Looking for real management advice about people? Your goal is to create a work environment in which people are empowered, productive, contributing, and happy. Don't hobble them by limiting their tools or information. Trust them to do the right thing. Get out of their way and watch them catch fire.
These are the ten most important principles for managing people in a way that reinforces employee empowerment, accomplishment, and contribution. These management actions enable both the people who work with you and the people who report to you to soar.
1. Demonstrate That You Value People
Your regard for people shines through in all of your actions and words. Your facial expression, your body language, and your words express what you are thinking about the people who report to you. Your goal is to demonstrate your appreciation for each person's unique value. No matter how an employee is performing on his or her current task, your value for the employee as a human being should never falter and always be visible.
2. Share Leadership Vision
Help people feel that they are part of something bigger than themselves and their individual job. Do this by making sure they know and have access to the organization's overall mission, vision, and strategic plans.
3. Share Goals and Direction
Share the most important goals and direction for your group. Where possible, either make progress on goals measurable and observable, or ascertain that you have shared your picture of a positive outcome with the people responsible for accomplishing the results. If you share a picture and share meaning, you have agreed upon what constitutes a successful and acceptable deliverable. Empowered employees can then chart their course without close supervision.
4. Trust People
Trust the intentions of people to do the right thing, make the right decision, and make choices that, while maybe not exactly what you would decide, still work. When employees receive clear expectations from their manager, they relax and trust you. They focus their energy on accomplishing, not on wondering, worrying, and second-guessing.
5. Provide Information for Decision Making
Make certain that you have given people, or made sure that they have access to, all of the information they need to make thoughtful decisions.
6. Delegate Authority and Impact Opportunities, Not Just More Work
Don't just delegate the drudge work; delegate some of the fun stuff, too. You know, delegate the important meetings, the committee memberships that influence product development and decision making, and the projects that people and customers notice. The employee will grow and develop new skills. Your plate will be less full so you can concentrate on contribution. Your reporting staff will gratefully shine - and so will you.
7. Provide Frequent Feedback
Provide frequent feedback so that people know how they are doing. Sometimes, the purpose of feedback is reward and recognition as well as improvement coaching. People deserve your constructive feedback, too, so they can continue to develop their knowledge and skills.
8. Solve Problems: Don't Pinpoint Problem People
When a problem occurs, ask what is wrong with the work system that caused the people to fail, not what is wrong with the people. Worst case response to problems? Seek to identify and punish the guilty.
9. Listen to Learn and Ask Questions to Provide Guidance
Provide a space in which people will communicate by listening to them and asking them questions. Guide by asking questions, not by telling grown up people what to do. People generally know the right answers if they have the opportunity to produce them. When an employee brings you a problem to solve, ask, "what do you think you should do to solve this problem?" Or, ask, "what action steps do you recommend?" Employees can demonstrate what they know and grow in the process. Eventually, you will feel comfortable telling the employee that he or she need not ask you about similar situations. You trust their judgment.
10. Help Employees Feel Rewarded and Recognized for Empowered Behavior
When employees feel under-compensated, under-titled for the responsibilities they take on, under-noticed, under-praised, and under-appreciated, don’t expect results from employee empowerment. The basic needs of employees must feel met for employees to give you their discretionary energy, that extra effort that people voluntarily invest in work. For successful employee empowerment, recognition plays a significant role.
“The Credo of an Empowering Manager” by Susan M. Heathfield (edited)
Showing posts with label gold time management. Show all posts
Showing posts with label gold time management. Show all posts
Thursday, September 9, 2010
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
Gold Time – an end to overwhelm!
Gold Time is probably the most ‘used-but-misused’ of the fundamental principles underpinning the Best Year Yet® system. Thousands of us say we practice Gold Time, but in reality few of us do it really well, all of the time. Of the hundreds of executives I’ve coached over the last 15 years, individually or in teams, the really impressive ones have, without exception, become Masters of Gold Time. Their secret is investing time in attending to the topics that matter in the long run.
Gold Time is the space in your schedule devoted to activities, tasks, projects and projects that are important but not urgent — at least not yet urgent. It’s what happens when you stop saying to yourself,
I’ll get fit, fix my finances, book the family holiday, study for the MBA, do the staff appraisals, attend to my Best Year Yet plan, have a staff meeting etc. when I’ve got the time. Just now I’m busy looking at my e-mails.
Gold Time distinguishes between the urgency and the importance of the tasks with which life presents us. Think of what fits into each of the following categories from your own to-do list.
Category 1
This is urgent and important; that’s why I’m doing it now.
Category 2
This is important but it’s not urgent, so it will have to wait.
Category 3
This isn’t important to me, but somebody else may want it urgently, so I’d better do it now.
Category 4
This is neither important nor urgent – so why the heck am I doing it?
Although it’s hard to argue with a proposition that offers top-drawer results simply by becoming more discerning about how you spend your time, it’s lamentable how few of us make that transformation: “I’ll do it when I have the time” is what we say to make our shortcomings sound OK. “Can’t you see I’m a busy person?”
The people who garner the real benefits from Gold Time are following some time-proven rules:
Have the right paradigm about the value of Gold Time, because it can be risky
“Why are you doing that stuff,” says the boss, “when you’ve got all these urgent things to do?” It can also be seen as selfish. “Why are you going to the gym when the kids need you to play with them?” Gold Time Masters have the unshakable belief that investing time now will reap ten-fold benefits in the future. And one-time critics will very soon become admirers when the mother lode of Gold Time is revealed.
Be a Gold Time junkie — an opportunist
Gold Time comes in two varieties: it can be planned and in your weekly schedule. Or it can be ‘gifted’, which happens when a meeting is canceled, a plane delayed or appointment turns up late. You’ve got a slug of free time you weren’t expecting. Treat it as a gift. A Gold Time ‘entrepreneur’ will know what’s currently on the agenda by having a Gold Time list: calls to be made, texts to read, goals to update’ gifts to be bought, supportive messages to be sent, expenses to be claimed, appraisal forms to completed thoughtfully.
Be in the right place
Allowing yourself to be distracted is a major impediment to the successful practice of Gold Time. Typically it doesn’t succeed at a busy workstation, or the breakfast table or with work buddies in the pub – although it can in itself be a GT activity. You need to expose yourself to the danger of having some serious, unobstructed thought, itself an ‘out of the comfort zone’ experience for many of us. Where can you take yourself off to that guarantees uninterrupted time for thinking, reviewing, deciding and taking action? Starbucks? Your parked car? The city library? Your silent home when the family is out?
Take action
I’ve lost count of the people who tell me ‘I do most of my thinking when I’m driving.’ The problem here – apart from the lack of attention to the road – is the absence of subsequent action. It’s absolutely vital to take out of your Gold Time session wherever it takes place, a record of whatever you’ve committed yourself to do.
And then do it.
1. Adopt an empowering paradigm towards Gold Time.
2. Both plan for and ‘snatch’ your Gold Time.
3. Have a ‘Gold Time List’ always in your ‘back pocket’ ready for the snatched opportunities.
4. Put your self in the right place.
5. Commit to and take the actions your Gold Time decisions demand.
“The crucial role of top management is to create the conditions in which individual managers can thrive”.~Peter Baxter
Written by Best Year Yet Partner Peter Baxter. Thank you Peter for this overview of Gold Time Management!
Peter Baxter’s career has been spent predominantly in financial services, initially in sales and more recently in marketing and product development. Peter Baxter is a UK-based partner of Best Year Yet LLC, a global organization, headquartered in Colorado, USA and operating on five continents.
He works within the Best Year Yet community as a program facilitator and business coach. In the ten years since the launch of the business, he has facilitated upwards of 75 teams and their leaders, in a range of large organizations.
Gold Time is the space in your schedule devoted to activities, tasks, projects and projects that are important but not urgent — at least not yet urgent. It’s what happens when you stop saying to yourself,
I’ll get fit, fix my finances, book the family holiday, study for the MBA, do the staff appraisals, attend to my Best Year Yet plan, have a staff meeting etc. when I’ve got the time. Just now I’m busy looking at my e-mails.
Gold Time distinguishes between the urgency and the importance of the tasks with which life presents us. Think of what fits into each of the following categories from your own to-do list.
Category 1
This is urgent and important; that’s why I’m doing it now.
Category 2
This is important but it’s not urgent, so it will have to wait.
Category 3
This isn’t important to me, but somebody else may want it urgently, so I’d better do it now.
Category 4
This is neither important nor urgent – so why the heck am I doing it?
Although it’s hard to argue with a proposition that offers top-drawer results simply by becoming more discerning about how you spend your time, it’s lamentable how few of us make that transformation: “I’ll do it when I have the time” is what we say to make our shortcomings sound OK. “Can’t you see I’m a busy person?”
The people who garner the real benefits from Gold Time are following some time-proven rules:
Have the right paradigm about the value of Gold Time, because it can be risky
“Why are you doing that stuff,” says the boss, “when you’ve got all these urgent things to do?” It can also be seen as selfish. “Why are you going to the gym when the kids need you to play with them?” Gold Time Masters have the unshakable belief that investing time now will reap ten-fold benefits in the future. And one-time critics will very soon become admirers when the mother lode of Gold Time is revealed.
Be a Gold Time junkie — an opportunist
Gold Time comes in two varieties: it can be planned and in your weekly schedule. Or it can be ‘gifted’, which happens when a meeting is canceled, a plane delayed or appointment turns up late. You’ve got a slug of free time you weren’t expecting. Treat it as a gift. A Gold Time ‘entrepreneur’ will know what’s currently on the agenda by having a Gold Time list: calls to be made, texts to read, goals to update’ gifts to be bought, supportive messages to be sent, expenses to be claimed, appraisal forms to completed thoughtfully.
Be in the right place
Allowing yourself to be distracted is a major impediment to the successful practice of Gold Time. Typically it doesn’t succeed at a busy workstation, or the breakfast table or with work buddies in the pub – although it can in itself be a GT activity. You need to expose yourself to the danger of having some serious, unobstructed thought, itself an ‘out of the comfort zone’ experience for many of us. Where can you take yourself off to that guarantees uninterrupted time for thinking, reviewing, deciding and taking action? Starbucks? Your parked car? The city library? Your silent home when the family is out?
Take action
I’ve lost count of the people who tell me ‘I do most of my thinking when I’m driving.’ The problem here – apart from the lack of attention to the road – is the absence of subsequent action. It’s absolutely vital to take out of your Gold Time session wherever it takes place, a record of whatever you’ve committed yourself to do.
And then do it.
1. Adopt an empowering paradigm towards Gold Time.
2. Both plan for and ‘snatch’ your Gold Time.
3. Have a ‘Gold Time List’ always in your ‘back pocket’ ready for the snatched opportunities.
4. Put your self in the right place.
5. Commit to and take the actions your Gold Time decisions demand.
“The crucial role of top management is to create the conditions in which individual managers can thrive”.~Peter Baxter
Written by Best Year Yet Partner Peter Baxter. Thank you Peter for this overview of Gold Time Management!
Peter Baxter’s career has been spent predominantly in financial services, initially in sales and more recently in marketing and product development. Peter Baxter is a UK-based partner of Best Year Yet LLC, a global organization, headquartered in Colorado, USA and operating on five continents.
He works within the Best Year Yet community as a program facilitator and business coach. In the ten years since the launch of the business, he has facilitated upwards of 75 teams and their leaders, in a range of large organizations.
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