An audience doesn't react to a speaker's nervousness. They react to the behaviors that they see and hear that they ascribe to nerves. If Paul is nervous but doesn't behave as if he is nervous, will his audience notice? Of course not. They'll think he's confident. (Location 279)
Success at work is about what you do—you are your behaviors. Almost nothing else matters. (Location 284)
Your First Responsibility as a Manager Is to Achieve Results (Location 345)
Your first responsibility is to deliver whatever results your organization expects from you. (Location 348)
You may be able to say, “My boss wants me to focus in these areas,” but that's not enough. You can't quantify what is expected of you. (Location 354)
The problem with not having clearly delineated responsibilities is that you can't make intelligent choices about where to focus. You begin to feel that “everything is important.” (Location 360)
If you can't list your goals almost off the top of your head, make a note somewhere to go to your boss in the near future. Ask her: “What results do you expect of me?” “What are the measures you're going to compare me against?” “What are the objective standards?” “What subjective things do you look at to round out your evaluation of me?” (Location 363)
Managers who produce great results have more successful careers than those who produce average results. (Location 372)
Your Second Responsibility as a Manager Is to Retain Your People (Location 381)
The Definition of an Effective Manager Is One Who Gets Results and Keeps Her People (Location 390)
The four critical behaviors that an effective manager engages in to produce results and retain team members are the following: Get to Know Your People. Communicate about Performance. Ask for More. Push Work Down. (Location 409)
the single most important (and efficient) thing that you can do as a manager to improve your performance and increase retention is to spend time getting to know the strengths and weaknesses of your direct reports. Managers who know how to get the most out of each individual member of the team achieve noticeably better results than managers who don't. (Location 419)
Our data over the years suggest that, generally, a manager who knows his or her team members one standard deviation better than the average manager produces results that are two standard deviations better than the average manager's results. (Location 427)
Sadly, what most of us as managers do (I know I did early in my career) is manage others the way we would like to be managed. This is sort of the Golden Rule of nonexperienced managers. You do to your directs what would make sense if you were one of those directs. (Location 435)
People and their behaviors are what deliver results to your organization. (Not systems, not processes, not computers, not machines.) (Location 441)
What Are the First Names of All of the Children of the People Who Report Directly to You? (Location 463)
Think about it from the perspective of your personal life: your close friends all know the names of all of your children. That's part of what makes them close friends. Your friends who are not as close know some of your children. And your acquaintances probably don't know whether you have children or not. (Location 468)
To build a trusting relationship, it takes more than chit-chat, more than “talking to your people all the time.” And the trust in this relationship matters a lot, according to our measures of effective managers. It takes even more trust building in a manager-subordinate relationship than it does with friends. (Location 525)
Generally, the more a team trusts its manager, the better the results will be, and the better the retention as well. (Location 528)
The Wisdom of Teams, taught us years ago that the binding and distinctive element of teams that outperform others is the amount of trust that they build and engender among their members. (Location 547)
You communicate more with those whom you consider friends and trusted colleagues, and less with those with whom you have less of a relationship. (Location 552)
If you're going to create trust and trusting relationships with your directs, then, you're going to have to talk to them frequently about things that are important to them. (Location 555)
Getting to know your directs accounts for 40 percent of the total value created by engaging in the four critical behaviors. (Location 568)
The Second Critical Behavior: Communicate about Performance (Location 579)
If you want high performance, you're going to have to talk about it with your directs. It matters more than anything else, other than your relationship with them. (Location 622)
Performance communication accounts for 30 percent of the total value created by engaging in the four critical behaviors. (Location 624)
The Third Critical Behavior: Ask for More (Location 628)
Our data show that, if you want great results and retention, you have to be willing to constantly raise the bar on performance. (Location 629)
Eustress is the stress you feel that helps you get ready, get excited, and “get up” for the big game. It's that tingly feeling of anticipation, eagerness, and a sense of fire and determination that you feel when your team huddles and shouts, “Team!” (Location 645)
The ideal place for your directs to be for maximum output/results is right on the line between distress and eustress, almost over the line into fear, but not quite there. They should have lots of energy but not panic. The only way to know where that line is, for each direct, is to push each direct into moments of distress and pay attention to when they start to lose effectiveness. (Location 647)
The best way a team's performance improves is if each individual's performance improves. (Location 656)
The effective manager is always, in one fashion or another, asking for more. To be an effective manager means encouraging and inspiring all of your directs to higher performance even when they say they don't want to—because you know the organization needs that to stay competitive. (Location 662)
Asking for more accounts for roughly 15 percent of the total value created by engaging in the four critical behaviors. (Location 665)
The Fourth Critical Behavior: Push Work Down (Location 667)
What does it mean to “push work down”? Here's a simple way to think about it. Suppose there's a task that both you and one of your directs can do. You usually do it, but your directs—or at least one of them—COULD do the task. (Location 675)
Pushing work down accounts for roughly 15 percent of the total value created by engaging in the four critical behaviors. (Location 699)
“What's your approach to managing?” (Location 753)
Managing is about results and retention, not about smiling and knowing people. Sure, it's a people job, but it's a job that any person can do with the right skills and behaviors! (Location 777)
manager taking notes actually elevates the conversation, making it more important. Managers who just chatted but didn't take notes about possible follow-up were deemed to be less engaged, less interested, and less likely to take action on topics that came up. (Location 1133)
Never tolerate from your directs what you would not do to your boss. (Location 1263)
The problem today with the average manager-direct relationship is NOT one of too much management but of far too little. Management, reasonably practiced, in virtually every organization, provides necessary guidance, controls, and incentives far below a level that is intrusive or detrimental. (Location 1270)
A demanding boss is not a micromanager. (Location 1276)
By definition, everyone's supposed to be “busy” or at least fully using their skills. (In fact, organizational behavior experts tell us that those people who probably don't have enough to do still fill up their hours. And they, too, not surprisingly, describe themselves as “busy.”) (Location 1347)
Before trying to get more of everything done, get the most important things done first. (Location 1357)
Getting Things Done by David Allen teaches this beautifully. The book 168 Hours by Laura Vanderkam does it very well. The concept is also beautifully illustrated in a widely quoted story called “The Big Rocks” by Stephen Covey. (Location 1382)
There are three forms of power or influence in organizations. Role power, that which the organization grants you to compel others to act for the organization; relationship power, your own ability to change behaviors of others because of their knowledge of, and trust in, you; and expertise power, others' perception of your technical, industrial, or topical knowledge that causes them to follow your guidance. (Location 1406)
Start each O3, every time, with every direct, no matter what, with the same first question. (Location 1442)
A typical O3 direct's portion includes updates about ongoing work, questions about problems they're having, project status reports, requests for assistance with budgets or communications, requests for guidance about next steps or about approaching a problem, verification of rumors they've heard, clarification of what you want or how you want something done, notifications of tasks they've finished, follow-up on pending actions, reminders of information or materials they need from you, and so on. (Location 1482)
The manager thinks about what happened in the past and asks herself how to talk to the direct—about what happened, in the past, about which the manager can do nothing. (Location 2064)
It ought to be obvious why talking about something that happened in the past is a problem. It also ought to give you a clue as to why directs get defensive when managers talk to them about their mistakes. They get defensive because managers talk to them about their mistakes—which happened in the past—about which the directs can do nothing. So, they feel trapped. (Location 2065)
The moment you switch to a future focus, however, you free yourself up to focus on something that you (and they) can do something about. (Location 2091)
Rather than thinking, “What can I say to this person about her mistake?” or, “How can I praise her for that great decision?” the right approach is to focus on what you want (the future), not on the past, because there's nothing she or you can do about the past. (Location 2096)
Focus on what you want, and don't worry about exactly how you're going to word some criticism or about how to praise someone. (Location 2104)
Asking directs for permission to give them feedback significantly increases their appreciation for your giving them the feedback and also the likelihood of their effective future behavior. (Location 2138)
Therefore, we don't give feedback on what directs meant, or why they did something, or what their attitude was when they did something. (Location 2212)
Our guidance is to look for small impacts that happen every day. It's easier to give feedback on them, and all those small changes will add up. (Location 2268)
Step 1: Ask. Step 2: State the Behavior. Step 3: State the Impact of the Behavior. Step 4: Encourage Effective Future Behavior. (Location 2308)
The point of immediacy is not to wait. The sooner your directs get feedback about what they do, good or bad, the more quickly they can implement that feedback. If managers can give feedback immediately, it works better. (Location 2327)
the purpose of the feedback: to encourage effective future behavior. (Location 2411)
If you're angry, don't give feedback. Period. (Location 2416)
If your purpose is to remind your directs of their mistakes, again, that is not in alignment with the purpose of giving feedback. (Location 2427)
if it's not about the past or about punishment, and if you can let it go, then go ahead and give the feedback. (Location 2441)
You initiated the conversation, and your purpose was a request about the future. (Location 2470)
Really well-delivered systemic feedback is exceptionally hard to ignore (Location 2510)
Systemic feedback addresses the direct's combination of continued failure to change with the direct's stated commitment to change. It addresses the greater failure to meet a repeated commitment. Failure to meet commitments is a systemic failure that no organization can long tolerate among its members. (Location 2512)
Standard feedback is about small behaviors. Systemic feedback addresses the moral hazard of a direct committing to new behavior but then failing to follow through. We can tolerate directs who make mistakes. We cannot tolerate directs who repeatedly make commitments they don't keep. (Location 2557)
Talk to your directs about the purpose of giving feedback, which is to “encourage effective future behavior.” (Location 2614)
Tell them when you give them feedback, you're focused on the future. When you have to give them negative feedback, tell them you'll do your best to be relaxed and not accusatory. Tell them you know there's nothing we can do about a mistake that's in the past, so there's no sense getting upset after the fact. (Location 2618)
Tell your directs that negative feedback isn't about punishment; it's about doing things better. It is about the future. (Location 2629)
The third critical behavior for effective managers is to ask for higher levels of performance: (Location 2667)
Manager Tools defines coaching as a systemic effort to improve the performance of a direct in a specific skill area. (Location 2688)
How do we set a goal? Easy. We describe a behavior or a result that we want to achieve by a date when we want it achieved. (Location 2707)
But to avoid doing anything that might be wrong, what most of us do is nothing at all. (Location 2763)
You know that, if you have to do something and there's no deadline, all other things being equal, you're going to act on the tasks that have deadlines that are reportable or enforceable, and you won't do the one that has no deadline. (Location 2838)
the best way to help people improve is by creating short-term tasks. (Location 2841)
By tightening tasks down to in some cases almost an hourly scope, we can, in the first week, start reading a book. (Location 2856)
Learning to delegate is part of the transition to becoming an executive. (Location 2951)
If you're a manager, your key to long-term success is to master the art of delegation. (Location 2962)
Delegation, on the other hand, is you turning over responsibility for one of your regular responsibilities—something you routinely do—on a permanent or long standing basis, to one of your directs. Task assignment is different from delegation. (Location 2974)
The size of the box is the absolute maximum your spouse or body will allow you to work. (Location 3015)
Don't ever delegate a new responsibility your boss has just given you to one of your directs. Learn it first, master it, before you consider delegating it. (Location 3033)
You say, as an example, “You're my best writer.” (Location 3096)
Look for four areas of your directs' abilities to determine what to delegate to whom: what they're good at, what they like to do, what they need to do, or what they want to do. (Location 3102)
In delegating your lesser responsibilities, you ought not to be thinking about yourself. (Location 3104)
Don't think about you, and about what you want to get rid of. Think about them, and what they could benefit from. (Location 3105)
What they're good at: If your direct is good at something, even if you are too, delegate to their strengths. (Location 3107)
What they like to do: If they have an affinity for an area, whether they're good at it or not, consider delegating in that area to them. (Location 3109)
What they need to do. If you have a direct who needs to improve in a skill area (often for consideration for promotions or career choices), delegate in this skill area to help them get there. (Location 3112)
We ask our direct to accept the responsibility before we tell them the details of what's involved. (Location 3118)
Before you get too surprised, ask yourself: would you ever delegate something to one of your directs that they couldn't do? Something that would crush them? Of course you wouldn't. You might want them to stretch, but surely you care enough about them to never ask them to do anything that would be too much. (Location 3119)
If we wait to ask until they've heard all the details, they will often listen to all the details in a defensive way, worrying about workload and priorities. (Location 3126)
Describe the Task or Project in Detail (Location 3137)
Walk the direct through what the responsibility is in detail. (Location 3138)
Address Deadline, Quality, and Reporting Standards (Location 3147)
when work passes from one person to another: the deadline, the quality standard the work has to meet, and whatever reporting frequency is required. (Location 3149)
Never ask a question whose answer you don't intend to honor. (Location 3179)
The first time you're told no, accept it. There's nothing wrong with probing, however, and trying to overcome the objection. Then, honor the no and walk away. (Location 3195)
If you want to be a great manager, do these things with love. What I mean is professional love: the willingness to risk yourself for the benefit of another. It means doing something that may be a little more difficult for you, as a way of showing respect for your colleagues and your organization. (Location 3232)
