiential learning. Consider establishing a mentoring or coaching relationship with a trusted individual in your company or with an outside professional who can help you.

To develop a plan for extracting valuable lessons from your workplace experiences, see the "Finding a Mentor" and "Developing a Support Network of Peers" tools.

Planning Your Immediate Learning Agenda

As you grow in your managerial role, you'll strive to constantly use your workplace experiences to build your knowledge and skills. But in your first days on the job, you'll need to identify your immediate learning agenda—the knowledge and skills you need to quickly master in order to begin making a contribution.

As you build your learning agenda, you'll need to be strategic—you will want to prioritize what learning will make the biggest difference the soonest. To this end, first identify the urgent needs of your group. Then, gauge your ability as a manager to help your group meet their immediate needs—and what skills you need to acquire quickly.

Identify your group's immediate needs and any obstacles

Is your group or unit charged with getting a new product or project off the ground? Is it facing a crisis and in need of a turnaround? Does it have to revitalize a service it provides? Is it striving mainly to preserve its already successful track record? To identify your group's immediate and urgent needs, you will need to clarify your group's priorities and concerns, assess your group's cultural challenges, and understand how your group's activities fit within the organization.

Clarify your team's perceptions. As you get to know your employees, you'll uncover what they view as your group's primary goals, priorities, and challenges. Talk to each member of your team about his or her specific responsibilities to get a complete picture of their immediate concerns. For example, if your group is launching a new website, your employees may share the view that their primary challenge is to meet tight deadlines, and urge you to bring in additional resources. Some might also be concerned that the proposed design will not provide the desired customer experience and ask that you champion a review of design specifications.

Assess any cultural challenges. Ask yourself whether your group's culture—the way people make decisions, work together, and handle problems—supports the group's efforts to achieve its goals. For example, if innovation is key to your company's competitive strategy and your group's immediate goals, your employees will need to feel comfortable taking some risks and enjoy exchanging ideas. In that case, if your group has a more cautious or subdued culture, you'll need to know how to go about changing it.

To assess your group's culture, observe the way people interact. Do they work well together as a team? Feel comfortable disagreeing with one another? Make decisions effectively? Follow through on action plans? Determine whether the group embodies the culture needed to be successful or if the cultural environment is an obstacle.

Understand your group's place in the organization. Your immediate need for networking skills depends on whether your group is highly interdependent with other

units in your company. On whom do you depend to do your work? And who depends on you to do their work? Your answers shed light on the networks of influence you'll need to navigate to succeed as a manager—and to meet your group's immediate needs.

You'll also want to quickly identify cross-functional tensions. For example, does your department consistently compete for IT resources? Do IT resources play a part in your group's ability to carry out their tasks? If such competition for resources jeopardizes your group's success, you may need to hone conflict resolution skills or negotiating skills.

Check your observations with your supervisor

You've assessed your group's immediate priorities, your team's perceived needs, your group's current culture, and your unit's place in the company's informal network. Now you need to meet with your supervisor to confirm whether his or her take on your group's immediate needs is the same as yours, and to prioritize multiple needs. If there is a disconnect between what you and your supervisor consider urgent, work with your supervisor to clarify priorities.

Gauge your skills

You've assessed your group's immediate priorities and worked with your supervisor to reach a common understanding. Now ask yourself, "Given my assessment, what skills and knowledge do I need to acquire to begin making a real contribution as quickly as possible?"

For example, you may find that you need to obtain resources to support your group. Therefore, you decide you need to sharpen both your influencing and presentation skills. Or, you may find that a more specific problem, such as a longstanding rivalry between the engineering and marketing groups, could hinder your group's success. In this case, you might decide that networking and repairing this cross-functional tension is your most urgent need.

Finally, prioritize your learning needs, and then develop a plan for achieving the skills and knowledge you've identified. This initial learning plan should strategically address your most crucial learning needs. As you continue to learn about your group and their needs, you should return to and update your learning plan.

Tool: Planning Your Immediate Learning Needs

To begin to prioritize your most critical learning needs, use the "Planning Your Immediate Learning Needs" tool.

2. WORKING THROUGH OTHERS

First Step: Analyzing Expectations

Feedback (Part 2 of 2)

The answers that you selected for each statement are listed below.

If you rated any of the statements a "3," "4," or "5," the statement may indicate an area of potential conflict (these rows are highlighted). Your expectations of your past bosses might have been in conflict with other responsibilities your bosses were expected to carry out.

If you rated statements a "1" or "2", you may not have potential conflicts with your boss' expectations that are of immediate concern. However, that might change over time. Moreover, your direct reports' expectations of you may be different than what you expect.

Read the far right column to better understand the conflicting expectations that you may encounter as a new manager.

When I worked with past bosses, I expected them to: Conflicting Expectations

1. Provide me with the resources I needed to carry out my day-to-day tasks.

Your direct reports will want you to focus on their immediate needs as related to their day-to-day tasks.

Your supervisor, on the other hand, will expect you to implement a long-term agenda for your group as well as address its short-term needs.

2. Be knowledgeable about and skilled in my job so they could help me solve problems.

Your direct reports will want you to be familiar with their jobs and the tasks that they perform so that you can help them solve their day-to-day problems.

Your supervisor, meanwhile, will expect you to minimize your functional—or individual contributor—skills and focus your efforts on strengthening your leadership skills; for example, setting direction for your group, motivating others, fostering teamwork, and

When I worked with past bosses, I expected them to: Conflicting Expectations

championing change.

3. Define the "big picture" in terms of the group's challenges.Your direct reports will want you to set the direction for the group and create strategies to meet the group's challenges.

Your supervisor, on the other hand, will expect you to monitor what's going on in the organization and competitive environment, and to update your agenda accordingly.

4. Support my personal career interests, even those interests that are not related to my company's needs.

Your direct reports will want you to create an environment in which their professional and personal needs are addressed and recognized.

Your supervisor, meanwhile, will expect you to develop your direct reports' skills so that they serve the company first and the direct reports' careers second.

5. Meet frequently with me, work with me to explore ideas, and support me emotionally during stressful times.

Some of your direct reports may want you to meet with them on a regular basis to collaborate on ideas and help them work through emotions associated with stressful times. Others might prefer a less-involved management style.

Your supervisor will expect you to divide your time between your direct reports and others in the organization so that you can cultivate a strong network.

6. Protect me from major changes taking place in the organization so that I could focus on getting my work done.

Your direct reports will want you to shield them from organizational changes taking place from within the company so they can get their work done.

Your supervisor, meanwhile, will expect you to make any changes necessary to support the company's strategy and direction.

7. Support me and my group by meeting my requests for resources, knowledge, and input on carrying out my work.

Your direct reports will want you to be a leader by procuring resources they need to get their work done and by supporting them in their professional development.

Your supervisor, on the other hand, will expect you to lead by setting an agenda that furthers your company's interests and by taking responsibility for your group's results.

To Learn MoreTo learn more about what is covered in this module, click the options on the left above.

Working Through Direct Reports

Your job as a manager is multifaceted—you assume multiple roles, network with a broad range of people, craft strategies for your group, and develop your managerial skills. However, your primary responsibility is to make things happen by working through your direct reports. You need to rely on your employees and their abilities, not yourself and your own skills, to accomplish your company’s goals. Even if you continue to work as an individual contributor, your first priority is to make things happen by working through others.

How do you do this? You relinquish the role of doer and embrace the role of people manager. You support your direct reports by serving as a liaison between them and the organization, setting clear direction and goals, creating a supportive environment, and learning about their individual needs.

In the end, your success as a manager is measured by the success of your team.

Act as a liaison

One of your responsibilities in managing a group is to serve as a liaison between your direct reports and the organization. You do this by continually monitoring what’s going on in the company and sharing important information with your team. You also filter requests from other parts of the organization so that inappropriate or unnecessary demands are not placed on your group. Simultaneously, you listen to suggestions and concerns made by your team and either respond to them or convey them to upper management as needed.

Clarify your group's purpose and goals

To ensure the success of your group, you must make sure their work aligns with the objectives of your supervisor and organization. When you become a manager, you will initially want to talk with your supervisor to make sure you understand the overarching purpose of your group and the group’s goals.

You will also need to understand and clarify the existing individual goals of your direct reports. Over time, you will help establish your group’s priorities and be responsible for translating those priorities into individual employee goals. You will also be responsible for aligning your group’s goals to the strategic goals of the company.

Tool: Clarifying Your Group’s Purpose and Goals

Provide a supportive environment

In addition to setting clear direction and goals, you also need to provide a supportive environment for your employees. You do this by creating a climate that helps individuals see themselves as valued members of the group and by providing your employees with the resources they need to do their jobs.

To ensure your employees know that you appreciate their contributions and are paying attention to their efforts, offer ongoing feedback that is both specific and timely. Positive words provide encouragement and recognition for a job well done. When team members offer ideas and opinions, listen to their comments and thank them for their input. Listening shows that you take people seriously and value their ideas.

You also support your employees by acknowledging their desire to grow professionally. View training and development as investments in your employees' future productivity. Give them “stretch” assignments that enable them to master new skills. If they make a mistake, help them analyze what happened and apply what they’ve learned to future challenges. Provide constructive criticism in a positive way.

Tool: Creating a Supportive Environment

To provide your employees with the resources they need, make sure you understand your group’s goals, objectives, and desired results. Then consider all the resources that are available to you in the organization. Resources include equipment, time, technologies, systems, office space, training, and people. For each resource need, identify the expected benefit to your team. Then work with your supervisor to determine how you can provide needed resources cost effectively.

By creating an environment in which people feel supported and enjoy their work, you enable both the individuals in your group and your organization to achieve higher levels of success.

Developing Rapport, Trust & Respect

The quality of the relationships you cultivate with your direct reports is critical to your performance as a manager. Trust is essential to effective relationships: When people trust you, they are more likely to see you as believable, well informed, and sincere. They know that you have their best interests at heart. They also view you as possessing a strong emotional character (steady temperament) and integrity (honesty and reliability). Those qualities reinforce your appeal, which in turn makes people more inclined to support your ideas.

How can you create a foundation of trust and build positive bonds with your employees? The following practices can help:

Strive for consistency. Avoid sending contradictory signals or giving different answers to the same question. Inconsistency makes employees skeptical of your credibility and competence.

Demonstrate your honesty. Answer employees’ questions honestly: Don’t pretend you know more than you do. If you don’t know an answer, say so—and promise to investigate. Then follow through on your promise.

Accept responsibility for your mistakes. When you own up to your mistakes, people see you as a truthful person—on the assumption that most dishonest individuals try to conceal their faults.

Build a track record of trustworthiness. Follow through on promises and commitments you've made. Share or give credit to those who contribute good ideas. Present consistent values. By behaving in a trustworthy manner, you earn a reputation for

being trustworthy.

Put others' best interests first. When people believe that you have their interests in mind, they tend to trust you and your ideas more. For instance, suppose a marketing

director helps a valued direct report get promoted to a different department. The marketing director knows it's difficult to lose a top-notch team member, but accepts that helping others develop their professional skills is part of a manager's job. As a result, the marketing director earns the trust of that direct report and also of the other department head—which may come in handy in the future.

Encourage the exploration of ideas. Listen to others' concerns to encourage dialogue and demonstrate your openness to others' perspectives. Establish an environment where everyone can share their ideas and know that their opinions are valued.

Getting to Know Your Direct Reports

Whether you are new to the group or company that you are working with, or have been promoted to a management position and will now supervise former peers, you should take the lead in getting to know your direct reports. In your first few days in your new role, you will want to introduce yourself to your group and plan meetings with each of your direct reports.

Introduce yourself

Your first team meeting sets the tone and serves as your initial introduction to the group. Hold this meeting, or at least schedule it, on your first day on the job. If team members are virtual—or physically separated from one another—make every effort to include them in your kickoff meeting. Virtual teammates can be connected by telephone or, if your company has the capability, by videoconference.

Prepare for this meeting by listing questions your employees may ask you and then rehearsing responses to each question. For example, if you've recently joined the organization, your employees may ask you what your perceptions are of the company and its products. If you've been promoted, they may ask about your priorities and goals. Prepare clear and concise responses—but try to avoid making pronouncements that might give the impression that you think you already know all the answers.

Also prepare a short personal introduction highlighting previous experience that relates to your new job. Finally, obtain a list of your employees’ names and brief biographical information from the human resources group so that you can be familiar with the important work that each of them performs.

If possible, hold the meeting in a room that encourages comfort and enables everyone to see one another. After introducing yourself, ask each employee to do the same. You might invite employees to share their thoughts about the challenges that they think the group faces or successes that they are particularly proud of. Keep the conversation focused on them, not you.

Remember, your goal is to be an active listener so that you can better understand your direct reports’ concerns.

End the meeting by telling your group that you will be setting up individual meetings with each of them to learn more about their challenges and concerns and that you will hold a follow-up meeting with the group at a later date.

Meet with each direct report

In your first week or two on the job, meet with each of your direct reports. These initial meetings set the stage for developing a relationship of trust. Unless your group is operating in a crisis mode and immediate, urgent action is required, your goal in these initial meetings is to get to know your employees as individuals and to understand what they consider important. Prepare for these meetings by reviewing each employee’s job description as well as any resume or job application that may be in his or her personnel file.

It's a good idea to plan to have two conversations with each direct report. At the first meeting, get to know the person. Ask open-ended questions—questions that cannot be answered yes or no—about their experiences and interests. Let the employee lead the conversation. Use the “Preparing for Meetings with Employees” tool to prepare for this meeting. Questions you might ask include:

Tool: Preparing for Meetings with Employees

What do you like about your work?

What are your other areas of interest?

What are your favorite hobbies or pastimes?

Where would you like to see yourself five years from now?

What are your professional goals?

Although your intention is to get to know your employee, be prepared to share similar information about yourself, if asked.

Take the time to record your thoughts after each of these meetings: What have you learned about each of your employees? What are their interests and goals? How might these fit into the work the group does?

At the second meeting, talk specifically about the person’s job, clarify goals, and determine whether any support is needed. Questions to ask might include:

What are your individual performance goals?

What challenges do you have in meeting these goals?

How can you best be supported in your job?

What changes do you think are needed?

In what ways do you think that your efforts support the strategic objectives of the unit and organization?

After you’ve conducted second meetings with all of your direct reports, use the “Capturing Key Insights from Your Meetings” tool to record your observations and summarize overall themes for your group.

Tool: Capturing Key Insights from Your Meetings

Analyze what you learned

Once all of your meetings have been conducted, analyze the information that you collected to see if patterns or themes emerge. Are people generally satisfied in their jobs? Does the group have a broad range of capabilities, or are team members heavily weighted in one area of expertise—for example, technical skills? Are individual goals aligned with those of the organization? Do team members understand how their work is contributing to the bigger picture?

The answers to these questions may reconfirm your expectations of your group. Or you may uncover themes that reveal new insights that you were not aware of.

You may want to check your insights with your boss to make sure your preliminary conclusions are correct.

Communicate key findings to your group

Share the insights that you gleaned from your individual meetings with your group. Summarize the key findings, issues, and themes that emerged from the conversations and ask your team what they think about the conclusions you’ve drawn. Be open to people’s interpretation of the

information and feedback, and encourage employees to give their thoughts to how issues can be addressed.

Finally, as you tackle any issues, be sure to continue to involve your direct reports. Consider how you can apply what you have learned about their experience and interests during your initial conversations with them.

Balancing Conflicting Expectations

New managers report that balancing their direct reports’ expectations with those of their boss is one of the most difficult parts of being a manager. Understanding how conflicting expectations arise can help you avoid being blindsided by them—and can help you generate ideas for balancing them.

Understand the dilemma

As a manager, you face a tough dilemma: To motivate your people and retain talented performers, you need to satisfy your staff’s expectations. But sometimes fulfilling your staff’s expectations can jeopardize your ability to carry out your primary responsibility: supporting your company’s strategic direction.

For example, suppose your team wants you to hire a specialist in a particular database technology to help them carry out a new task involving analyzing customer information. While you have permission to hire one new person, you’ve determined that it would be better over the long run to bring in an instructor for three days to teach your team how to use the technology and analyze the information themselves—and use the open position to hire an additional team member who is not a specialist. You feel that this solution allows for long-term growth and encourages your team members to augment their skill base. In this case, your team may feel that you’re not fully supporting their efforts, while you feel that you are balancing their needs with the company’s constraints and strategy.

Understand differing perspectives

Many instances of conflicting expectations stem from supervisors’ and employees’ differing perspectives on how managers should behave, what their priorities should be, and what capacities they should bring to their work. The table shows examples:

Issue Employees want you to Your boss wants you to

Time Provide the resources they need to carry out their tasks now

Set and implement a long-term agenda for your group as well as

Issue Employees want you to Your boss wants you to

address short-term needs

Skill levels Know more than they do about their jobs, so you can help solve their problems

Strengthen your leadership skills, not your individual contributor skills

The "big picture"

Define the “big picture” as the group’s challenges and strategies for addressing them

Define the “big picture” as your company’s competitive challenges and strategies for addressing them

Professional development

Support their personal career interests, regardless of whether those interests relate to the company’s needs

Help your people develop skills that serve the company’s needs first and their career interests second

Networking Engage in frequent interactions with them to help them solve problems, explore ideas, and gain emotional support during stressful times

Cultivate contacts with peers and other constituents that enable you to collaborate constructively with other parts of the company

Buffering Shield them from major change so they can focus on getting their work done

Ensure that your group makes the changes necessary to support the company’s direction

Leadership Define “leadership” as meeting their requests for resources, support, knowledge, and ideas for carrying out their work

Define “leadership” as setting an agenda that furthers your company’s interests and taking responsibility for results

Communicate to balance expectations

How to handle conflicting expectations? There’s no “one-size-fits-all” solution. Rather, you need to handle each case separately. However, forthright communication can help you understand

the forces behind conflicting expectations as well as begin addressing them. If you sense frustration among your employees after you’ve made a particular decision, ask them to explain their view of the situation. Follow with an explanation of the reasons behind your decision. You may uncover important differences between perceptions and reality.

For instance, Joan, a sales rep, has become embroiled in a dispute with a customer. She asks you to intervene. You promise to gather more information about the conflict. Joan becomes visibly frustrated when you don’t immediately contact the customer. When you ask her to explain her perceptions, she expresses concern that you’re being “indecisive” and “unsupportive.”

Here’s an opportunity for you to manage Joan’s perceptions: Explain that decisiveness and supportiveness don’t always take the form of instant action. In fact, the best decision makers take time to gather needed information before reacting to the situation. Moreover, by waiting a day or two before contacting the customer, you’re giving both Joan and the customer time to cool off—laying the groundwork for a more productive conversation about the conflict. In addition, you’re providing Joan with the opportunity to come up with creative solutions on her own.

It’s always helpful to explain the big-picture rationale behind unpopular decisions. For example, the more your people know about the company’s strategy and your unit’s role in supporting that strategy, the greater the possibility that they’ll understand and accept decisions that on the surface seem ill-considered.

Leverage your group's talents

Communication alone isn’t a cure-all for addressing conflicting expectations. You also need to sharpen your creative thinking abilities. At times, you may be able to involve your group in finding solutions that meet everyone’s needs.

For example, suppose your group needs to reduce order-processing errors but lacks the funding required to research potential new technologies. You could bluntly explain that your group’s limited budget must go toward expenditures that relate more directly to the company’s long-term strategy. But you could also go one step further: Invite talented and invested employees to brainstorm creative options that cost less and devise solutions to the order-processing problem.

Tools: Clarifying Your Group's Purpose and Goals and Identifying Expectations

By using this approach, you give your employees opportunities to use their creative problem-solving skills, you draw on their technical expertise, and you demonstrate that you’re willing to involve them in the process of finding solutions to problems.

Use the “Clarifying Your Group's Purpose and Goals” and “Identifying Expectations” tools to help you better understand and balance conflicting expectations.

Adapting Your Management Approach

As part of your role as a people manager, you need to adapt your management approach to specific circumstances as well as to the individuals you’re overseeing. This section will help you understand how to balance supervising and managing activities and how to adapt your management style to individual employees based on their abilities.

Managing versus supervising

Many people use the words managing and supervising interchangeably. Yet they are two different activities that serve different purposes. In general, management usually includes activities such as setting policies and establishing standards, while supervisory activities typically focus on enforcement.

For example, you might manage your group by setting team goals such as “Reduce order-processing errors to meet our organization’s goal of improving customer service.” You might supervise your group by periodically assessing their progress on the targets and goals that have been defined. If little progress toward the goal has been made, you might create an action plan for improving performance.

Similarly, you might manage your direct reports by defining the performance standard, or target, for each of the goals that have been established. For instance, “Reduce order-processing errors by 15% by the end of the year.” You might supervise your staff by monitoring how order-processing data is recorded to ensure that information about errors is being reported accurately and captured in a timely manner.

Finding the right balance between managing and supervising can be challenging, as there is no set equation for how much time you should devote to each. High-risk projects and less-experienced employees typically require more supervision than do low-risk projects and highly trained employees. Be aware, also, that your own manager's supervisory style may influence his or her expectations about how much you should supervise others. Practice and experience are your best teachers and will help you strike the right balance.

Adjust your management style to individuals

You also need to adapt your management style to each employee, depending on his or her level of professional development and skill. The table below shows some examples.

Development level

Situations Appropriate management style

Employee is inexperienced, but has a high degree of commitment

New employees or employees who have transitioned to a group from another department who are enthusiastic.

For example, a direct report is just starting out in his or her career—or just takes on a new set of responsibilities.

Directive: You monitor the person more closely and provide more explicit instructions and demands.

Employee is somewhat competent, but has a low level of commitment

Employees who are experienced, but are wavering in their commitment to the job or organization or are unmotivated.

For example, an individual feels frustrated about challenges he or she has encountered on the job.

Coaching: You identify the person’s concerns and work together with him or her to create an action plan for resolving the issues.

Employee is experienced and capable, but has variable commitment

Employees who have mastered the skills of the job, but (for whatever reasons) lack confidence in applying these skills.

For example, a staff member who has completed training in conflict resolution skills avoids dealing with a difficult peer: The person has not actually practiced these skills before

Supportive: You encourage the person to identify and build on his or her strengths, and to gradually take on more complex challenges.

Development level

Situations Appropriate management style

and therefore lacks confidence.

Employee is extremely competent and highly committed

Employees who are strong performers, require little supervision, are committed to the organization, and are proactive in developing their careers and capabilities.

For example, an employee has a broad understanding of how his or her work supports the unit’s and company’s efforts and embraces goals enthusiastically.

Delegating: You give the person significant latitude and entrust him or her with key task responsibilities and decision making.

Source: Adapted from Situational Leadership® by Dr. Paul Hersey and Dr. Ken Blanchard, 1969.

Matching a learning style to a particular person and situation is not an exact science. In fact, one direct report might need different styles, depending on the tasks at hand. For example, you may have a direct report who’s been grappling with a work-related problem for several days. The more he works on the problem, the more frustrated he gets. You might use a coaching management style to help him understand and work through the problem. Once the problem is resolved and the direct report’s frustration has abated, you might use a supportive management style.

By modifying the way you work with individuals in particular situations, you can help them reach their highest level of performance on a specific goal or task. This, in turn, results in greater organizational effectiveness.

3. MANAGING PERFORMANCEPerformance Management: A Daily Activity

Performance management and employee development are crucial management activities that ensure alignment of individual performance goals with organizational goals, keep employees motivated and engaged, and help build key competencies. Most companies have established employee performance management processes that encompass some or all of the following activities:

Setting standards and/or goals for individual employees based on shared expectations of the work that needs to be done.

Delegating tasks based on agreed-upon performance standards and goals.

Providing feedback to employees about their performance as well as listening to their concerns.

Coaching employees to help them improve performance or develop new skills.

Evaluating whether an employee has achieved his or her defined goals.

Creating a development plan to help employees grow professionally.

In many organizations, managers conduct formal performance appraisals once or perhaps twice a year. These appraisals can affect whether an employee is considered for a salary increase, bonus, or promotion. Performance appraisals can therefore play an important part in the performance management process. However, the appraisals are only one step in the process. Managing performance is an ongoing task that involves a number of management skills.

Performance management as a daily activity

Integrating the performance management process into your daily interactions with direct reports can help you build effective relationships with your employees while keeping them motivated and focused on achieving their performance goals. Many of your everyday management activities—such as prioritizing work, delegating assignments, recognizing successes and achievements, coaching your employees, and helping your employees create development plans for growth—touch on the performance management process.

As a new manager, how might you begin weaving performance management into your daily activities? First get acquainted with your direct reports, through the following steps:

Review your employees’ previous performance evaluations, job descriptions, and goals.

Hold one-on-one meetings with each staff member to clarify his or her job responsibilities and to assess developmental goals. Ask: “What skills do you want to improve? What new types of work assignments do you want to try?”

The insights generated by this get-acquainted process will help you set work priorities consistent with each employee's performance goals and delegate assignments that enable your people to strengthen their skills and gain experience in new areas.

These insights will also help you give constructive feedback to your direct reports, identify opportunities for coaching, conduct effective formal performance appraisals, and work with your direct reports to create development plans for further growth.

The following foundations take a closer look at each of the elements in the performance management process.

Setting Goals

When you start out in your new role, your direct reports will most likely already have existing goals. Eventually, however, you will be in the position of setting goals with your employees for the coming year.

Clarifying and setting goals for each employee is a vital part of the performance management process. Without goals, your employees won’t know whether they’re performing adequately. How do you go about defining individual employee goals? The following process can help:

1. Clarify the employee’s existing goals.

Meet with each employee and ask him or her to describe the individual goals established by your predecessor. Ask the employee to explain how each goal relates to the unit’s objectives or to the employee's personal development plan.

For example, suppose you lead a product development unit. Your company’s strategy hinges on increasing market share, and the product development unit has been charged with introducing breakthrough innovations as well as new features to refresh sales of existing products. To meet those objectives, perhaps your predecessor assigned some team members the task of developing new product features, while asking others to create entirely new products.

2. Decide whether existing goals need updating.

Given your understanding of your unit’s objectives and your company’s competitive strategy, consider what (if any) changes you need to make to each employee’s goals.

Consider revising or eliminating goals that are not tied either to business objectives or employee development.

For instance, suppose your company has determined that enhancing existing products by adding new features is a more cost-effective and faster way to gain market share than investing in entirely new innovations. In this case, you might decide to put more employees in charge of developing new features and task fewer people with innovating breakthrough products.

3. Ensure that each goal is “SMART.”

“SMART” goals are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-limited. Here are several examples of SMART goals:

“By the end of the second quarter this year, reduce by 10% the number of errors in customer orders that you process.”

“By year-end, launch new versions of five existing products into the marketplace.”

“Within six months, teach everyone in the department to use the new customer database.”

Whether you’re affirming an employee’s preexisting goals or defining new ones, ensure that each goal is SMART.

4. Explain each goal’s importance.

For each goal that you establish for the employee, clarify how the work will affect your assessment of the employee's job performance. For example, “Your performance rating will be determined according to whether you’ve met or exceeded these goals.”

Also explain how the goal supports unit and company objectives. Finally, point out ways in which the goal will help the employee achieve his or her developmental

objectives. You will also want to indicate which, if any, of the goals are more important than others.

If you can’t make a link between a goal and these criteria (performance assessment, unit and company objectives, and developmental objectives), reconsider whether the goal or task is appropriate for that employee.

5. Determine resources needed to achieve each goal.

For each goal that you’ve defined for an employee, ask the person what resources he or she will need to achieve the goal.

For example, will the employee require new equipment? Additional office space? Training? Access to specific individuals who can provide needed information or expertise? Assistance from part-time workers who can free up the employee’s time to devote to the goal?

Once you’ve clarified needed resources, investigate which are possible to obtain and make arrangements to procure them. If you can’t obtain new resources, explain the reasons to your employees and investigate alternative resources or goals.

Setting goals: Additional tips

Tool: Setting Performance Goals

The following table provides additional tips for setting goals:

Tips for Setting Goals

Break long-term goals into a series of smaller, measurable achievements. This enables you and your employee to track progress and determine whether he or she would benefit from additional skill development or coaching.

When setting goals that require an employee to learn new skills or take on new responsibilities, allow latitude for the employee to make mistakes.

Identify “stretch” assignments as such—those tasks that help an employee strengthen existing skills or acquire new ones. Define these goals in terms of both their minimum requirement and their ideal performance.

Make sure that you and your employee agree on how

Tips for Setting Goals

you’ll both know when the employee has achieved a goal. For example, “Jim, we’ll know you’ve achieved this goal when everyone in our department can create correct reports using the new software that you’ve trained them on.”

To help your employees achieve their individual goals—and thus ensure that your unit reaches its objectives—you’ll need to know what kinds of tasks to delegate to your direct reports. You’ll learn more about delegating, a core managerial responsibility, in the next foundation.

Learning to Delegate

Being a manager is about getting work done through others, rather than completing tasks yourself. To succeed, you need to be able to delegate. But delegating is more than randomly assigning projects or deliverables to whichever employee seems to have the most free time. Instead, delegating involves complex judgment calls. It can often be a means to motivating an employee or developing an employee's skills. At the same time, you must be careful not to abdicate your own accountability for the assignment.

Delegating can be a surprisingly difficult skill for new managers to master. You will need to learn what to delegate, how to communicate assignments, and how to determine the appropriate level of follow-up. Delegating also carries an emotional component. You may feel that you are losing control over the outcome when a direct report carries out a task using a process that is different from yours. When you delegate decision making, you will need to be receptive to a decision that is different from what you expected. If you delegate a project to an employee who does an outstanding job, you may worry that your own contribution will go unrecognized.

Why is delegating important?

Delegating frees up more of your time for those responsibilities that you cannot delegate, such as thinking strategically, building relationships, and managing employee performance. Through the power of delegating, you can:

Utilize your human resources to their highest potential and achieve superior results by matching tasks and responsibilities to employee strengths.

Empower and motivate employees, resulting in higher productivity.

Help your people develop specific skills, or give them an opportunity to demonstrate competencies in new areas.

Increase the capacity of your group to respond quickly to changes in your business.

What to delegate

First, you need to decide what to delegate and what to keep. One way to approach this decision is to decide what you can't delegate, such as higher-level tasks and responsibilities or those that are core to your job—examples include responsibility for contracts, determining strategy, building alliances, and setting standards—and then put everything else on the table. This approach will help you avoid making the mistake of delegating only routine or tedious tasks while holding on to more meaningful projects.

Many routine tasks can be incorporated into employees' regular job functions rather than delegated on an ad hoc basis. For example, others in your group might collect progress updates and compile monthly status reports for your approval, schedule recurring meetings, and search the Internet for news about your industry. Routine tasks that do not legitimately fall within a particular job function might be delegated to teams or individuals on a rotating basis so that no one feels particularly singled out for additional work.

Special projects are also good candidates for delegating. If your supervisor asks you to do an analysis to determine whether new equipment will reduce costs, this doesn't mean that you personally have to collect and analyze all of the information. Unless the project needs to be kept confidential, your direct reports can help you complete your supervisor's request. Complex projects can often be divided into a collection of tasks that can then be delegated to different individuals.

A task or project that you do not initially know how to accomplish may not be a good candidate for delegating until you can identify what controls or checkpoints are appropriate. If you are new to the department or function you are managing, you might begin by asking those in your group to help you better understand the task's requirements.

Defining your desired results

Once you've identified what to delegate, define the specific results you want to achieve. For example, if you need someone to follow up on past due invoices, you might define your goal as

"We need at least 30% of the invoices that are 60 days or more past due paid by the end of the month."

Clearly defining goals will make it easier for you to identify the right individual or team for a particular task. For example, if your goal is to collect 30% of past due revenue, you might choose someone with good negotiating skills. However, if instead you want someone to "call all of our customers with invoices that are 60 days past due," you have limited the requirements for the assignment to basic telephone skills.

Defining your desired results also helps you understand whether your ability to delegate may be limited by your staff's current capabilities and to pinpoint needed training and skill development. Perhaps you want someone to take over the function of managing accounts receivable, but you realize that you first need to help someone develop the required combination of accounting, telephone, and negotiation skills. In that case you would need to delegate responsibility gradually as your employee gains experience.

Choosing the right person

In choosing an individual or team for a project assignment, consider their:

Capacity to perform the assignment. Do they have time available, or can this new project take priority over existing work?

Capability to complete the assignment successfully. How do the required skills compare with their strengths and experience? Remember that not everyone is going to do everything correctly, especially on the first try. You might build some slack into the assignment so that your employees will have opportunities to practice unfamiliar skills and, if they make mistakes, to learn from the experience.

Interest in the assignment. What aspects of the assignment might make it attractive to an employee? Will they have a chance to do something different, exercise higher skills, or get exposure to senior management? Understanding why an employee might have an interest in a particular assignment will help you find ways to motivate them.

Development needs. You can delegate work that helps employees develop specific skills and allows you to assess their capabilities to do different types of work.

If an individual lacks a required skill or is inexperienced, be prepared to provide additional coaching as they progress with the assignment, or consider asking another more-experienced employee to be the coach. Have a contingency plan in case the employee finds the task overwhelming.

Rather than delegate exclusively to one or two top performers, try to spread out your assignments among different employees Although you may have greater confidence in your top

employees, they may become overburdened, and you will miss opportunities to strengthen other members of your group. Consider asking for volunteers for an assignment.

Tool: Planning to Delegate

Use the "Planning to Delegate" tool to identify tasks that you might delegate to your direct reports.

Communicating the assignment

When approaching an employee with a new assignment, your goal is to help them understand:

Your objectives

How the work will benefit the department or organization

The potential benefits to the employee of working on the assignment

Your time frame

How you will monitor progress

What training or assistance you will provide

Constraints on how the work is to be accomplished

How you will measure success

Provide a written summary of what the employee is accountable for—what specific results are to be achieved, and when. If the task is significant, you may want to add it to the employee’s formal performance goals. Also, identify significant constraints on how the work is to be accomplished. For example, in delegating the task of collecting on past due accounts, you might establish that using scare tactics or intimidating customers is not acceptable. Use the "Clarifying Task Expectations" tool to document the details of a task you are delegating.

Tool: Clarifying Task Expectations

Following up on your delegation

Follow-up includes letting other employees and colleagues know that the employee is assuming additional responsibilities, as well as arranging for appropriate resources and authorizations.

Follow-up also involves monitoring the progress of assignments—since you are ultimately still accountable for the results. You might request regular status updates, preliminary reports, or hold meetings to review progress and identify obstacles. If employees have difficulty with

assignments, give them some time to resolve the problems on their own before making suggestions. Try not to step in and solve the problem for them—that can undermine their confidence, and ultimately their ability to handle the task. And some skills can be mastered only through hands-on experience. If an employee asks for help, try to provide assistance in a constructive way, without taking over or taking back the assignment.

Assessing the delegation

Additional follow-up should occur when the assignment is completed. Find out how your employees experienced the delegation process. What did they like/dislike about working on an assignment? What would they do differently in the future? Consider the employees' perspectives as well as your own experience in evaluating whether a delegation was successful. Finally, congratulate your employees for their efforts in completing assignments, and encourage others to recognize their successes as well.

Giving Ongoing Feedback

Giving ongoing feedback is an essential part of managing employee performance. In your role as a manager, you’ll need to provide feedback on ongoing work as well as on any performance problems that arise.

Ongoing feedback is different from a formal performance review, in several ways:

Ongoing feedback can take place during structured sessions (such as weekly status meetings) and during your day-to-day interactions with employees (such as a conversation after an employee has completed a project or given a presentation). A performance review takes place once or twice a year.

Unlike a formal performance review, an ongoing feedback session or conversation should not affect an employee’s compensation or eligibility for promotion. When employees understand the difference between the two types of reviews, most will prove more open to receiving ongoing feedback from you. There may also be a difference in documentation requirements.

Many experts maintain that a formal performance review should constitute a recap of issues that you and your employee have already discussed. Ideally, anything said during a formal performance review should not come as a surprise to your employee.

Consider these guidelines for providing ongoing feedback:

Keep feedback sessions on ongoing work separate from performance reviews. Consider conducting a weekly or monthly status review with each employee to provide guidance on ongoing projects and work in progress. During such meetings you can ask

how things are going and ask whether the employee needs help to complete a project, and you can discuss any new ideas for the project.

At these sessions, you and your employee can also explore ways to work toward larger goals—such as improving work quality or timeliness, or furthering the employee’s professional development.

Recognize accomplishments. Managers often forget to provide positive feedback that shows appreciation for the work an employee has accomplished. During ongoing feedback sessions—as well as during your daily encounters with employees—remember to praise your employee’s achievements. Many employees experience the absence of positive feedback as negative feedback.

When giving positive feedback, be genuine and specific. For example, “Sally, I really liked the way you handled that customer’s complaint this morning. You showed him that we care about the quality of our service, and you offered a good solution to his problem. This kind of creative problem-solving is essential for keeping our customers

loyal.”

Present critical feedback effectively. Providing ongoing feedback to guide an employee’s current efforts or address a performance problem is a key component of managing and developing your staff. When you give ongoing feedback effectively, your direct reports can further enhance their performance and make even bigger contributions to your group.

As explained in the “Coaching Your Employees” and “Conducting Performance Reviews” foundations included in this module, giving critical feedback requires skill and thoughtfulness. When you provide critical feedback outside of a formal performance review or coaching session, keep the following principles in mind:

o Provide the feedback as soon as possible after you’ve identified a performance problem.

o Deliver the feedback in private to the employee in question.

o Frame the feedback in terms of the person’s behavior, not his or her character or motives.

o Explain the impact of the person’s behavior on his or her ability to meet individual goals, and describe the impact of the behavior on the rest of your group or unit.

o Clearly define the change in behavior needed to correct the problem.

o Offer assistance in helping the employee to change this behavior.

Invite feedback from employees on your performance as a coach and manager. At ongoing feedback sessions or after you’ve provided feedback on a specific effort (such as a team presentation or a completed project), ask simple questions such as, "Was this conversation helpful to you?" or "How might I have been more effective?"

By inviting feedback you demonstrate that you’re open to learning and to improving your own performance, thus you act as a role model for receiving feedback. But make sure you respond positively to whatever you hear in response to your questions. Rather than reacting defensively to any criticism, use active listening techniques.

For example, paraphrase to verify that you’ve heard the message correctly. Request any needed clarification. And periodically summarize the discussion. Avoid responding in defensive ways—such as making justifications, apologizing, or explaining. A defensive response could inhibit your employee from giving you feedback in the future.

Tool: Preparing to Give Feedback

Use the "Preparing to Give Feedback" tool to plan how best to deliver positive or constructive feedback to your employee.

Coaching Your Employees

You’re a few weeks into your new managerial job, and you’ve noticed that one of your direct reports has turned in several poorly prepared reports. Or perhaps another employee has expressed a desire to deliver a presentation to the group on his latest project. Or maybe another group member seems to be dominating brainstorming sessions to the point where other participants aren’t speaking up.

Such behaviors are often signals that you need to do some coaching with a particular employee. Coaching is an interactive process by which you help direct reports identify areas for improvement or growth, clarify their goals, and then move toward achieving those objectives.

Through coaching, you help your employees grow as professionals, address performance challenges, and maximize their contributions to your unit’s and company’s success. You also establish a culture of continuous learning and enhance your employees' power to meet your organization’s current future needs.

Coaching requires distinct skills—such as observing behaviors, asking good questions, listening, providing feedback, and agreeing on action steps for change. These skills are described in more detail below.

Observing your employees' behaviors

Take a closer look at the behaviors you’ve noticed—by observing your employees in action. Form theories about what’s happening. Clarify your thoughts about the observed behavior on your group’s ability to meet its goals, avoiding character judgments or assumptions about employees’ motives. The following table contrasts ineffective and effective observations.

Observations

Rather than assume that Frame your observations as

“Susan is careless and doesn’t care about the quality of her work.”

“Susan submitted two reports containing several errors on each page. When Milo tried to follow the instructions in the reports, he became confused. He had to go back to Susan for clarification, and he completed his task late.”

“Joe is too timid and is letting his timidity keep him from helping out the rest of the group.”

“The last two times I suggested to Joe that he give presentations on his projects, he came up with reasons not to do so. As a result, other group members aren’t getting information they need to do their jobs.”

“Angelina doesn’t respect others’ contributions to brainstorming. She’s being too pushy.”

“Angelina interrupted others seven times during the last brainstorming session, and only two of the remaining ten participants contributed ideas during the session.”

If needed, check your observations with others—while respecting your employee’s confidentiality. For instance, ask several group members other than Angelina how they feel the brainstorming sessions are going. Also consider whether you’ve inadvertently contributed to the problem. For example, have you dominated several sessions, sending the message that collaborative brainstorming isn’t important to you?

Understanding the coaching process

You can coach employees during your daily interactions with them, as well as schedule coaching sessions to discuss specific problems or growth opportunities. In either case, coaching is a three-step process:

1. Prepare for a coaching discussion. Before broaching the subject of needed change with an employee, prepare a discussion plan. Start by documenting the purpose of the discussion; for example, “To prepare Joe to deliver successful presentations.” Note what’s needed, such as “Joe will need to attend several training seminars on public speaking.” Write down what’s at stake: “Other group members can’t perform as well if Joe doesn’t share information about his projects with them.” And list desired outcomes: “Joe will begin delivering project presentations weekly starting next month.”

2. Conduct the discussion. Meet with your employee and clarify the purpose and importance of discussing the needed change in his or her behavior or performance. Ask questions to ensure that the employee understands why you’re having the discussion.

In specific terms, describe the undesirable ways in which the problem behavior affects your group. Explore ways to handle the situation—offering ideas as well as encouraging the employee to brainstorm alternatives with you.

Then agree on an action plan and the outcomes you both desire. Be open to a range of ideas presented by your employee. Ensure that the action plan includes a timetable and benchmarks for assessing progress.

3. Follow up on agreements. Schedule one or more follow-up meetings to check on the employee’s progress once he or she has begun to implement the agreed-upon action plan. At these meetings, continue using your coaching skills to help the employee improve in areas that still need work. For instance, perhaps Joe has made improvements in using graphics during his project presentations, but he needs to get better at summarizing his ideas at the end of his talks.

Practiced thoughtfully, coaching can help your employees give their best on the job. Coaching itself takes practice—but you’ll find the results well worth the effort.

This three-step process is typically completed over a period of days or weeks, but can be compressed in situations where coaching must be conducted immediately. For example when you are working with or observing employees and see that they are proceeding incorrectly and need correction immediately, but also need an understanding of how to choose the right path in the future, you might interrupt, ask permission to offer a bit of coaching, and then conduct the coaching discussion.

Tool: Planning a Coaching Session

Hone your coaching skills

To be effective as a coach, you'll need to develop specific skills, including:

Asking effective questions. Ask questions to assess the employee’s views about what’s going on. Open questions (those that don’t require a “yes” or “no” response) can help. Consider these examples:

“Susan, what do you think are the most important characteristics of a well-prepared report?”

“Joe, if you delivered a short presentation on your project during next week’s status meeting, what do you think the impact would be?”

“Angelina, what ideas do you have for ensuring that everyone in the group has a chance to contribute ideas during brainstorming sessions?”

By asking open questions, you encourage the employee to actively participate in the conversation. You also begin generating ideas for how to address the problem behavior.

Listening actively. During coaching conversations with your employee, listen actively to show interest in the person as well as his or her ideas and concerns. To listen actively, avoid distractions—putting other work aside during your coaching conversation. Make eye contact with the employee, smile, and resist any urge to interrupt. Demonstrate relaxed body posture. Speak in a friendly tone of voice, and periodically show that you’re listening.

Most important, paraphrase occasionally to demonstrate that you’ve understood the other person accurately. For example: “So, Joe, you feel intensely anxious about public speaking?” Or: “What I hear you saying, Susan, is that you haven’t had time to thoroughly familiarize yourself with the new report-preparation software. Is that correct?”

Giving feedback. Share your observations of the troubling behavior with the employee in question. Frame your comments in terms of the person’s behavior and its impact on your group—not in terms of character or motives. Describe behavior in specific terms. And don’t forget to praise the person for his or her positive behaviors and accomplishments.

For example: “Susan, when you make errors in your reports, other members in the group get confused and have to come to you for clarification. They end up performing their part of the project late. You do a great job of providing clear summaries and analyses in your reports. Reducing the number of errors would help you produce even higher-quality work. Most important, you’d be helping the rest of the group to do their jobs more quickly and accurately.”

When you give feedback honestly, objectively, and fairly, you earn your employee’s trust.

Gaining agreement. Questioning, active listening, and giving feedback can help you and your employee agree on new goals and action steps for achieving them. For instance, based on your conversation with Joe, you and he might agree that Joe needs to strengthen his public-speaking skills. Together, you might set a goal for him to take a one-day course on giving presentations. You might set another goal for him to develop a project presentation that he’ll deliver to the group in a month.

If Joe tends to hear constructive feedback as criticism, emphasize the importance of strong presentation skills and express your confidence that he can master the art of public speaking. Stress how much you value his contribution to the group.

Coaching a poor performer

When coaching a marginal performer—someone who does not consistently meet performance expectations—you may need to be more directive. For example, if Joe doesn’t respond to feedback or doesn’t seem to care about changing his behavior, calmly and clearly explain how and why he must strengthen his skills. Be supportive, but explain the consequences of not changing: “I won’t be able to approve your promotion and salary increase until you can demonstrate more effective presentation skills.”

For employees who have steadily performed at a low level, work with your human resources group and follow your company's procedures to develop a performance improvement plan. Such plans are designed to offer coaching to the employee along with a specific set of measures they must meet to be successful.

Conducting Performance Reviews

During a formal performance review, you give your employee specific information about his or her job performance, review and clarify performance goals for the future, and establish development goals—that is, set objectives for strengthening particular skills and abilities. This foundation focuses on how to prepare for a performance review and apply specific strategies while conducting the review. The next foundation focuses on how to create a development plan with your employee following a performance review.

Preparing for a performance review

Before meeting with your employee to discuss his or her performance, prepare by reviewing the following information:

Your company's performance review policies and forms.

The employee’s job description.

Goals and performance criteria established for the employee for the current period. Typically, these will have been defined during the previous review.

The employee’s work history, including skills, past training, and past job performance.

Your documentation of performance observations and other relevant data.

Relevant and specific feedback from customers, peers, or other individuals with whom the employee works.

Self-reporting by the employee (if included in your company's review process).

As you review this material, note specific examples of both positive performance and problems that will provide support for your assessment and enable you to give meaningful feedback. Where the employee's performance is below expectations, consider possible contributing factors—such as unclear goals, lack of resources, insufficient training, or ambiguous direction or instruction. If you have been giving your employee ongoing feedback on performance, there will be no surprises during the review.

Help the employee also prepare for the meeting by reminding him or her of the purposes of the review beforehand. In addition, outline the steps that the review will take—for example, “We’ll start with your appraisal of your own performance, then we’ll talk more about future goals. In addition, we will follow up by creating a development plan.”

Conducting the meeting

How you conduct the performance review depends on the objectives as well as the employee's level of experience and sensitivity to negative feedback. Generally, it's a good idea to start by asking the employee to share his or her impressions of how things have been going. This helps you understand the employee’s point of view and prevents you from controlling too much of the conversation early on. If you’ve identified performance issues that the employee doesn’t bring up, you can then ask for his or her perspective on those issues.

In some cases, however, you may decide to begin the meeting with your evaluation of the employee’s performance and your ideas for improvement. Why? This approach can be helpful if the employee’s performance needs substantial improvement and if other, less direct attempts to communicate these issues have failed. You may also use this approach with an employee who is inexperienced, relatively new to the job, and who looks to you for significant direction.

The purpose of a performance review is to encourage good performance or correct poor performance. In both cases, frame your comments on how the employee’s specific accomplishments compare to agreed-upon goals. Keep the focus on the performance, not the employee’s character or motives. This is also the time to confirm whether the employee understands his or her responsibilities and has the skills and resources to fulfill them.

Discussing problematic performance

Some managers feel uncomfortable giving feedback to correct an employee’s performance. If you have this difficulty, remind yourself that you’re working together with your employee as a partner and that giving feedback is a necessary part of improving performance.

Start by describing the differences between the employee’s goals and his or her actual performance. For example, “We agreed that you would get an average of five new customers per month over the past six months, and you got an average of three per month.” If possible, explain how improving the performance will help the company reach its goals: “By getting more new customers, we have a better chance of increasing our market share.” Also emphasize the importance of performance improvement in terms of the individual’s career goals: “When you’ve met these targets, you’ll be eligible for promotion.”

It’s vital that you gain the employee’s agreement that improving performance is important. To that end, the following strategies may help you offer effective feedback:

Encourage the employee to respond to and articulate points of disagreement.

Orient your feedback toward problem-solving and action. To keep ownership of the problem with the employee, give him or her the first opportunity to suggest a plan for closing the gap between desired and actual performance.

Avoid using subjective judgments; for example, "You aren’t a leader," or "You aren’t committed to the job.”

Avoid generalizations such as, "You just don’t seem involved with your work." Instead, offer specific comments that relate to the job, such as, "I’ve noticed that you haven’t offered any suggestions at our service improvement meetings. Why is that?"

Be selective in the data you choose to share. You don’t need to recite every shortcoming or failing.

Give authentic praise as well as meaningful criticism.

Define the consequences or impact of the person’s behavior. People can and do change when they understand how their behavior affects others.

Once you’ve discussed the employee’s performance, it’s time to generate a development plan—a strategy for helping the person close performance gaps and enhance his or her skills. The next foundation examines this phase in detail.

Creating a Development Plan

Helping your employees create a development plan is another crucial component of managing performance. A development plan lays out the skills or behaviors a direct report wants or needs to improve, as well as the steps for achieving that growth or improvement.

Organizations that encourage learning build the creation of an annual employee development plan into their performance management process. Sometimes creating a development plan is part of the formal performance appraisal. However, in an attempt to separate the functions of evaluating employees’ performance and supporting them in their development, some organizations encourage managers to hold two separate meetings when possible: one for the performance appraisal and another for the development plan. The purpose of the development plan is to help an employee acquire the skills needed to grow within the organization and to advance his or her career.

A development plan might also be created as part of a coaching arrangement.

Creating a development plan

Before you meet to create a development plan with an employee, be sure to ask the employee to think about their developmental needs and possible ways to address those needs. You may also want to prepare a proposed draft of a plan before the meeting, based on your own analysis of the employee's needs. However, it’s important that the employee actively participate in the planning process and buy into the plan. Thus any plan you propose should be clearly presented as a draft that you and your employee can refine and finalize together.

When you meet, make sure you and your direct report discuss the questions shown in the table below:

Question Example

“What goals do you want or need to achieve?”

Patricia wants to learn how to use the new customer database your company just installed. Her interest in this skill is good news for your unit—since your group could accomplish its work faster if more of its members were familiar with the system.

Patricia also wants to improve her presentation skills. She believes that her timidity and lack of confidence have prevented her from delivering effective project updates to her colleagues.

“When will you achieve the agreed-upon goals?”

Patricia will strive to demonstrate knowledge of the new database three months from now.

She will also aim to deliver an acceptable project update to her colleagues two months from now.

“What steps do you need to take to put this plan in action?”

To develop her IT skills, Patricia will need to take the online tutorial provided in the new database.

To strengthen her presentation skills, she will need to read some literature on public speaking, take a course in making presentations, and observe several effective presenters in action.

“What are the outcomes you and I want to see?”

As a desired IT outcome, Patricia will update the customer database without error and generate correctly formatted reports.

As a desired presentation-skills outcome, she will begin delivering effective project updates to her team every week or month—in an informal meeting setting.

“What assistance do you need in order to reach the goals in the plan?”

To reach her goal regarding the database, Patricia will need time to practice using the database. Some coaching and feedback on her IT skills from Angelina, in IT, would also be valuable.

To strengthen her presentation skills, Patricia will need to ask a trusted colleague to observe her rehearsals of a project presentation and provide critical feedback. My feedback after her presentations would also be useful.

As you and your employee create the development plan, ensure that you reach agreement on the goals and steps required to achieve them. Also test the person’s commitment to carrying out the plan. One helpful technique is to ask your employee to affirm the benefits that he or she will gain by achieving the agreed-upon goals.

For example, you might ask: “Patricia, what do you see as the payoff—both for yourself and the company—if you successfully carry out this plan?”

The commitment you are looking for might sound like: “I think that by learning how to use the database I’ll come up with good ideas for serving customers better. Also, if I improve my presentation skills, I can position myself for a more visible leadership role.”

Tool: Creating Development Plans

Documenting creation of the development plan

Once you and your employee have finalized the development plan, save a copy of the plan in the employee’s record. Keep notes of your observations from the meetings in which you and your direct report finalized the plan.

Often special legal considerations come into play when a manager addresses an employee’s performance problem. If you’re uncertain of or unfamiliar with your company’s policies regarding documenting employee performance, consult your human resources manager or your company’s legal team. If you created the development plan to help an employee address a performance problem, it’s vital to document all the information shared and decisions made as comprehensively and factually as possible.

Following up

As with any plan, don’t forget to follow up after you and your employee have finalized the development plan. Follow-up means remaining aware of the steps and timelines stipulated in the plan and regularly checking in with the employee to see how he or she is doing regarding the plan. Each time you check in, you can provide feedback, coaching, ideas, and encouragement as necessary.

You can follow up by establishing a series of formal status updates, as well as by asking informal questions during your day-to-day interactions with the employee. For example, suppose you run into Patricia in the hallway soon after she had her mentoring session with Angelina in IT. You might use several coaching techniques in a conversation that resembles the following:

Technique Conversation

Following up and checking in with your employee

You: Patricia, how did your mentoring session with Angelina go?

Patricia: Pretty well. I learned a lot, but I was a little overwhelmed by the database’s report-formatting function. It’s complicated.

Inquiring to help the employee solve a problem

You: What would help you get a handle on the function?

Patricia: Hmm. Well, if I could meet with Angelina a few more times, that could help. And I might run through the tutorial a second time.

Technique Conversation

Supporting your employee, making suggestions, and setting milestones

You: Sounds like a good idea. Why don’t you plan for those two things and let me know when you’ve scheduled them in. Also, you might ask Angelina to set aside some extra practice time on the database for you.

Patricia: Okay, will do.

Providing praise and encouragement

You: Keep up the good work, Patricia. I appreciate your can-do spirit and your commitment to the plan we worked out.

Helping your employees to create development plans and achieve agreed-upon goals is one of the most important parts of your job as a manager. By applying the practices described above, you can enable your employees to enhance their performance and make ever more valuable contributions to your unit and company.

4. ORGANIZING RESOURCES, MEETINGS & TIME

Your Role as Administrator

Administrative responsibilities make up an important part of your job as a manager. You carry out administrative tasks to ensure that your company achieves the results it desires—in accordance with its values as well as legal and regulatory requirements. Your administrative responsibilities may include:

Exercising financial controls and participating in the financial management of your department's operations.

Documenting compliance with company policies regarding employee relations, hiring, performance management, and business ethics.

Documenting compliance with regulations specific to your industry.

Safeguarding confidential information.

The value of administrative responsibilities

Some managers view their administrative responsibilities as nuisances that take them away from their “real” work. But by fulfilling these responsibilities, you help ensure that employees, as well as vendors, customers, and even shareholders, are treated equitably. Through documentation and recordkeeping, you demonstrate that you and your group have followed appropriate procedures.

Failing to carry out your administrative responsibilities can pose problems later. For example, suppose you don't document an employee's poor performance as it comes to

light. Eventually, you may decide to fire the employee. The person could charge your company with wrongful dismissal—and you wouldn't be able to provide evidence that his or her performance was subpar.

Thankfully, some administrative tasks are relatively straightforward, such as reviewing and approving time sheets and expense reports, authorizing purchase orders, and reviewing activity reports. Make these tasks part of your daily or weekly routine. If you initially feel unsure of your administrative tasks, complete the "Record Keeping" tool to identify the main tasks for which you’re responsible and to capture key information about each task.

Tool: Record Keeping

In addition to routine administrative responsibilities, you may encounter other situations in your new role that require close attention to company policies and procedures. Consider these scenarios:

A co-worker tells you privately that her supervisor sexually harassed her, but that she’s afraid to report the incident to the human resources department. You wonder if you’re legally required to report it to human resources. Your company’s administrative procedures will clarify how to handle this situation in a way that provides the protection this co-worker is entitled to in the workplace and that safeguards your job.

You interview three candidates—Mary, Jim, and Rob—for a new product design position. After the interviews, you believe you have a good sense of Mary’s abilities and experience, but you feel less confident about Jim’s. You therefore ask Jim for a writing sample. You are even less sure about Rob, so you ask him for a writing sample and a sample of his design work.

Ultimately, you decide to hire Mary. If this hiring situation were subjected to legal scrutiny, a reviewer might determine that you did not treat the candidates fairly (since you did not require a writing sample from Mary), which could pose ethical and legal problems for you and your organization. To avoid such potential situations, you need to follow established guidelines and work closely with your human resources department in all staffing activities.

Your company’s policies are designed to help you handle these types of situations appropriately. As a new manager, you may have difficulty discerning when it’s appropriate to use your discretion in handling such situations and when you must follow company procedures to the letter. Early in your tenure as a manager, it’s best to be cautious and seek counsel from the appropriate experts whenever you feel unsure of what to do.

Types of administrative responsibilities

The following table lists some of the most common administrative tasks a new manager needs to perform:

Task Responsibilities

Hiring Writing job descriptions and posting jobs

Conducting interviews

Making formal offers

Pay, benefits, and compensation Deciding on and reviewing salaries

Approving employee requests for time off and for expenditures related to education and training programs

Employee relations Handling employee grievances

Complying with existing labor agreements

Enforcing rules regarding employee attire, sexual harassment, ethics, and so forth

Performance management Conducting formal performance reviews with

employees

Documenting and communicating poor performance, including verbal warnings and written evaluations outlining areas of unsatisfactory performance

Terminating employees

Compliance with federal, state, and industry regulations

Documenting interactions with outside vendors, clients, and customers

Establishing quality controls

Conducting other industry-specific recordkeeping

Financial controls Reviewing purchase orders and expense reports

Reviewing current budgets against actual results and investigating discrepancies

Task Responsibilities

Preparing budget estimates for future periods

Recordkeeping/archiving Maintaining important departmental records,

including contracts, reports, inspection records, phone logs, legal reviews, and so forth

Developing best practices for maintaining copies of your correspondence if your company doesn’t provide guidelines

Confidentiality Safeguarding confidential customer information

Keeping copyrighted brands or trade secrets confidential

Maintaining confidentiality of employee records

Emergency preparation Maintaining up-to-date emergency procedures,

including provisions for how to continue to service customers or clients. Most organizations designate a particular person to take responsibility for these plans. This individual may provide you with a template to complete and to keep updated for your department.

Vendor/contractor relations Dealing fairly with vendors and contractors; for

example, only using vendors from a pre-approved list and declining gifts from existing or potential vendors

Data security and appropriate use of information

Enforcing policies relating to employees' use of the Internet and e-mail

Protecting passwords to internal Web sites, and so forth

Where to find guidance

To fully understand the scope of your administrative responsibilities, you may well need help from others in your organization. Your company may also provide training in such matters. In addition, you’ll find the following resources valuable:

Employee guides and policy and procedure manuals. Your company's employee handbook outlines many of the organization’s policies. You may also receive a policy and procedures manual when you begin your new job as a manager. When you find yourself wondering how to handle an administrative question, these documents are a good place to start.

Company intranet. Your company may have an intranet site to help managers handle administrative processes such as hiring. For example, if you have an open position in your department or team, you go to the site, post your position, and review applications from interested candidates. The site may also provide answers to many questions about human resources, as well as forms you’ll need to handle certain administrative tasks.

Training programs. If your company offers new manager training, take advantage of it. Many managers who skip or postpone such training later regret it. If your company doesn’t provide formal training for new managers, make time to sit with your boss and/or someone from your HR department to ensure that you clearly understand your administrative responsibilities.

Try to understand the why behind a particular responsibility. This understanding will help you see the importance of fulfilling that task in the prescribed way. For example, suppose you don’t know that your company’s compensation committee depends on job descriptions written in a specific format to assign pay levels. In this case, you might describe a position in a way that results in a much higher or lower salary than the role warrants.

Human resources, finance, and legal/compliance departments. Most companies have departments or individuals responsible for human resources, financial issues, and legal questions. In some organizations, one person or department may handle all three areas. Regardless of the arrangement your company has chosen, find out whom to contact for answers to questions about handling administrative tasks related to human resource, financial, and legal or regulatory matters.

Tool: Administrative Resources Contacts

Complete the "Administrative Resources Contacts" tool to identify resources you can use to resolve an administrative issue.

Managing Meetings

A well-run meeting enables you to capitalize on your team’s collective abilities to accomplish goals such as making a tough decision or to come up with an innovative new strategy. A poorly run meeting, on the other hand, accomplishes little or nothing—and therefore wastes time and money. How to ensure that your meetings are valuable and productive? Start by assessing whether to meet at all.

Why meet?

Many managers mistakenly use meetings to accomplish goals they could have achieved through other, more efficient means, such as e-mail, voicemail, or memo. Before you schedule a meeting, consider the goals you’re trying to achieve and ask yourself whether you require live interaction among people to achieve them.

Your goals for having a meeting could include the following:

Share information: Communicate news, identify and explain challenges, ask people questions, answer questions, plan, motivate people, and build cooperation and trust.

Make decisions: Capitalize on different experiences, styles, and perspectives to make better choices.

Solve problems: Leverage participants’ varied expertise to identify creative solutions to thorny challenges.

Foster innovation: Inspire each other to improve processes or develop new products.

In many situations it may be possible to achieve these goals without a meeting. The challenge is to figure out when a meeting is the best way to achieve them. In general, the reason to have a meeting is to generate back-and-forth dialogue between participants. For example, suppose you want to convey information about a new company policy. If you anticipate numerous questions or concerns, a meeting might help you respond to them immediately. However, if the communication is likely to be one-way, then an e-mail or memo may be a better choice.

Because meetings involve face-to-face interaction, they’re usually the best way to motivate or energize a group, or to persuade people to agree with your point of view. In addition, you’re more likely to generate creative solutions and better decisions when you bring a group together than when you sit at your desk alone. Meetings are therefore usually a good choice for decision making and brainstorming.

Tool: Evaluating Whether to Meet

Use the "Evaluating Whether to Meet" tool to eliminate needless meetings from your current schedule and identify unnecessary meetings you’ll want to avoid in the future.

Once you have decided a meeting is worthwhile, use the following practices to prepare for and manage it effectively.

Preparing for a meeting

As with any other important work activity, you need to approach meetings with the same level of effort as you do assignments you complete in your office. Start by clarifying in your own mind what you want the meeting to achieve and what you expect from participants.

Once you identify your goals for a meeting, lay the groundwork for achieving them by doing the following:

Define your goals. What do you hope to accomplish during the meeting, and what do you want people to do after they leave the meeting? For example, your meeting goal may be to brainstorm ideas for a new way to pitch your company’s consulting services. You may also want to generate a list of ideas that participants will explore further after the meeting.

Create an agenda. Define how you will structure the meeting to achieve your goals; for example, a 10-minute presentation on new products followed by a brainstorming session to generate a list of possible sales approaches.

Sound out key stakeholders in advance. You'll be better prepared for a meeting if you know in advance what key participants think about important items on the agenda. By understanding and addressing their concerns during the meeting, you stand a better chance of achieving the outcome you want.

Decide who should attend. Invite only those who can contribute to your meeting goals. For instance, in considering each possible participant, think about whether the person is an important stakeholder, or someone who might have a valuable perspective on how to sell your product. Remember, the more people you involve in the meeting, the more time-consuming the deliberation process will be. On the other hand, a very small group may not represent diverse interests and perspectives.

Determine logistics, such as time and location. Review your agenda. How long should it take to cover all the items? Also consider where to meet. Are you trying to encourage creativity? If so, your usual meeting room might not be the best place. Another location, such as a lounge, may help people think outside of their traditional roles.

Distribute relevant information. Distribute your agenda and materials to be used during the meeting far enough in advance that the attendees have time to review them. If you want participants to do research or bring a list of ideas to the meeting, let them know that ahead of time.

Use the "Preparing for a Meeting" tool to help you get ready for your next meeting and the "Meeting Agenda" tool to create an agenda.

Tools: Preparing for a Meeting and Meeting Agenda

Managing the meeting

Careful preparation will go a long way toward enabling you to run an efficient meeting. But you also need to get the most out of your participants during the meeting itself. The following tips can help:

Start on time. Don’t waste the time of people who arrived promptly or reward those who didn’t by starting the meeting late.

Review your goals and objectives at the outset. Remind participants of what you want to accomplish during the meeting. For instance, do you want to brainstorm, or do you want to discuss the pros and cons of particular ideas?

Assign a person to write key points on a flip chart or white board. These notes will keep people focused and provide a visual reminder of what the group has accomplished.

Keep conversations on-topic and encourage everyone to participate. Write down off-topic ideas and suggest that they be pursued at another time. If one person seems to be dominating the conversation, politely interrupt and encourage participation from those who have been quiet.

Stay action-oriented. Focus on achieving your objectives.

Encourage individuals to leave if the remaining topics don’t pertain to them. For example, an account executive may want to leave if the remainder of your meeting time will focus on how to build a software demo.

Summarize your decisions. At the end of the meeting, review the information on your flip chart or whiteboard. Ensure that everyone agrees the list represents the choices the group has made. Ask for volunteers to take responsibility for any action items. Establish a timeframe for completing each task, and then document that timeframe.

Manage the clock. End your meeting on time. To do so, you’ll need to move the conversation along if you get stuck on a difficult issue. Address unresolved agenda items at a follow-up meeting, if necessary.

Following up

When you walk out of the meeting room, your job isn’t done. To ensure that the work you accomplished during the meeting is put to good use:

Tool: Post-Meeting Communication

Send a follow-up communication. Use your meeting notes from the flip chart and the "Post-Meeting Communication" tool to send a quick note of thanks to all meeting participants, acknowledging the progress you made. This document serves as a summary of what you decided together and lists key action items with time frames. Include in your communication any information people will need to complete the action items.

Follow up in person with anyone who didn’t participate in the discussion during the meeting or who seemed dissatisfied with the results. This practice will help you gather valuable feedback and can enable you to win buy-in for any decisions you’ll make based on the meeting.

Schedule a follow-up meeting, if necessary. Consider whether you need another meeting. What are your objectives? Is another meeting the best way to meet them? If so, determine how much time people will need to accomplish their assignments. Then schedule your next meeting accordingly.

Meeting tips

People spend 20% or more of their working lives attending, conducting, preparing for, and following up on meetings. Almost one-third of all meetings are considered unnecessary by the people who attend them. The table below shows some tips for managing meetings.

Meeting tips

1. Spend the time planning. If one person is planning for a meeting where five people are in attendance, it is much better and more efficient than creating the plan "on the fly." A good guideline is one hour planning for every hour in the meeting.

2. All meetings have four functions: participation, process management, information management, and decision making. Meetings are best when group members and leaders make conscious choices about how each function will be managed.

3. Building agreement is a critical skill for mastering meetings. By

Meeting tips

helping people reach small agreements, you build a firm foundation for collaborative action.

4. Everyone in the meeting should play a role in making the meeting a success.

5. To facilitate group action, participants share a basic meeting management tool kit. Everyone in the meeting can use the tools and there is no one right way to build understanding and agreement—rather many ways.

6. Sharing expectations for a meeting builds alignment and fosters a sense of shared responsibility for success.

7. A truly successful meeting will have at least these key ingredients: shared responsibility for success, collaborative attitude by all in the meeting, strategic thinking, and facilitative behaviors in action.

8. Every meeting should have clear "desired outcomes." A desired outcome is what your meeting aims to achieve, the expected results. A desired outcome statement answers the question: "What will we walk out of the meeting with?"

9. An agenda is a meeting road map that the group can consciously amend as it moves toward its desired outcome.

10. Getting up-front agreement on the agenda facilitates collaboration and is a best practice.

Source: Interaction Associates © 2005.

Meetings are just one of the responsibilities you’ll have to juggle in your new role as a manager. The next foundation provides tips for making the most of your limited time.

Managing Time

If you often feel rushed during the work week, or you have the sense that you aren't devoting as much time to important tasks or people as you would like, you may need to improve your time management skills. A rushed and reactive work style may prevent you from spending time planning and draw you away from your most critical responsibilities.

Effective managers don’t immediately respond to every issue brought to them. They also don’t let things like e-mail, meetings, and unforeseen situations distract them from achieving their goals. They manage their time in ways that help them stay focused on their top priorities.

Using time purposefully

Setting goals helps you prioritize your many activities and develop a strategy for how you’ll spend your time. You may have goals in several different areas, such as:

Business growth and improvement: Work on projects and processes such as planning a new sales strategy or implementing a cost-cutting initiative.

Managing relationships: Time that you spend building relationships with employees, peers, higher-level managers, and customers, as well as coaching your employees.

Administrative responsibilities: Activities such as status meetings, budgeting, and expense accounts.

Daily responsibilities: For example, quality control reviews, problem solving, or production goals.

Self-development: Activities that help you strengthen your skills or acquire new ones.

Start by defining and prioritizing your goals for each area of responsibility listed above. Break down long-term goals into smaller tasks. You’ll have an easier time scheduling and completing smaller, discrete tasks than trying to tackle a large project all at once.

Consider what percentage of your time you want to spend on each category of activity. For example, do you want to spend 25% of your time on business growth and development? Once you have determined these percentages, use the "Weekly Goals & Time Allocation" tool to translate them into hourly figures (e.g., 10 hours per week on business development). Then, determine which goals from each category you can reasonably pursue given your time constraints and priorities.

Tool: Weekly Goals & Time Allocation

Review your goals and your decisions about how you’ll allocate your time with your manager or a mentor to make sure you are being realistic and consistent with organizational priorities. You may need to review and reprioritize your goals quarterly, monthly, or even weekly in response to changes in the business environment.

Taking control of your time

Once you set your goals and create a plan for allocating your time, develop a schedule for your week. Don’t get caught up in how you make your schedule. Different scheduling tools work better for different people. Use whatever tool works best for your style, ranging from a simple wall calendar to a complex software program.

Your schedule should include time for completing your critical tasks, as well as free time for handling unexpected issues, visitors, and meetings. Use the following guidelines to create a weekly plan:

Schedule time to work toward your highest-priority goals first. This practice will help ensure you have time for your most important work. For example, if you need to complete performance reviews with your staff by a certain date, schedule a couple of hours each day to work on them. If your company uses scheduling software for planning meetings, be sure to block out those hours in the software so others will see that they are already reserved. Ask people to respect the time you have blocked out.

Schedule some time each day to be “off limits” to phone calls and other interruptions. Use this time to work on your current highest-priority task. Work somewhere other than your office, if necessary. Make sure to reserve adequate time for high-priority work. A few minutes here and there won’t give you the results you seek.

Keep in mind your high- and low-energy times. Schedule more difficult tasks during your peak energy hours. For example, you may be more productive and creative in the morning than in the late afternoon. If so, schedule high-level strategy meetings or writing in the morning and routine tasks such as responding to e-mails in the afternoon.

Reserve time every day to deal with crises and unexpected tasks. You won’t be able to anticipate everything you’ll need to do in a day, so build flexibility into your schedule. But be careful—don’t waste this time. Have a list of things to do if some of your reserved time is not needed. For example, respond to e-mails, complete expense reports, and the like. List both quick tasks and more involved ones. That way, you can appropriately fill the time you have and avoid squandering time trying to remember what you need to do.

Consolidate time for tasks such as responding to e-mail, paperwork, and phone calls. Research indicates that the cost of switching from one task to another and back again could reduce a company’s efficiency by 20% to 40%. Consolidating tasks can cut down on this start-up and switching time.

Monitoring your use of time

Effective time management takes practice and commitment. For a period of time, use the "Evaluating Your Weekly Time Use" tool to assess how you spend your time. For example, if you find yourself unable to complete all high-priority tasks as originally scheduled, make a mental note of what prevented you from doing so. Did you underestimate the time it would take to complete a task, or allot too little time for addressing unexpected problems?

Tool: Evaluating Your Weekly Time Use

When you review your week’s activities you’ll probably notice that you weren’t able to control everything in your schedule. For example, a co-worker may have been ill, forcing you to run a meeting she had scheduled. But by watching out for some common time management problems, you’ll be able to make the most of your time. Consider these common traps:

Procrastinating—putting off tasks. Common reasons for procrastination are that you view a task as being either unpleasant or uninteresting; you fear that you might not be up to the challenge; or you are overwhelmed by the project.

Overextending yourself—taking on more than you can handle. You can’t say “no,” especially when your boss asks you to do something. You work extra hours, but still can’t catch up. If you find that you're overextended, ask your manager to help you prioritize your tasks.

Failing to delegate—working on tasks that your subordinates could handle. As a manager, you probably need to spend less time “doing” and more time planning work assignments, organizing resources for others, and coaching people who need help.

Assuming your subordinates’ problems—allowing subordinates to delegate their problems to you. Your job is to help subordinates solve their own problems.

Traveling when you don’t need to—attending a meeting in person when you could participate by phone or video conference. While the meeting itself may be a good use of your time, the time you waste sitting in taxis or standing in lines to get on the plane may outweigh the benefits of going in person.

Attending unnecessary meetings—organizing or attending meetings that could be handled by other people or by another means such as an e-mail or memo.

To uncover any patterns, periodically review previous weeks to see how you've actually spent your time versus what you had planned. Once you identify what is preventing you from reaching your goals, rework future portions of your schedule to reflect what you have learned. For example, you may want to build more free time into your schedule to address unanticipated issues. Then periodically assess your progress to look for additional potential improvements. Consider asking your manager and colleagues for ideas on how to better use your time based on what you learn from these assessments.

5. MANAGING A GROUPManaging a Group Versus Individuals

Learning how to lead a group of individuals is one of the most challenging tasks facing a new manager. Whether you are managing direct reports or leading a multi-functional team of peers, your task is to encourage collaboration and create an environment that leverages individual talents in the pursuit of common goals.

A common mistake new unit managers make is focusing solely on managing individuals and overlooking the opportunity to manage the group's overall performance. Harnessing the potential power of group performance requires an understanding of the degree of interdependence within your group, an awareness of what makes a team effective, and the ability to manage group dynamics.

Assessing interdependency

If individual group members rely on each other to complete their work, group performance can likely be improved by strengthening teamwork. Teamwork is essential to day-to-day operations, for example, in groups where employees need to collaborate to complete tasks, or share the burden of completing a certain volume of work. In contrast, the need for teamwork may be limited in groups where individuals work independently on unrelated tasks.

To decide how much teamwork might be appropriate for your group, use the "Evaluating Task Interdependency" tool to analyze the level of interdependence of your group's functions.

The greater the level of interdependence, the more important it is that your group function well as a team.

Tool: Evaluating Task Interdependency

What is a high-performing team?

A high-performing team is one that:

Achieves superior performance. The result achieved by individuals working together as a team is greater than the sum of what individual group members could achieve on their own.

Promotes individual growth and job satisfaction. Each member of the group supports the group's priorities, yet also realizes a sense of personal satisfaction and growth from his or her contributions to the group's efforts. To achieve this

result, managers must learn to balance the group’s output with the individual’s need for personal development and overall satisfaction.

For example, consider the situation in which Joe, a unit manager, had to lead his group to achieve a difficult delivery goal. Joe could have required his direct reports to work long hours on tasks that they already knew. Instead, he assigned some people to tasks that required them to learn desirable new skills, even though this practice slowed progress toward meeting the delivery schedule. As a result, Joe's employees felt that they had opportunities to pursue personal development goals. He achieved a balance between short-term performance goals and longer-term employee satisfaction.

Adjusts and improves over time. Individuals within a high-performing team learn over time to work together more effectively and how to collectively adapt to changing circumstances and demands. This flexibility results in part from individual team members becoming familiar with each other's work style and likely response to different situations. As a manager, you can support this process within your group by facilitating greater understanding of how individual strengths contribute to the group’s success and by encouraging the group to implement processes that accommodate different work styles and strengths.

Group strategies

The remaining foundations in this module focus on strategies for strengthening teamwork and managing group dynamics, including:

Establishing group processes: Clarify decision-making and communication procedures to promote collaboration and to establish clear expectations.

Managing group dynamics: Shape team norms, including how team members are to behave toward one another.

Managing conflict: Constructively manage conflicts between team members to enhance group creativity and problem-solving capabilities.

Building your team: Ensure that the group has the critical competencies it needs to achieve its goals.

Providing a supportive environment: Use the physical environment to facilitate collaboration and communication. Also, bargain for the resources your group needs, and provide emotional support.

Establishing Group Processes

Group processes include how decisions will be made, how individuals will coordinate their activities, and what and how information will be communicated within the group. Clearly defining group processes eliminates confusion over roles and responsibilities.

Identify current processes

Consider the following situation: One month after joining her department as manager, Sue decided to reorganize her group and reassign roles. She announced the decision at a weekly staff meeting. She was then surprised to learn that many of her direct reports were angry about the decision and felt that she had overstepped her role. Sue later learned that her predecessor had involved everyone in decisions about how the group should be organized.

Sue’s choice wasn’t necessarily a bad one. But she could have avoided some of the employee frustration if she had understood her employees' expectations and established in advance that she planned to make this type of organizational decision on her own.

As a new manager, you may have inherited a group of direct reports with established processes for working together. Start by taking a look at what organizational processes are already in place. Use the "Observing Group Processes" tool to take an inventory of how the group works together. Then identify which processes you may want to modify, and whether you want your direct reports to participate in defining the new processes. Use the "Changing Group Processes" tool to plan how you will change existing group processes. Remember that the more involved your employees are in developing process standards, the more empowered they will feel and the more likely it is they will later support them.

Tools: Observing Group Processes and Changing Group Processes

Decision-making processes

Establishing ground rules for decision making early in your role as a new manager is critical. You and your group will face decisions of varying degrees of complexity and significance. For example:

Who will go to the client meeting next week?

Should the design of a product be changed to meet a last-minute customer request?

Which subcontractor should the team use for its next project?

In determining how such decisions will be made, consider the group's past experience and preferences, what approach would result in the best decision, the need for expediency, and the risk associated with a wrong decision. Consider also that you are ultimately responsible for decision making that you delegate to others.

Some common approaches to decision making include:

Majority rule: Individuals meet to discuss alternatives and then vote. The choice that receives the most votes is adopted.

Consensus: Individuals meet to discuss alternatives and work to find a choice that every member of the team can agree to support. The ultimate decision may not be an individual’s first choice, but is one that he or she agrees is acceptable.

An individual or small group decides: An individual or small group with relevant experience and skills is selected to make the decision, usually within parameters specified by the manager.

Manager decides with input: The manager gathers input from individuals and then makes the decision.

Manager decides alone: The manager makes the decision based on his or her own experience and knowledge base. Managers may also make decisions with peer managers who lead interdependent groups.

The more participative approaches generally result in broader support for decisions. But approaches that involve many people also take more time to execute and therefore are typically reserved for important decisions that impact the whole group. There is also no guarantee that a group decision will be the best decision. Decisions that have limited impact on the group, relate to a sensitive human resource issue, or are time critical may be better for you, as the manager, to make on your own or with limited input. Other decisions may not require your involvement and can be delegated to an individual or subgroup with relevant experience.

Communication

When team members work closely with each other on a daily basis, they will likely work out their own informal means of sharing information. In fact, teams that frequently communicate with each other on an informal basis, such as in hallway conversations, tend to be more effective.

But even if your group communicates well informally, you should consider how to keep everyone fully informed about decisions and issues that affect them. A formal communication process helps ensure that group members receive important information from outside the group as well as share information about activities and issues within the group. In defining a communication process, include the following:

Status updates: These can be written summaries on a periodic basis (weekly or monthly, for example) rather than face-to-face meetings.

Staff meetings: A weekly or biweekly staff meeting provides a forum to discuss unresolved issues and challenges. Staff meetings also provide an opportunity for team members to share what they have learned from their recent experiences. Did someone underestimate how long it would take to complete a project? What are the implications of the division's renewed focus on customer retention? If you decide to hold staff meetings, establish a process for creating the agenda and communicating meeting results.

Use of e-mails and memos: When, why, and to whom should people send e-mails or other written correspondence? Individuals should receive all information that affects how they will perform their jobs. At the same time, it is not advisable to copy every person in the group on every correspondence.

Collaboration

Collaboration occurs when individuals with similar or complementary skills work together to accomplish a group goal. For example, developing the marketing presentation for the unit’s annual strategy meeting requires people with strategic thinking skills, writing skills, and design skills.

Collaborative behavior is difficult to formally design—it often happens (or doesn’t happen) on its own and depends largely on the individuals. But you can encourage collaborative interactions by:

Rewarding collaborative behaviors: Look for opportunities to reward individuals who contribute to the group's success. For example, publicly praise those who go out of their way to help others achieve their goals. Also consider

group rewards for achievements resulting from the combined efforts of all of the individuals within the group.

Tracking the group's progress toward goals: Publishing a record of the group's progress as well as individual workloads will help build the group's awareness of opportunities for collaboration. Before reassigning tasks when one individual is overloaded or falling behind schedule, you might wait to see if someone voluntarily offers to help, or consider asking for volunteers.

Cross-training individuals to perform multiple job functions: When possible, cross-train group members so that they can perform multiple job functions. This will allow them to more easily step in to assist a coworker with a heavy workload.

Special considerations for cross-cultural and virtual work groups

Today’s work groups often include individuals who are not in the same physical location. These virtual team members may be located in different time zones and in different countries. When working with virtual and cross-cultural groups, communication can be a challenge. Strategies for managing communications include:

Scheduling weekly or even daily conference calls to keep the lines of communication open between team members.

Encouraging individuals to set aside a regular time during the day to be available for mutual teamwork and discussions.

Deciding how to manage across different time zones, if needed, so that the burden of working late or starting early is distributed evenly among the different members of the group.

Cross-cultural teams present additional challenges. Different cultures may have different business hours, holidays and vacation schedules, as well as different communication or work styles. You must be sensitive to cross-cultural issues, while still holding individuals to the same performance standards. Significant issues that may need to be addressed include clarifying how individuals will share their opinions (in some cultures, for example, open disagreement is considered impolite), and defining the authority that the manager has. Other issues to consider include:

What language will be used for discussions and reports?

In what currency will budgets and monetary transactions be expressed?

What measurement system will be used for specifications (e.g., metric, UK, or U.S. measures)?

How will you manage differences in national holidays and vacation policies?

Formal processes can help define many interactions among group members. However, informal processes are also important, as discussed in the next foundation.

Managing Group Dynamics

The informal interactions in a group are just as important to the overall effectiveness of your team as the formal processes. For example, you can schedule a weekly meeting or conference call to discuss questions and concerns about a project. But that doesn’t guarantee that one individual won’t dominate the conversation, or that the group won’t defer to the most senior member, regardless of his or her knowledge of the particular issue. Group norms—the behaviors that individuals expect or accept from each other—play a large role in how your group works together.

Establishing group norms

You likely manage a pre-existing group that has already established some group norms. Observe your group together, and you will probably notice that some individuals talk more than others. You may also notice that the group often defers to an informal leader who may have more technical expertise or seniority. Such patterns are often established early in the group’s work. For example, individuals who speak a lot in early meetings usually dominate subsequent meetings, too. Those who were quiet initially often have a difficult time breaking into conversations later.

Why do these behaviors matter? Some norms can prevent you from getting the most out of your team. For example, research shows that groups tend to adopt the most frequently suggested idea. If the same people are talking all of the time, then their ideas will be heard most often, even if they aren’t the best choice.

Strategies for influencing norms

Tools: Observing Group Norms and Changing Group Norms

For the most part, you cannot mandate group norms. But you can influence them by encouraging positive norms and discouraging negative ones. Use the "Observing Group Norms" tool to assess your group’s existing norms and to help identify norms you may want to change. Use the "Changing Group Norms" tool to plan how you will influence group norms. Strategies for positively influencing group norms include:

Be a role model. Emphasize in your own behavior the norms that you want the group to adopt. For example, promote mutual respect, open discussion, constructive debate, and collaboration by modeling these behaviors in your own interactions. If someone disagrees with your point of view, acknowledge the other person’s position and ask for further clarification. Ask other members of the group to share their perspectives on the issue.

Reward positive behavior. When you conduct individual reviews, give feedback on how the employee contributed to the group. For example, did Tina dominate conversations and hoard project resources for her own benefit? Even if she met

her individual goals, you might not want to reward her as much as someone else who achieved their individual goals but also worked to improve the group's

performance overall.

Reassign roles to encourage others to adopt new norms. Individuals are often unaware of the group norms that they have adopted. For example, you might notice that individuals regularly send out reports a few days after they are due. To begin to change this norm, assign someone to send out a reminder a few days in advance of a due date.

Identify desired behaviors. While you can’t define all norms, you may want to explicitly state some expected behaviors. For example, explain that you encourage people to defend their views, but you also expect everyone to share relevant information with each other, even if it goes against his or her preferred choice.

The next foundation discusses how establishing positive norms for managing conflict can help individuals vent disagreements constructively and work together more creatively.

Managing Conflict

When conflict arises between individuals within your group, your goal is to manage it in a way that produces better ideas and decisions. Not all conflict is bad. In fact, if people strive too much for group harmony, that may override their motivation to debate alternative ideas. In this situation, often called “groupthink,” you lose the benefit of having a group of people with different backgrounds and view points.

Managing creative conflict

Employees sometimes feel frustrated when they work with people who have styles different from theirs. It's often a good idea to allow individuals to work out minor conflicts themselves. You can make team members' conflict management efforts more productive by helping them recognize others' styles and appreciate the strengths that different styles bring to the group. For example, you might say, “Mary's creative way of thinking helps push the rest of us to question our ideas. How can we capitalize on her fresh perspective?”

Another tactic is to educate the group on differences in learning styles and problem solving approaches. Team-building exercises or personality assessments, such as the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, can be useful tools for this purpose. Insights from such assessments can help your employees be more tolerant of and communicate better with each other. For example, if Ken prefers to dig into the details but knows that Lauren is a “big picture” thinker,” he can present higher-level arguments to her instead of details.

To benefit from diverse thinking styles and backgrounds, group members must listen to each other, be open to different perspectives, and be willing to objectively question their own beliefs. To encourage these behaviors:

Focus discussions on issues and goals. Explain at the outset of a discussion that the purpose is to come up with the best idea or decision for the group using all available information and diverse points of view.

Encourage open dialogue. Make it clear that everyone’s input should be valued. People should make an effort to understand and respect different viewpoints. Assign the role of devil's advocate or find other new ways of looking at an issue to help the group come up with more creative solutions to tough problems.

Ask questions. Ask people to support their ideas and opinions with data and rational argument, and look for agreement among group members on critical facts. Ask other group members if they have any information that supports or contradicts an idea.

Accommodate differences of opinion. Try to find ways to accommodate differences in opinion among group members. For example, if Theresa is concerned that a June deadline is high risk, while Marie believes that the June deadline is essential if the group is to meet this year's goals, identify what additional safeguards might be implemented to address Theresa's and Marie's concerns.

Acknowledge individuals who share their ideas in a positive manner. Recognize and thank people who were willing to take the risk of challenging your ideas or

those of another group member. Point out how well they focused on the issues at hand and how maintaining focus helped the group to advance its thinking.

When to intervene in interpersonal conflicts

Sometimes disagreements between employees escalate to a point where you, as manager, need to take direct action. In general, when employees argue with each other, it may be best to give them an opportunity to work out the issue on their own. However, you may want to intervene if:

Tool: Conflict Resolution Analysis

The disagreement impacts the group’s productivity

The problem is between an assertive person and a timid one

The disagreement expands to include additional group members

One or both of the individuals involved asks you for help

When you intervene in an interpersonal conflict, your role is to help the employees define the problem, listen to each other, look for areas of agreement, and identify potential solutions. After the employees agree on a plan of action, follow up with them to see how it is working. Use the "Conflict Resolution Analysis" tool to help you evaluate whether to intervene in an interpersonal conflict and to document your discussions with the employees involved.

Building Your Team

As a new manager, you probably inherited your group of direct reports. Over time, however, you will likely need to make new hires, either to replace departing employees or to add additional capacity or skills to your group.

Assessing your group's needs

Before you begin the hiring process you'll want to think strategically about what skills and personal attributes would be helpful to the group, such as organizational, problem-solving, and interpersonal skills. For example, your current employees may be strong technically, but may lack organizational skills or have few contacts outside of the department. Therefore, someone who is very organized or has a large network of contacts might be a good addition to the group—even if he or she is not as strong technically as another candidate. Use the "Skill and Work Style Needs" tool to evaluate your group’s skill set to identify qualities you might look for when searching for a new member.

Potential benefits of diversity

In addition to specific skills, consider how diverse perspectives, cultural backgrounds, professional experience, or problem-solving styles could benefit your team. For example, an individual who lacks direct sales experience but who has worked with customers in a support role may bring a fresh perspective to the sales team. Similarly, someone who prefers to brainstorm and think creatively might be a good balance to a group that tends to focus only on numbers and charts when making decisions. People from different countries and cultures can also bring greater cultural awareness and different communication and work styles to your group.

Tool: Skill and Work Style Needs

If managed well, diverse groups tend to be more innovative, make better decisions, and generate more potential solutions to challenging situations. They hold an advantage in creative tasks and problem solving. For example, consider a team at a shoe manufacturer that is responsible for designing sports shoes for urban young adults. If the team is comprised solely of individuals who are good at generating creative ideas but who lack analytical skills, the team runs the risk of producing ideas that don’t fit the criteria that its customers require. The ideal group would include both creative and analytical skill sets. The group might also benefit from other diverse perspectives—for example, a parent of an urban teenager, or someone with direct sales experience in the target market.

Hiring considerations

While diversity can have great benefits, don’t immediately rush to hire someone just because he or she brings a different perspective or skill to your group. Group diversity can also make team process more difficult. For example, it can take much longer to make a decision when individuals interpret and respond to situations in different ways. It may also be more challenging to get people to trust each other because of different work styles or communication habits. Your employees may become frustrated with each other more quickly and your group may split into factions.

Because of these potential challenges, consider your group’s primary responsibilities when deciding what to look for in a new hire. For example, if you are consistently under time pressure to complete analytic reports, you may not want to add someone whose work style is dramatically different from that of existing team members. But, if your

group needs to innovate or frequently has to overcome challenging problems, consider adding people with diverse styles and backgrounds.

Providing a Supportive Environment

A supportive physical and psychological environment can help you transform a group of individuals into a high-performing team.

The physical environment

The physical environment in which your team works can help promote group work and collaboration. You may not have much control over the actual office space, but you can still look for ways to use the space you have been given more effectively. Consider the following ideas:

Locate people who need to collaborate near each other: Research shows that people tend to collaborate more and work better together when they are located in proximity to each other. When people are near each other, they are more likely to talk and share ideas.

Create spaces to encourage communication: Informal and formal conversations are important components of teamwork. Physical spaces, such as a common lunch room or a lounge, can encourage the casual conversations that can help build friendships and trust.

Plan events that bring people together: Create opportunities for individuals to meet and talk informally. For example, invite your group to join you for lunch once a week, or begin each month with an informal breakfast meeting.

Resources and tools

Beyond creating group spaces, part of your job as a manager is to provide your direct reports with the tools and resources they need to work together effectively. For example, place whiteboards or drawing pads and plenty of pens in both your formal and informal gathering places to encourage people to brainstorm and explore their ideas while they are talking.

To promote effective teamwork, consider the following categories of resources and how they might benefit your group:

Equipment: Consider how group members will communicate with each other. Individuals who travel frequently may need a contact management system or remote electronic access to shared work files. A white board that lists group projects and expected delivery dates can help keep everyone aware of the group’s current obligations. Make sure that work spaces are stocked with needed tools.

Technology: Consider technologies that could help your group work together more efficiently. Perhaps it’s a scheduling tool or knowledge management software. You may want to set up a team website with all of your group’s relevant information such as prototypes and meeting minutes, to enable individuals to post their work and communicate with each other.

Training: Consider whether any group members need training to contribute more to the team. Potential training topics range from interpersonal issues, such as working in a group, to technical issues, such as learning how to use a particular software program. For example, if you notice that some members of your group seem not to trust each other, a team-building workshop, where roles and interdependencies are clarified and differences are celebrated, may help.

People: Does your group have the right number of people with appropriate skills to achieve its goals? Are individuals overwhelmed or overextended? You may need to seek help from another department (e.g., technical assistance from the IT group), or seek approval to hire temporary help or even an additional team member.

Use the "Group Resources Needs" and the "Physical Environment Inventory" tools to assess your group’s needs. Then, work with your supervisor to look for ways to cost effectively obtain the resources you need.

Tools: Group Resources Needs and Physical Environment Inventory

Rewards and emotional support

A supportive environment also provides the emotional encouragement people need to feel that they are valued members of the group and helps motivate individuals to work together to achieve common goals.

Much of the psychological support you provide will be in the form of feedback and rewards. A common mistake new managers make is to only provide feedback when something goes wrong or during a scheduled annual or semi-annual review. Help bolster employee confidence and build an optimistic outlook by providing regular positive feedback.

Another way to motivate your group is to encourage individuals to focus on immediate milestones. Then celebrate the achievement of those milestones. Recognizing small achievements helps keep the group excited and on track toward achieving larger goals.

Finally, recognize that when people are exhausted or overwhelmed, they can more easily become frustrated with each other. Look for opportunities to relieve tension and stress. For example, if your group has been working extra hours on a presentation for a major client, encourage everyone to enjoy some unscheduled time soon after it is completed.

6. SUPPORTING YOUR BOSS & ORGANIZATION

Understanding Your Boss’s Agenda

As you settle into your new managerial role, you’ll need to take steps to understand your boss’s agenda. An agenda can consist of many elements. Your boss’s agenda might comprise:

His or her daily responsibilities, pressures, and challenges

The goals your boss has set for the larger unit or department he or she leads—such as strengthening the unit’s performance, ensuring it gets the resources it needs, and improving the way the unit works with other groups

The outcomes your boss expects of each individual and unit under his or her direction

The criteria by which your boss’s superiors judge his or her performance

Why understand your boss’s agenda?

For several reasons, it’s important that you take the time to understand your boss’s agenda:

Supporting corporate strategy. Your company’s high-level, competitive strategy cascades down through the executive, managerial, and individual ranks. By understanding your boss’s agenda, you can see more clearly how his or her everyday work contributes to the company’s strategy, and how your work fits into the bigger picture. And you can cultivate a partnership that enables each of you to support the organization’s objectives.

Helping your boss achieve unit goals. When you know what your boss is trying to achieve in his or her unit, you can more easily develop ways to help your boss meet those goals.

Resolving conflicting expectations. Once you understand your boss’s agenda, you may develop a greater appreciation for why he or she wants you to generate certain results in your group. This appreciation can help resolve any conflict between your and your boss’s expectations about your responsibilities.

Clarifying information needs. A clear understanding of your boss’s agenda enables you to make informed judgment calls about what information he or she will want from you—and how often. It also enables you to clarify your group’s priorities and determine to which issues and events you should alert your boss.

Helping your boss meet performance criteria. By understanding how your boss’s performance will be judged by his or her superiors—as well as how those criteria relate to your own group’s performance—you can better define ways to support your boss’s efforts.

Tool: Understanding Your Boss's Agenda

A solid understanding of your boss’s agenda yields numerous important benefits. To gain that understanding, it’s important that you learn how to “manage up.”

The benefits of “managing up”

Contrary to what many business people assume, “managing up” isn’t about currying favor with your boss. Rather, it’s about finding ways to support your supervisor and cultivate a mutually beneficial relationship that enables both of you to succeed. The keys to managing up include:

Gaining insight into your boss’s strengths and weaknesses (such as his or her leadership skills, creativity, and interpersonal capabilities).

Understanding the demands and pressures your boss is under.

Clarifying the personal goals he or she is striving to meet.

Knowing how best to collaborate, communicate, and make decisions with your boss.

When you manage up effectively, you have a better chance of getting the resources you need to do your job—and you work more effectively with your boss. After all, you and your boss are mutually dependent—just as you and your direct reports are. Managing up helps you ensure that both you and your boss get what you need to excel.

Resolving conflicting work styles

Managing up also helps you resolve differences in work styles—a common problem between new managers and their bosses. Consider these possible work-style differences:

You . . . But your boss . . .

Respond to requests for information from your boss quickly

Takes his or her time getting back to you with information you need

Believe it’s better for a manager to stay more involved in the details of direct reports’ work

Believes that effective managers delegate responsibility to their direct reports without interfering

You . . . But your boss . . .

Prefer to mull over as much information as possible before making a decision

Values quick, decisive action, even if all the required information isn’t at hand

Generate your most creative ideas during face-to-face, impromptu discussions

Is most creative when he or she has structured time alone to brainstorm

How to resolve differences in work styles

Take the initiative to articulate important differences with your boss and to clarify expectations about how you can best work together. Accept that it is your responsibility to make the relationship run smoothly, and identify any changes you need to make in your work habits to accommodate your boss's stylistic preferences.

For example, suppose your boss prefers to receive written summaries of important issues before making a decision, but you feel more comfortable discussing decisions face to face. In this case, you need to learn to prepare written summaries for your boss. You may feel that this effort takes too much of your time. But by making such an accommodation, you might be more likely to get your boss’s input on key decisions when you need that input.

Hallmarks of a mutually beneficial relationship

When you’ve built a strong partnership with your boss, it shows in the following ways:

You regularly seek out information about your boss’s goals, problems, and pressures—knowing that his or her priorities and concerns can change.

You stay alert for opportunities to clarify your boss’s performance expectations.

You pay attention to clues in your boss’s behavior—signals suggesting how he or she prefers to receive information, when to deliver discouraging news about a project, or how often your boss needs to meet with you to stay informed.

You accommodate your boss’s work style in ways that help him or her become even more effective. For example, if your boss likes to deeply explore issues before forming an opinion, you might send brief agendas several days before a meeting to help your boss prepare.

Now that you know the benefits of understanding your boss’ agenda, you’re ready to learn how to begin building a strong partnership with him or her. The next foundation addresses this subject.

Building a Strong Partnership with Your Boss

Don’t assume that your supervisor will initiate conversations about how the two of you can best work together. You should assume responsibility for initiating the discussion.

Forging a partnership

How can you best begin building a strong partnership with your boss? Through observing your supervisor, asking him or her questions, and talking with others who know and work with your boss, assess the following:

Performance expectations. Find out what your boss expects from you. How will he evaluate your performance? What standards will he want you to strive for? Verify your understanding of your responsibilities and performance standards with your boss to avoid misunderstandings.

Decision-making style. Does your boss like to be highly involved in decisions? If so, touch base frequently during the decision-making process. Or, does your boss prefer to delegate? In this case, you’ll want to touch base less frequently, yet also inform him or her about important decisions you’ve made.

Communication preferences. Don’t underestimate or make assumptions about what your boss needs to know about your work. Keep her informed—providing both good and bad news through processes that suit her style. Find out how often your supervisor likes to be updated, what form she prefers (written reports? face-to-face meetings?), and how much detail she wants.

Tool: Forging a Partnership

Use the "Forging a Partnership" tool to develop ideas for working productively with your boss.

Being a model partner

Investing time to determine your boss’s expectations and preferences regarding decision making, communication, and performance expectations can help you forge a strong working relationship with your supervisor. By applying several additional principles, you can further strengthen that partnership. Specifically:

Demonstrate dependability. Follow through on all commitments and promises you’ve made to your boss. If you think you may be delayed in delivering on a commitment, let you boss know immediately, and provide the reason why.

Be honest. When a project gets off track or an initiative goes over budget, don’t shrink from sharing the bad news with your boss. He or she will likely want to be informed of problems as early as possible, before they become unmanageable. Again, provide the reason for the delay.

Respect your boss’s time. Ask for your supervisor’s time and resources only to meet the most important goals—the company’s, your boss’s, and yours. Handle less-critical matters yourself or delegate them, rather than consuming your supervisor’s time and attention.

Negotiating with your boss

It’s a given that you and your supervisor will occasionally disagree. Perhaps your boss wants you to spend more time on a project you consider less crucial than other efforts. Or he or she has asked you take on a new initiative without providing the resources—personnel, office space, equipment, budget—that you believe the project requires.

In such cases, you may need to call on your powers of negotiation and persuasion to resolve disagreements. For example:

Frame proposals in terms of business results. If you and your boss disagree on some expectations or priorities, identify those you consider the most important. Then make a compelling business case to persuade your boss to agree to those you consider most important. For example, “I know you’d prefer that I focus on other priorities. But I think if we can complete that market research project, we’ll be in a much better position to get an early start on the new product line.”

Present consequences and alternatives. If your supervisor has piled one too many major projects on you, respectfully explain what the consequences may be if you take on the extra work. Then present alternatives for his or her consideration. For example, “I’d be glad to work this new report into my schedule, but that will mean the key-account analysis may have to wait a week or two. One option is to hire temporary help for a few days to cover that end of things. What do you think?”

Strengthening your effectiveness

The more you can learn to manage your job responsibilities effectively yourself, the less you’ll need to ask of your boss. By strengthening your effectiveness, you’ll earn even more of your boss’s appreciation and respect—two essential ingredients in a positive partnership. Consider these examples:

Managing demands. Look for ways to focus on high-priority goals rather than spending all your time fighting fires. Given the many demands that you face, what additional precautions can you take to avoid getting caught in fire-fighting mode?

Generating resources. Win needed resources by demonstrating your ability to produce results. For instance, overhaul an inefficient process, then use your resulting credibility to argue convincingly for funding a larger effort.

Identifying alternatives. Draw on your expertise to anticipate—and circumvent—possible obstacles to achieving your goals. For example, develop several contingency plans in case a particular decision doesn’t go your way or a project doesn’t go as well as expected.

By building a strong partnership with your boss, you boost the chances that the two of you will accomplish important goals together. But a strong partnership isn’t enough: You also need to understand how your and your supervisor’s work relates to your organization’s high-level strategy. The next foundation examines this subject.

Understanding Your Organization’s Strategy

If your company is like most, it has defined a strategy—a plan for realizing its vision, or its compelling image of the future. For example, suppose your company envisions becoming the most recognized name in health-care services nationwide. To realize that vision, your company defines a strategy that entails improving service quality, strengthening customer relationships, and increasing brand awareness.

No matter what strategy your organization has defined, it won’t make the high-level vision real unless you and other managers throughout the company understand that strategy. Only then can you identify ways for your group to help execute the strategy.

How to determine your company’s strategy

If your organization has not published or announced an explicit statement about its strategy, consider taking these steps:

Seek your boss’s interpretation of the strategy and, if appropriate, his or her supervisor’s view.

Examine speeches by your company’s CEO, reports to shareholders, and other documents for insights into the company’s strategic aims.

Notice what executives are talking about. For example, does the subject of getting costs in line keep coming up? Are you noticing frequent mention of enhancing top-line growth, building market share, or expanding product lines?

Consider where the company’s resources are going. Even if you’ve heard a lot of talk about innovation, your organization may have a very different strategic objective if it’s investing most of the expenditure pie in marketing existing product lines.

Check your understanding of the corporate strategy with other managers around you. They may have access to additional information that can help flesh out the strategic picture for you.

Tool: Clarifying Strategy

Use the "Clarifying Strategy" tool to help you better understand your company's and unit's strategy.

Aligning company and unit goals

In all organizations, it’s vital that unit managers—such as your boss and his or her peers—align their goals with the company’s strategy. For example, say your executive team has defined a strategy that entails providing high-quality products at the lowest possible cost. In this case, unit leaders would each develop a set of strategic objectives that would enable them to support the company-wide strategy—possibly calling on you and other group leaders for input while defining the unit goals. For instance:

The product development unit might set out to streamline development processes to lower costs.

The logistics unit could work toward centralizing certain supply chain processes to deliver products to customers more efficiently.

The purchasing unit might survey vendors’ prices to find opportunities for savings.

Guiding your employees through change

Oftentimes, achieving the unit goals your boss has defined requires changes in the way your direct reports do their work. For example, suppose your unit has defined a goal of improving customer service. As part of this effort, you and your supervisor design an initiative aimed at improving call center employees’ knowledge of company products. This initiative will require your employees to attend workshops on the enterprise’s product lines, master new ways of conversing with customers on the phone, and demonstrate more effective problem-solving techniques.

Regardless of who conceives of or launches a change initiative, it’s crucial to remember that many people find change difficult—even painful. Change initiatives often call for employees to replace old beliefs and assumptions with new, unfamiliar ones; to adopt new ways of thinking; and to change the way they go about their work.

Tool: Managing Change

As a group manager or leader, you can support the corporate strategy and your unit’s goals by helping your employees navigate the rocky terrain of change. The "Managing Change" tool is designed to help you plan how to manage change initiatives affecting your direct reports. Key change management practices include:

Explaining why the change initiative is important and how it connects to the company’s overarching goals

Pointing out how your employees will benefit from the change

Celebrating short-term successes to build momentum for further change

Acknowledging the pain that change provokes

Communicating your confidence in your staff’s ability to change the way they work

Gaining your employee’s buy-in for the change initiative by inviting them to offer ideas for making the change happen

Once you understand your company’s strategy and your unit’s goals, you can define a vision for your group—a compelling image of what your employees can accomplish in the future. The next foundation explores this aspect of supporting your boss and organization.

Defining a Vision for Your Group

Similar to a company’s high-level vision, your vision for your group reflects your and your employees’ shared image of what you can achieve together in the future. Effective group visions incorporate images of valuable contributions your group could make in support of company, unit, and individual goals.

Some examples of a group vision are:

“We will streamline all our work processes to achieve unprecedented speed and efficiency.”

“We will create innovative products that score huge successes in the marketplace.”

“We will embrace change with courage, commitment, and compassion.”

“We will become the most cost-effective group in our division.”

“We will generate the highest levels of customer loyalty ever seen in this company.”

Use the "Developing Your Group's Vision" tool to craft a preliminary vision statement that you will refine over time as you communicate your vision to others and test its effectiveness. You might ask your key employees to participate in crafting a vision

statement, or you can develop a preliminary vision statement on your own and then gather feedback from others.

Hallmarks of an effective group vision

Tool: Developing Your Group's Vision

An effective group vision has several distinct characteristics:

It aligns with your company’s competitive strategy. Effective group visions help support your company’s larger strategic goals. For instance, suppose your organization’s strategy hinges on creating exciting new products or services for customers at the lowest possible cost. No matter which group you lead, you can develop a vision that supports that strategy. For example, if you’re in the marketing department, you might envision a future in which your group designs innovative ad campaigns that break the mold. If you lead a human resources team, perhaps your vision might call for drastically reducing employee turnover—so workers can form more positive, long-term relationships with customers.

It paints a clear picture of the future. Your group vision makes it clear what the future work environment will look like once your group has realized its vision.

It expresses your group’s core values and purpose. Your vision for your group should reflect the values you and your employees prize—the guiding principles by which your group carries out its work. These values might include respecting fellow team members’ ideas, communicating problems and concerns promptly and honestly, pitching in as needed, and so forth. Your vision should also support your group’s purpose within the larger organization. For instance, if you lead a customer service group, your vision will be most effective if it conveys specific images of how your employees might better serve customers in the future.

It is expressed in concise, inspiring language. The best group visions can be communicated in concise, inspiring language to your “troops” in the form of a vision statement. As the above examples suggest, well-crafted vision statements evoke a powerful sense of team—often by using words such as

“we,” “our,” and “together.” Effective statements get your and your employees' competitive and creative juices flowing.

It inspires enhanced performance in your group. Your vision for your group not only supports your company’s high-level strategy, it also encompasses other

goals related to continual performance improvement within your group. For example, perhaps you envision helping your employees to feel more comfortable taking risks and learning from mistakes as a way to enhance their creative thinking and ability to innovate.

No matter how inspiring your vision for your group might be, you’ll have difficulty realizing that vision unless you translate it into actionable individual goals for your group. The next foundation offers guidelines for navigating this translation process.

Aligning Individual Goals with Company & Unit Goals

Now that you’ve defined a compelling vision for your group that is aligned with your company and unit goals, how might you turn that vision into concrete action steps? You translate your vision into individual goals—for yourself and each direct report. When you manage this process deftly, you achieve what’s known as alignment.

The following steps can help you align individual goals with your organization’s competitive strategy and your unit’s goals.

1. Define the performance measures and execution strategies that are critical for your group to achieve in order to meet their goals.

Think about the vision you defined for your group. Then ask yourself what actions your group must take to make the vision real. For example, suppose you lead a customer service group and you’ve defined a vision in which your group sets new standards in the quality of the service it provides. Perhaps you’ve determined that this vision of unparalleled customer service supports your unit’s strategy of improving customer loyalty, which in turn aligns with the company’s strategy of increasing market share. In this case, critical factors for your group might include the following:

Reducing errors in order fulfillment

Solving callers’ problems more quickly and effectively

Deepening your staff’s knowledge of company products and customers’ needs

Improving customers’ perceptions of your group’s competence

To define these factors, think in the broadest terms possible about how you can make your group’s vision real.

2. Identify misalignments

Now assess how well each of the following aspects* of your group currently supports the critical factors you’ve defined:

Success strategy. What approach will your group use to achieve its critical factors? For instance, will you seek to increase the number of new product ideas your group generates? Attract a new customer segment?

Structure. How well is your group set up to support achieving its critical factors? For example, is your group organized so that customers have easy access to people who can solve their problems?

Systems. Does your group have the systems required to achieve the critical factors? For instance, does current technology enable your employees to accurately track customer’s order status?

Skills. Do you have the right people, in the right jobs, and with the right skills—such as a sufficient number of call center representatives who can answer customers’ calls on the first or second ring?

Shared values. Does your group hold the right values, norms, and assumptions about how work should be done to make its vision real? For example, do they make customer satisfaction and loyalty top priorities? Do they genuinely care about serving customers?

*Adapted from McKinsey & Co.'s 7S framework for organizational analysis. "Organizational Alignment: The 7-S Model" by Jeffrey L. Bradach. Harvard Business School Note, Nov. 19, 1996.

If you answer “No” to any of these questions, those aspects of your group are likely misaligned and do not support your critical factors.

Also look for misalignments between these aspects of your group. The table below shows some examples.

You have misalignment:

If: And:

Between success strategy and skills

Your success strategy is to increase the number of new product ideas your R&D group generates

Your group doesn’t understand the latest techniques and support tools that would let you run more experiments faster than before

Between success strategy and systems

Your success strategy is to focus on a new customer segment in your marketing group

The group hasn’t established an effective way to compile and analyze information about those customers

Between You’ve organized Your group hasn’t set

You have misalignment:

If: And:

structure and systems

your product development group members by product line to focus specialized technical expertise on specific products

up communication systems that enable experts from different product teams to share their knowledge

3. Identify changes to correct misalignments

Ask yourself what changes in your group’s success strategy, structure, systems, skills, and shared values would help correct any misalignment. For example, do your employees need to attend a training session on conducting R&D experiments? Should you design more effective customer surveys that generate the information your group needs to design marketing campaigns that appeal to a new customer segment? What about setting up a series of meetings or mentoring relationships that enable technical experts from different product teams to share their knowledge?

The changes you identify should become the basis for your group’s individual goals.

4. Craft individual goals

Define individual goals in concrete terms. As you may recall, well-crafted goals are SMART: specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound. For example: “Complete training on new customer database by year end.” “Conduct two web-based seminars by the close of the third quarter.” “By March compile a profile of customers that increased purchases by 20 percent during the previous year.”

Ask yourself what each of your employees needs to do in order to support the group goals you’ve identified. Invite your employees to share their own ideas for aligning their efforts with group goals. These ideas can form the basis of their individual goals.

Finally, check that the individual goals continue to be aligned with group goals, which in turn should support unit and company goals. The table below shows several examples of how this alignment might look.

Company Goal

Unit Goal Group Goal

Individual Goals

Enhance profitability

Reduce costs of serving customers

Install new customer database by year-end.

Alyssa researches five available databases over the coming month and provides her recommendations.

Each staff member completes training on new database by end of quarter, and passes a test with a score of at least 80 out of a possible 100.

Increase brand strength

Improve customer loyalty

Increase repeat purchases by key customers 20 percent over the next year.

John analyzes key customers’ purchasing habits within two weeks.

Marion starts spending one hour every week with Pat, in product development, to deepen her knowledge of company offerings.

Charles is answering 75 percent of customer calls on the first ring two months from now.

Sylvia begins “cross-selling” to each caller, starting immediately.

Tool: Checking Goal Alignment

Use the "Checking Goal Alignment" tool to verify that your individual goals are aligned with company and unit goals. Aligning individual goals with group goals, unit goals, and your company’s high-level strategy takes time and skill. But the rewards are worth it. When you achieve alignment, you help ensure that everyone in your group is pulling in the same direction—the direction your company has defined as crucial for its success.

7. NETWORKING WITH COLLEAGUESThe Importance of Peer Networks

Before you started in your new role as a manager, your boss, friends, or a coach may have counseled you to network with peers inside and outside your organization. But what is networking, exactly? And why take time to network with colleagues—when you’ve got so many other responsibilities to worry about?

What is networking?

In its most general sense, networking is the cultivating of mutually beneficial relationships with superiors, peers within and outside your organization, and direct reports. This Stepping Up to Management module focuses on networking with colleagues. Your colleagues, or peers, may include:

Other managers working in different functional areas or regions in your organization

Former peers and bosses who now work at other companies

Suppliers and customers with whom you regularly interact

Influential and knowledgeable people you know from participating in professional association meetings and other outside business activities

As you might guess, networks can take several forms. For example:

Organizational: Your organizational network might comprise relationships with colleagues who work within your department or in other functional areas or regions, on whom you depend to accomplish your work. For instance, if you work in human resources and are responsible for helping to develop a new recruiting web site, you’ll likely need to interact productively with people from the IT department, as well as managers throughout the company who will provide information on what they need from the new web site.

Informal: Your informal network may contain bonds you’ve formed with peers inside and outside your organization based more on positive chemistry or mutual interests rather than project-specific work. For example, perhaps you’ve met numerous individuals through a manager orientation program who share interests similar to yours, and you feel a kinship with them. You may want to cultivate workplace relationships with these peers for the mutual advice and support they provide.

Personal: A personal network may consist of connections with individuals outside your organization—such as former colleagues or bosses. These peers can often provide useful suggestions for handling management challenges and recommendations for future vendors or employees, as well as emotional support as you transition into your new role.

Tool: Cultivating Your Network

Use the "Cultivating Your Network" tool to identify your existing network members and to plan how you will manage these relationships.

Why network with colleagues?

Cultivating a diverse, extensive network with colleagues generates important benefits. For example, these connections enable you to build trust so you can:

More easily procure the resources and support your group needs to do its work

Protect your group from overly demanding requests from other departments or teams

Clarify your peers’ needs so your people can support other units’ efforts

Learn from other managers’ leadership styles and problem-solving strategies

Gather “penalty-free” feedback on your performance as a manager

Share and learn from your shared managerial experiences

In addition, networking with colleagues helps you:

Receive emotional support so you can more effectively cope with the challenges of management

Explore ideas for improving your group’s productivity and performance or addressing thorny “people management” problems

Broaden your understanding of how the different parts of your organization work together

Obtain guidance on how your decisions or actions might affect various stakeholders and influence events in the long run

Challenge any incorrect assumptions you might have made about the managerial role

Transition smoothly back into your organization when you return home from any expatriate assignments

In addition to offering these valuable benefits, peer networking has become more essential than ever in today’s business world. Why? More organizations are using flatter management structures, outsourcing, and virtual teams—all of which require managers to get things done through people over whom they have no formal authority. In addition, change has grown increasingly complex, involving multiple functions within and even between companies.

Clearly, peer networking has become a crucial business competency. To master this competency, you will need to learn to actively manage and cultivate your network. The next foundation discusses strategies for building your network.

Building a Successful Network

How might you begin building your peer network? Start by understanding the core premise of networking: mutual benefit. To forge bonds with colleagues, you need to achieve a balance between the reality of competing for resources, project opportunities, and promotions and the need to collaborate. In fact, to remove peers’ concerns about competition, some managers ask for advice about especially difficult problems only from peers in other parts of the organization or in other corporations.

Those who are most successful at building networks also think about how they can ensure that their networking relationships are mutually beneficial. That means looking for ways to give back as much as they receive from their network members. For example, if someone helped you recently by locating a needed resource quickly, check back with that person in the next month or two to see what problems you might provide assistance with.

Taking the initiative

It’s easy to form bonds with others who are like you. To ensure that you reap the benefits of a diverse network, it’s important to actively shape its membership. Consider these approaches:

Join a task force—these provide excellent opportunities for you to encounter peers who work in different functional areas from yours.

Invite candid feedback from peers—especially those who may not be your biggest fans. Ask them to tell you honestly how they feel about your performance as a manager. Ask their opinions on what you’ve accomplished (or not accomplished) so far, how you’ve gone about your work, and how others in

your organization feel about your leadership style. Request specific examples of your behaviors that aren’t working.

Work to understand your peers’ biggest challenges and concerns, and identify ways to help them.

Be sure to forge bonds with peers who “make things happen” in your organization, with individuals to whom others go for advice and support, and with colleagues who can influence others.

Demonstrating integrity and discipline

In addition to initiating connections with potential peer-network members, strengthen your network bonds with new and existing network members by demonstrating integrity and discipline. Consider these practices:

Discuss, in respectful, productive ways, any sensitive issues that arise owing to differences between you and your peers. Networking relationships in which members embrace their differences and productively talk about difficult or awkward issues are more successful than those in which the partners ignore tough topics or mimic one another’s styles.

Win your colleagues’ trust and respect by showing your willingness to work hard. Follow through with promises you’ve made, and demonstrate honesty.

Dedicate a specific amount of time each day or week to building your peer network. For example, commit to having lunch each Thursday with a different manager inside or outside your organization whom you don’t know well but who may play an important role in a project you’ll be leading.

Tool: Assessing Your Peer Image

Developing your peer network takes time and patience—and often the dividends don’t come until much later. But, as many new managers have discovered, the effort is well worth it.

In the following foundation, you’ll learn more about how to garner the benefits your peer network offers in exerting influence.

The Power of Influence

To gain the many benefits afforded by your peer network—such as assistance on a project, advice on an initiative you’re considering, or access to important people in the organization—you can’t rely on power. That’s because you don’t have formal authority over members of your peer network. Instead, you must use your influence skills.

But what is influence, exactly? It is the mechanism by which you change others’ opinions, attitudes, and behaviors to suit your interests as well as theirs. Influence isn’t about manipulating others into going against their values or goals to do what you want. Rather, it’s about getting results that benefit both parties. Exercising influence typically involves an exchange of “currencies,” where each party gains something of value. Currencies can take many forms. Some examples are:

Consultation

Being consulted can be a valued currency. When you need one or more peers’ support on a project, take time to ask their opinions—positive and negative—about the initiative you’re championing. You’ll make them feel engaged in your idea, and therefore more committed to supporting it.

For example, suppose you’re responsible for setting up a new database in your company. For the project to succeed, you’ll need other managers throughout the organization to take time to input their customer data into the new centralized repository. But many of them may feel they’re too busy to do so. You can’t order them to provide the data, so you’ll have to win their commitment through other means.

In this case, you could involve them in the project by asking them what kinds of reports and other information they would like to see the new system provide, as well as solicit their ideas for gathering the needed information most efficiently. By offering their ideas and knowing that you’re hearing their concerns, they may feel more willing to provide the support you need.

Coalition building

When several people advocate an idea, they exert more influence than one lone proponent. For this reason, coalition building plays a vital role in influence. If you can gather together influential colleagues to form a “single body of authority,” you stand a better chance of winning other peers’ support for a proposal or initiative.

How to identify potential coalition members? Ask yourself whose “blessing” you need—whether in the form of political support or access to important resources or individuals—

to put your idea into action. Also ask whose buy-in is crucial to your initiative’s success. Any of these individuals would be useful members of a coalition.

Providing resources or assistance

The simple act of doing favors for a peer can boost your chances of getting some form of help and support from that person later, when you need it. For example, you might lend a colleague a few hours of one of your employee’s time to help him finish a project on deadline. Or maybe you provide advice or moral support to help a peer solve a pressing problem. Other ways of helping might include introducing a peer to an influential person who can help her career, or offering information your colleague needs to make an important decision.

Whatever forms of currency you offer, be sure they meet your peers' needs. And look for opportunities to communicate your needs, so your peers will know what types of currencies you might value in return.

Establishing common ground

Take time to discover your peers’ interests and values, as well as communicate your own. Sometimes merely striking up a workplace relationship with peers based on shared interests and values can enable you to strengthen your influence. For example, if you discover that you and a colleague have a common passion for sailing and spend many moments chatting enjoyably about the sport, a bond based on friendship may begin to emerge. And when people like one another, they are more apt to help each other when the need arises.

Leveraging company loyalty

At times, you can influence a colleague to act in your mutual interests by evoking his or her responsibilities to the company’s greater good. For instance, suppose your company has a mentoring program based on cross-functional pairings of mentors and protégés. You want Graham, a manager in another unit, to serve as mentor to Sylvia, one of your employees. Sylvia is a talented employee who needs to improve her assertiveness and decision-making skills. You believe that Graham can help coach her to develop these skills. But Graham says he’s too busy to spend several hours a week mentoring Sylvia.

Tool: Leveraging Your Influence

Here, you might influence Graham’s decision by pointing out how much he’ll be helping the company overall by enabling Sylvia, a high-potential employee, to develop her skills: “Whenever managers fulfill their mentoring responsibilities, we retain valued employees rather than losing them to competing companies that can offer them better developmental opportunities.” While you’re at it, you might also acknowledge why you want Graham, rather than someone else, to coach Sylvia: “You’re very well-regarded by high-level people in this organization, especially for your decision-making abilities.”

These and other techniques can help you influence your peer network members so that each of you gains something of value. In addition to influence, you can also use persuasion to get the most from your peer network. The next foundation presents several potent persuasion tactics

The Practice of Persuasion

In addition to using consultation and other influence-related tactics, you can use persuasion techniques to strike mutually beneficial arrangements with members of your peer network. Consider these “seven levers” of persuasion:

Presenting logical arguments

Present all relevant considerations of an idea, including its pros and cons. For example, suppose you want a colleague to commit part of his group’s budget to a new IT system you’re advocating. You might persuade him by explaining that because the new system would benefit every part of the organization, it’s reasonable that everyone help fund the system—and that his costs will include ongoing amounts for training and technical support as well as an initial outlay.

Justifying your position

Provide numerical and other information relevant to your idea: “I’ve done a bit of research on this, and the new IT system I’m advocating could help you and other managers throughout our company lower your costs by 20 percent and improve group productivity at least 30 percent. Take a look at these reports from Talisman Co.—they used the same system, and they’re similar in size and structure to our company. These are the cost and productivity gains they achieved by adopting this system.” Present your data in a way that highlights your main points, without overwhelming your audience with too much detail.

Appealing to others' interests

By framing your ideas in terms that appeal to your peers’ concerns, you stand a better chance of gaining their support. For example, if you find out through interacting with your network peers that they’re worried about rising costs, declining productivity, or process inefficiencies in their groups, cite the ways in which your idea will help them address these concerns. Remember that a concern need not always be "logical" to become an obstacle to agreement—some concerns are based on beliefs or feelings rather than facts.

Using effective descriptions

Present your ideas in a variety of formats, including stories, statistics, and graphics. In the IT-system case, you could show your peers bar charts or graphs depicting the cost savings and productivity improvements they stand to gain if they help fund the new system. You could also look for and present some compelling statistics about your idea. For example, “Sixty percent of companies that adopt this type of system go on to improve their market share by at least 10 percent.”

Finally, you could use a story to strengthen your case: “At my last company, the marketing manager was initially skeptical about this same thing—just as you are now. But we ran a small pilot project to show him how it worked, and he loved it.”

Providing incentives

Provide incentives for your peers to support your ideas. For instance, after discussing the need for your peer’s financial commitment to the new system, you might mention your willingness to help the person in ways that address his or her most pressing challenges.

Drawing comparisons

Monitor industry trends and developments, and draw on them to persuade your peers. For example, “Jim, I’ve just seen a report that says more and more organizations are moving to this type of system. If we want to stay on the cutting edge—and be seen by our customers as tech-savvy—we need to commit to a group effort to make it happen.”

Overcoming objections

Tool: Practicing Persuasion

Identify the principal causes of your peers’ resistance to your ideas, and work to defuse them. For instance, “Sophie, I realize you’re concerned that moving to this new system will mean more time you’ll have to spend inputting your group’s data. But I calculate the time required for inputting data at no more than one hour per week. More important, you’ll ultimately save much more than an hour per week because of new efficiencies you’ll gain once the system is set up and everyone is using it regularly.”

Using influence and persuasion can help you gain the most value from your peer network and achieve the best results when collaborating with your colleagues. The next foundation explains additional strategies for successful cross-functional collaboration.

Cross-Functional Collaboration with Peers

If you’re like most managers, you don't work in isolation to accomplish your objectives. Instead, you need to collaborate with managers of other groups. Sometimes, your group will need to receive work from other groups to reach its objectives. And sometimes your group will need to give work to other groups so that they can achieve their goals. Typically, several groups will need to collaborate to carry out a strategic initiative.

Consider this example: Your company wants to grow its market share by 30 percent over the next five years. Each unit and group in the enterprise has a role in ensuring that this goal is met. To carry out your group’s part in helping the company grow its market share, your group may need to collaborate with members of other peer groups. The table shows some examples.

If your group is... You might need...

For help in...

Sales Human Resources

Designing a series of courses on effective cross-selling

Marketing Information Technology

Building a customer database that distinguishes market segments

Product Development

Finance Clarifying new business models

When collaboration with peer managers becomes extensive, companies often form cross-functional teams comprising representatives from each participating unit. For example, a cross-functional team designed to support the company’s market-share goals might be led by someone from Marketing and include managers from Product Development, Sales, and Information Technology. As needed, the team might pull in members from Finance and Human Resources.

When cross-functional teams are created, they typically develop a charter that outlines the roles, responsibilities, key milestones, deliverables, and decision-making processes of the group.

The challenge of cross-functional collaboration

Cross-functional collaboration with peers can be challenging because it hinges on mutual support among people who don’t have formal authority over one another. To boost the chances of successful collaboration, apply these practices:

Tool: Collaborating with Peers

Discuss and negotiate cross-functional collaboration requirements with peer managers early, so you can align all the resources you each need to successfully carry out your plans.

Get clear approval from senior management for any major cross-functional collaboration.

To ensure accountability, document all peer-collaboration needs, expectations, and obligations—as well as any changes in the agreements you’ve made.

If a conflict arises once the collaboration begins, acknowledge and resolve it immediately, so the effort can continue moving forward as planned.

If many different group managers must collaborate on an initiative, consider suggesting formation of a cross-functional team dedicated to carrying out the initiative.

If you’re approaching a time when a peer manager will owe your group work, remind him or her about the upcoming collaboration. Give your peer the courtesy of sufficient notice.

Put reminder mechanisms in place to ensure that you follow through on your obligations to peers.

8. EVOLVING AS A MANAGERWho Are You Becoming?

The transformation from individual contributor to manager can initially seem overwhelming, but with experience, you're likely to discover new strengths and talents. As you develop in your management career, you'll want to look for opportunities to leverage these strengths. You're also likely to find that you lack some important skills, and in that case you'll need to figure out how to enhance those abilities or adopt compensating strategies.

Taking stock

Self-reflection will help you assess your managerial abilities and interests. Consider the type of work you most enjoy and past experiences in which you held a leadership role. Ask yourself questions, such as:

Do I like collaborative work? Have I learned to work through others?

Do I enjoy working on difficult problems?

How do I cope with stress?

In informal groups, have others turned to me as a leader? What was the result?

What does leadership mean to me?

Do I have a genuine interest in the success and well-being of those around me? Am I as happy when others succeed as when I succeed?

Thinking about such questions will help you better understand what motivates you, what you hope to achieve through your work, what types of challenges you might tend to avoid, and what type of management career you will want to pursue.

Identifying strengths and weaknesses

Along with introspection, you also need objective, external feedback to fully develop as a manager. Management expert Peter Drucker asserts that all positive performance comes from strengths. To identify your strengths, analyze the results of your actions. For example:

For each key decision you make, note needed actions and expected outcomes

Record the actual results

Compare the actual results with your expectations

Tool: Identifying Strengths & Weaknesses

Look for patterns in the relationship between actual outcomes and your expected outcomes. Perhaps you are good at anticipating your opponent’s moves in negotiations. Or you find that you frequently underestimate others’ capabilities. Strengths are areas where you demonstrate a history of outcomes consistent with expectations. Your weaknesses may lie in areas where there is rarely a match. Use the “Identifying Strengths & Weaknesses” tool to record your observations.

Learning from criticism

The most successful managers are ones who develop an appetite for feedback and constructive criticism. It is sometimes disheartening to discover that colleagues and direct reports perceive you quite differently from the way you see yourself. Try not to judge such feedback as positive or negative. Instead, focus on uncovering what you need to do differently to be perceived in the way that you intend.

For example, you see yourself as thoughtful, and are surprised to learn that to others you appear indecisive. Rather than abandon your approach to decision making, you decide to ask a mentor or a trusted member of your peer network, "What behaviors do I exhibit that make me appear indecisive?" You learn that you often say "I'm not comfortable answering that right now" when someone is pressing you for a decision and you want to take some time to think about it. Given this insight, you decide to adopt a different response, such as, "I'll make a decision about that this afternoon." Your decision-making strategy hasn't changed, but you have learned to manage how others perceive it.

In other cases, you will want to rethink your intentions. Consider this example: You are disturbed to find that others see you as too aggressive, demanding, and self-interested. You inquire further and are told that you often disengage from a conversation or appear disinterested when others want to talk about problems they are having. You consider this information and realize that this is in fact a fairly accurate interpretation of your intention—when someone starts relating a problem they are having, you begin feeling

stressed and overburdened, and you disengage to alleviate those feelings. What needs to change? In this case, you'd want to learn how not to take ownership of others' problems and instead act as an advisor or coach.

Preparing for the future

Throughout your career you will have many opportunities to shape what and how you develop your management abilities. This, in turn, will affect the types of positions that you will eventually be qualified to assume.

The next foundation examines the unique skills required to build your capabilities as a leader.

Developing Leadership Skills

As you develop managerial skills, you will also hone leadership skills. What’s the difference? The process of managing focuses on creating order and controlling situations to achieve desired results. In contrast, the practice of leadership involves identifying what those desired results are, making sure that they are consistent with corporate values, and attracting others to collectively pursue them. By definition, leaders inspire followers.

While good management capitalizes on differences in individual abilities and personal ambitions, good leadership taps into the commonality of interests across individuals.

Managers… Leaders…

Ask: “Are we doing things the right way?” Ask: “Are we doing the right thing?”

And focus on: And focus on:

Planning

Organizing

Problem solving

Setting direction

Aligning people

Motivating employees

Essential leadership skills can be strengthened

While there may be “born leaders” with innate talents, many leadership qualities can be cultivated. These qualities include the ability to:

Perceive patterns and relationships. Leadership involves seeing situations from a broader perspective in order to identify needed changes in the organization and set direction. By taking a step back from the current environment and context, one can more easily perceive patterns and detect relationships between disparate elements. Take time to periodically reflect on your environment from a broader perspective and discuss your observations with a mentor.

Tolerate ambiguity. Leaders often must establish direction based on incomplete or ambiguous information. To become more comfortable with uncertainty, look for situations where others have navigated successfully in ambiguous circumstances, and analyze their strategies. Choose tasks or projects that will enable you to practice in a low-risk environment.

Embrace change. The comfortable and familiar can easily turn into stagnation, while too much change can lead to chaos. Observe how you and those around you react to proposed change—for example, do you feel threatened or restless? Effective leaders learn to gauge an appropriate pace for introducing change.

Discover what you value. A leader’s value judgments are essential to establishing clear direction. For example, one company invests in developing successive generations of an artificial heart valve, in which each generation is slightly better than the preceding one. The company’s philosophy is that the most valuable contribution it can make is to continue to improve this life-saving device. Another company, adopting a different philosophy, invests in the search for an elusive breakthrough technology that will enable doctors to permanently correct some valve abnormalities. Neither of these two philosophies is necessarily right or wrong, but they represent different values. Develop awareness of your values by observing your choices and preferences over time. Understanding your values will help you to:

o Choose opportunities that will increase your sense of fulfillment because they are consistent with your values.

o Reject opportunities that will lead to frustration because they don’t match your values.

Tool: Leadership Qualities Self-Assessment

Use the “Leadership Qualities Self-Assessment” tool to identify leadership qualities that you may want to strengthen.

Gathering feedback on your leadership skills

Feedback is essential to developing leadership skills. Ask mentors, trusted peers, and subordinates for insight into how others experience being led by you. Some questions to ask for feedback about are:

How do others feel about working with me?

How do others feel about themselves when they are working with me?

Does working with me leave people feeling energized?

What aspects of my behavior are not effective?

The next foundation explains the application of emotional intelligence in leadership and management roles and how you can improve your emotional intelligence.

Leading with Emotional Intelligence

A manager’s emotional intelligence skills affect how he or she approaches different management and leadership tasks, such as setting direction, managing employee performance, and motivating others. What is emotional intelligence, or EI? Management consultants Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis, and Annie McKee define EI as a set of competencies governed by the emotional centers of the brain rather than the thinking brain. The four components of EI are self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management.

Why emotional intelligence is important

The table below describes the four components of EI and characteristic ways they surface in management activities. Weakness in one or more EI components can limit an individual’s ability to:

Respond appropriately to challenging situations

Make good decisions

Establish strong relationships with others

For example, individuals may take on impossible assignments because they don’t realize that they lack requisite skills, or may make decisions that violate their core values because they fail to recognize what those core values are.

Most people aren’t strong in all four components of emotional intelligence. But the most effective and successful managers have strengths across all the EI quadrants, listed below.

The Components of Emotional Intelligence

Self-Awareness Self-Management

Emotional self-awareness. The ability to read and understand your emotions as well as to recognize their impact on job performance and relationships.

Accurate self-assessment. The ability to realistically evaluate your strengths and limitations.

Self-confidence. The ability to keep a realistically positive sense of self-worth.

Self-control. The ability to keep disruptive emotions and impulses under control.

Transparency. The ability to be honest, authentic, and have integrity.

Initiative. The ability to have a sense of efficacy and seize opportunities as they arise.

Adaptability. Skill at adjusting to changing situations and overcoming obstacles.

Optimism. The ability to view setbacks as opportunities instead of threats.

Achievement. Skill at setting realistic goals and seeking performance improvements.

Social Awareness Relationship Management

Empathy. Skill at sensing a wide range of emotional signals, understanding others’ perspectives, and taking an active interest in their concerns.

Organizational awareness. The ability to read the currents of organizational life, build social networks, and navigate politics.

Service. The ability to recognize and meet customers’ needs.

Influence. Skill at sending clear, convincing, and well-tuned messages.

Inspiration. The ability to inspire and move people with a compelling vision.

Catalyst for change. The ability to challenge the status quo and champion the new order.

Conflict management. The ability to defuse disagreements and orchestrate resolutions.

Development of others. The propensity to bolster the abilities of others through feedback and guidance.

Teamwork. Skill at building teams and fostering collaboration.

Strengthening your emotional intelligence

As with cognitive intelligence, there appears to be a genetic component to emotional intelligence. However, research shows that EI is also learned, and that it generally increases with age as individuals gain experience.

To strengthen EI, emotional centers of the brain must be retrained to adopt new behaviors, much as one would break a bad habit by replacing it with a new, positive behavior.

To develop your EI capabilities:

Make a personal commitment to developing your EI.

Create a personal vision of your “ideal self.” Who do you want to become? What kind of manager do you want to become? How do you want to be remembered as a manager?

Gather feedback from colleagues to shed light on which of your EI skills most need improvement.

Examine your behavior to understand exactly what you need to change—for example, “In stressful situations I fail to listen to others’ suggestions and ideas.”

Identify how you will behave differently. For example, “In stressful situations I will specifically ask others for their ideas and will concentrate on listening to their suggestions.”

Enlist the support of others to help you monitor your progress. For example, if you are seeking to become more open to others’ ideas, you might ask a trusted colleague to observe your behavior in meetings where new ideas are discussed.

Tools: Assessing Your Emotional Intelligence and Strengthening Your Emotional Intelligence

The "Assessing Your Emotional Intelligence" and “Strengthening Your Emotional Intelligence” tools will help you better understand and strengthen your emotional intelligence.

Emotional intelligence plays an important role in your successful transition from individual contributor to manager, and perhaps even more so as you develop your leadership role. The next foundation discusses how to apply EI components such as self-awareness and self-management as you chart the next steps in your career.

Taking Charge of Your Career

Managing your career includes acquiring the skills that you need—both technical skills and people-management skills—to meet increasing levels of management responsibility. It also entails developing a mature perspective on your role within the organization, and adopting a strategic approach to building your network and pursuing career opportunities.

Make a commitment to learning

Pursuing a career in management requires a commitment to lifelong learning. As your responsibilities change you will likely need to acquire new functional skills and knowledge. You could need, for example, an understanding of accounting principles, knowledge of basic business law, or the fundamentals of organizational development. Specific skills in these areas can be acquired through seminars, college courses, or self-study programs.

Much of what you learn about management, however, is acquired through on-the-job experience. If you are serious about developing as a manager, one of your top priorities should be to develop a network of mentors and sponsors whose feedback will help you better learn from your experiences. To truly harvest the potential of mentoring relationships, you must also accept the responsibility of being a protégé willing to divulge shortcomings, admit imperfections, and consciously seek constructive criticism.

Embrace the greater good

At the beginning of a management career, it's natural to be dazzled by the opportunity to exercise authority or by the potential financial rewards that come with a management role. But to grow as a manager, you will need to shift your focus to the concerns of your group and others. Rather than acting primarily for personal gain, decide to focus on the welfare of your team and your company. Instead of asking, "How can I best develop my skills?" ask, "What skills do I need to develop to best serve the company's current and future needs?"

The answers will help you chart your learning and development agenda and provide insight into which types of assignments and positions are appropriate at each stage of your development. According to Linda Hill, there should be a good fit between your

abilities, goals, and need for learning opportunities, and the position to which you aspire.

Evaluate stretch assignments

Stretch assignments are those that require you to grow in order to make the required contribution. They play a vital part in helping you develop new knowledge and skills. As valuable as they are, stretch assignments increase the risk that you will make mistakes or not substantially contribute to the organization’s goals. Therefore, it's important to choose situations where the risks are manageable. As a general rule, it should take you less than six months in a new position to begin making a meaningful contribution, so choose assignments only if you believe you can reach that target.

It's also a good idea to look for diverse experiences to help you develop skills in different functional areas. While it's true that you should leverage your strengths, some initial strengths can later become fatal flaws if you do not learn to adapt to new demands. Strong technical expertise, for example, may be a valuable asset early in your management career. But too great a reliance on this strength may prevent you from developing broader management abilities that could prove essential later on.

Think strategically about your career

A strategic approach to career management means ensuring that you and your skills are always essential to your organization’s success. Being strategic requires that you:

Look outward in your organization to identify emerging needs

Set goals important to your organization as well as your own interests

Position yourself to acquire skills and gain relevant experiences through stretch assignments or lateral moves within your organization

Periodically reevaluate goals, making changes as organizational needs change

Tool: Career Development Checklist

Thinking strategically about your developmental network means that you look for a cross-section of relationships rather than focusing on just one mentor. It also means that you actively develop new relationships based on your changing needs rather than relying on existing relationships simply because they are comfortable. Use the “Career Development Checklist” tool to periodically assess your career development goals activities.

Over time you’ll reap the reward for effectively managing your career—the achievement of positional power: a combination of visibility, autonomy, and a “fast track” position. Positional power grows out of a good performance record, a strong network, and the ability to attract stretch assignments. Positional power grows in a self-reinforcing cycle. New successes and new assignments further strengthen your visibility—and further increasing your ability to use that power to make a positive contribution to your organization.