Managers review goals, give praise, and offer redirects

Think of traditional management. What comes to mind? Perhaps you remember the person in your company who tells you what to do next. Or a performance review given to you by a previous manager that outlined every mistake you made that year? Or the time you made a mistake and the manager’s angry response? Is this the role of a manager, to tell employees what to do, to let them know how poorly they did it, and to punish them for mistakes? Didn’t you wish that you had a manager who cared about you?

Again, what comes to mind if you employed a manager to supervise employees at your business? Do you expect them to tally metrics while your employees decide on their own what they should be doing? Will you be content if the manager tells his employees only good news? What if the manager strengthens your least productive employees to continue working the minimum amount? Wouldn’t you wish you had a manager who cared about results?

Blanchard and Johnson believe that an effective manager cares for both people and results, and that the central activities that produce both happy employees and noticeable results center on three simple, short bullet points: one-minute goals, praises, and re-directs.

One-minute goals give a target for an employee to hit. Without a target, an employee’s work is like playing a game that doesn’t keep score ((Blanchard, pg. 55)). While the targets are informed by the manager’s insight into the business, but the manager doesn’t set them, the employee does. They are few and short enough to read every day, and clear enough to know whether a day’s activities has moved towards the goal’s fulfillment or away from it.

One-minute praises give employees the encouragement to try new activities they aren’t initially good at. A praise soon after an employee does something right that tells them what the behavior was and why the manager likes it gives employees the extra boost needed to change. Work that an employee has mastered get less praise because the manager trusts them to do the same good work the employee has demonstrated in the past, and an employee soon picks up that the key to future praises is to grow and learn.

One-minute re-directs give the employee a chance to reflect on actions taken that have not met the agreed-upon goals. A re-direct opens time for reflection on mistakes and affirms the employee has a manager who cares that his employees learn from their mistakes. Re-directs leave an employee concerned about the effect of his mistake and earnest to become better, but they never leave an employee wondering if his manager distrusts him or believes that he’s not valuable to the team and company.

A manager who cares only about results treats his employees poorly and diminishes the company he works for. Likewise, a manager who only concerns himself with the needs of his employees and overlooks business performance also diminishes the company. Only a manager who can serve his employees and set high performance standards at the same time produces a lasting benefit to his company. Because of this dichotomy it’s vital to either hire or promote managers who are adept at both results and people. A manager who excels at only one of these may appear to be an excellent candidate, but there’s a strong change that he will not value the other side of the coin. Therefore, it is more important when hiring or promoting a manager to find an individual who seeks both results and happy people, even if their ability in both arenas is less, than to find a manager strong in one and very weak in the other.

My first inclination is to hire a person based on their results. The manager’s resume who lists achievements that prove he can get things done has already won my heart. It may be that the results that manager gained in his previous positions happened because he valued both results and people, but I must be wary of assuming that results happened because of this and not because he was a slave-driver. Deeper questions about the nature of his leadership and priorities should reveal whether a manager I’m interviewing wants to produce value for the company and take care of his employees, or whether he cares only for one or the other.

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