He wants to be a good manager. You really do.
And you’re doing the best you can, or trying to.
However, you wonder how well things are going when situations like these happen:
SCENARIO ONE
You hear laughter at work and decide to walk towards it. You are in charge of things here, but you are also human. A little lightness could help brighten a difficult day, you think as you walk towards joy. Suddenly, when you turn a corner and see the crowd gathered there, the laughter stops. They all freeze. They then quickly disperse, amid a variety of muttered excuses.
SCENARIO TWO
You are leading a meeting. The goal: engage your team in finding the best way to suddenly meet much more challenging quarterly performance targets. You look at the group gathered before you. It’s a sea of boring faces and the top of people’s heads. They are trying their best to be anywhere but here while they daydream, text, tweet, and scan the internet.
SCENARIO THREE
Performance ratings are due. You dread this time of year (and so do the employees). And yet, you try to provide good, meaningful feedback to every employee who reports to you. Your fellow managers make fun of you, saying that your good intentions and your time are not well spent. “You know your employees just want to know, ‘How much? And why not more?'” their colleagues explain, with a cynical smile. Go back to work, wondering if they’re right, but give the best feedback you can, just like before.
As these scenarios show, the role and path of management is sometimes lonely and frustrating.
When you get to it:
– It’s hard to get people on the same page.
– So it’s hard to get them moving forward as a well-functioning team.
– And then there is the constant need to keep people and the whole team positive and keep going through all kinds of challenges, tasks and circumstances.
Amidst all of that (and more), poor management practices can quickly slip in and take hold, whether we like it or not.
If you want to avoid (or get out of) the trap of repeating poor management practices, regardless of how you learned them, start by thinking of your job as a game.
Your goal is to help your team see and understand the game fully, prepare them to win, and then manage the team as you play so that they win time and time again.
Start by asking yourself these important questions:
1. What “game” is our company or team playing?
2. What is a win for our clients? What is a victory for us?
3. Who are the main players in this game?
4. What are their roles?
5. What are the rules we play by now? What are the best rules for us to use?
6. How do we keep score now? Is that the best way?
7. What is the reward for playing well?
8. What are the penalties for playing poorly?
9. How are we doing, in general? As we know?
10. Are we playing better all the time?
11. If so, why? If not, why not? What can we do to improve?
12. How do we stay inspired and continually move forward?