Dan Erwin

New Manager Interpersonal Skills: Gaining Personal Commitment

One of the on-going tasks of new managers is gaining the kind of buy-in and commitment to projects that will result in high productivity.  It’s a common scenario for the new manager.  She focuses on project objectives, making certain they’re well understood by her team, creates a schedule, talks through the issues that she believes may create difficulty for her team, and sets them free.

She checks in with a team member the next day, only to find out that little has moved off the dime.  Why does this happen?

One reason is that new managers often ignore a simple fact:  commitment happens at an emotional level rather than at a rational level.  For assignments to gain the kind of support from individuals that results in success, managers will need to understand the commitment process.

As a hands-on consultant who does a lot more than develop plans or advise, I have to gain the personal commitment necessary to achieve agreed-upon objectives.  I’ve found that the commitment process has three distinct stages.

Understanding:  This stage is about making certain through explanation and clarification that the information has moved from my mind to the receiver’s gray matter and that she understands it.  Often, managers seem to assume that understanding or talking about something is all that’s necessary to achieve the desired results. 

Buy-in:  The second stage focuses on the beliefs of the individual.  Here, you’ll want to make certain that the individual understands the personal implications of this task, and believes it will benefit both the organization and herself.  Beliefs, in contrast to information and mere understanding, are about emotions. 

Ownership:  This is the ultimate stage, the point where the individual accepts personal responsibility for helping you achieve your objectives.  Typically, this is where the team member starts talking about timelines and asking about the processes of achievement.  In effect, the team member says that she is taking personal responsibility for implementation.  I typically close off the conversation with, “Let me double-check.  What are the next two or three steps you’re going to take?”

Managers need emotional commitment, not just the compliance of their team members.  You can’t get that without highly focused interpersonal communication. 

When a Gen-Yer Manages Gen-Yers

A recent post on Brazen Careerist discussed one of the first issues every new Gen-Y manager faces: how do you manage someone your own age or someone who is a friend?  

The insightful comments that followed the post reveal the kind of motivation and commitment every executive wants in his/her managers.  They demonstrate the kind of personal wrestling with new responsibility that makes for success.  Taken together, the comments read like the frustrations of a new manager from any generation.  But here's what Gen-Yers have to say:

• We're not used to having someone our own age being in charge of us.
• Gen-Yers don't take work as seriously as they should.  Too often deadlines are missed or opportunities are not taken because Gen-Yers don't have the drive they should.
• It's great that many Gen-Yers approach me as a friend.  Befriending one another makes the boss more approachable and more respected.
• Maybe a little formality between boss and report is necessary.
• How do you think Gen Y will do managing Gen X or Boomers?
• I don't believe in looking down at your employees and I also don't like to be strongly authoritative.
• It's hard to tell someone your own age he needs to be a little more responsible and proactive with his job issues.

When I analyzed these comments, I found that they are all focused on one issue: what relationship between manager and subordinate will be most productive? 

The best way to deal with these issues is through the use of a "relationship format."  Most Gen-Yers are familiar with digital formats on which you store, discover or deliver information.  Excel, for example, is a format that enables users to plug in information and come up with specific outcomes.  A relationship format builds on the same principle.    

The objective of this work-relationship format is to enable a manager and subordinate to work together most effectively.  Although a manager can initiate the process, it works better when the subordinate initiates and manages the format.  That way the conversation becomes an act of self-advocacy and tells the manager that he or she intends to make the relationship work.  The process was spelled out by Ed Schein of MIT more than twenty-five years ago.  (It's a tragedy that it has not been widely disseminated.) 

Remember that the basic task between manager and subordinate is to build a relationship and establish an emotional climate that facilitates getting things done effectively, and provides a set of agreed-upon relationships that support decision making and business.  The questions asked by Gen-Yers need to be answered by each manager.  The answers may change over the years, but the answers need to be mutually agreed upon.  The conversational format normally includes answers to the following:

• How will we set mutually shared goals?
• How will we go about solving problems?
• How will we make decisions?
• How will we ensure follow-through and completion of tasks?
• How will we keep our lines of communication open?
• How will we manage our differences?

If you don't know each other very well, you may want to begin with a conversation about the first question.  Set up a 45 minute appointment and start talking.  It might sound like this: "I've not worked with you as a manager, and I'd like for our relationship to be a success.  Can we talk about project goals?  Do you prefer to talk big picture, or are you more analytical and prefer to start out our relationship with work tactics?  I'm comfortable either way." 

Make certain that over the next few weeks you consider all of the issues. . . take notes, and follow through on the decisions.  Managers consistently love the process.  One of the most typical comments from both both subordinates and managers is, "Wow, is that useful.  It saves hours and hours and prevents all kinds of breakdowns.  I can work with this guy."  

This format, supported by protocols and scripts, is a proven step-by-step strategy for gaining a particular response--techniques that can be used to resolve recurring issues.  In the near future, I'll lay out some of the typical issues that come up and provide you with actual protocols and scripts to deal with them.

FYI:  Brain scientists have recently researched the actual impact of such techniques as protocols and scripts on brain development.  They've found that every technique or skill we develop exists as a circuit in the brain.  In the language of scientists, "experience-expectant processes" are teed up and waiting to create skill circuits.  A "skill has to be formed and optimized," but circuits are available and waiting to lock onto those skills that are in the development stage.  Technique development, the practicing and repeating of a skill initiates an expertise circuit.  The effect is further development of your brainpower and your work expertise.

 

CAN YOU FLY BELOW THE RADAR AND STILL BE SUCCESSFUL?

General James Jones, Obama's national security advisor, seems to think so.  But will this approach work for your career? 

In an interview with the New York Times, Jones presents his case, arguing that low profile does not necessarily mean low impact. 

“You can be a leader that takes charge of every meeting and takes charge of every issue and rides it to its conclusion and plays a very, very dominant role,” he said. “For me, that has the effect of muting voices that should be heard.”

There's no question that the best creative decision making comes from a team of experts.  Contrary to conventional wisdom, innovation is not necessarily a personal gift.  It's a contact sport, and so Jones' use of his team is spot-on. 

What's not clear from the interview is the backstory.  However, I'm quite certain that you don't get to be a four-star Marine general without knowing how to work the system, make significant contributions to the Corps, get buy-in to your ideas and become an expert at managing up.  The Marines are just as political as the White House or any American corporation, but they believe in team-building and--almost uniquely--practice it.  Richard Holbrooke, now working with Mrs. Clinton at the State Department, confirmed my suspicions about Jones' team-building and said that Jones had produced "a sophisticated, multilayer decision structure at the National Security Council that did not exist before."  

I assume Holbrooke means Jones has an extensive network of smart colleagues, regularly interacts with them, creates and makes the necessary policy adaptations to gain his team's long-term support.  As a result of his "teeing up" activities, you can be certain he's got an impeccable knowledge of all the issues, able to assess both the competency and policy insights of his team members to determine their real value.  The reports on Jones’ style indicate that he’s not afraid to delegate, and does an exceptional job of it.  With that base of support, speaking up is not as necessary, especially with a president as highly deliberative as Obama who likes to ask the questions. 

Well, can you fly below the radar and still be successful?

I doubt it.

Jones comes to his position with a great reputation already in place.  He has had long and obviously successful experience with teams, making it possible for him to bring ideas that are already vetted to his president.  

Contrast that rich background to your own and to corporate America.  In the early years of your business career you’ll be devoting the majority of time to your basic business expertise, finance, marketing, technology or whatever.  At the same time you’ll be figuring out your role, how to work with different and sometimes difficult people more effectively, building a network of intelligent colleagues and developing the street smarts to manage the whole system.

On top of all that you’ll need to develop an image as an able and competent thinker and strategist.  Of course, to build that reputaiton you’ll need to demonstrate that you deliver well and meet job expectations.  But image is also tied to your ability to make important contributions to the thinking and deliberating of managers and execs, and that can only be demonstrated by speaking up.  For millennia we’ve known that your image is the strongest persuasive tool you have.  The enduring value of this information is that we know that our image is created through communication with important managers and their teams.  The  content or substance of your informal/formal messages, the justifications you provide for your recommendations and the values you espouse all affect your image or reputation.  Whenever you find yourself in a new setting, you will have to re-create and re-mold this image.  It will be built on your “upward voice,” and you can’t do that below the radar.  Especially in the early years of your career, it’s a fact that in American corporations you’re going to have to speak up, gain a hearing and have impact if you want to be successful.

That’s a lotta stuff for the first few years of your career.

But image management has shown itself to be a continual task in the global economy.  I’ve been surprised at how often executives as high as EVP in major corporations have asked for my coaching in this matter.  Curiously, all the eight or ten execs that were specific in their requests for help in image management wanted to be seen by their managers as a “strategic” executive.  Lack of that reputation was holding back their future and they understood the importance of their upward voice.

So, can you succeed in business below the radar screen?

In the first four to six years of your career?  Absolutely not.  In the rest of your career?  Maybe.  General Jones is a very unusual animal and the success of his model has not yet been proven.  He will not be a useful model for 99% of us business professionals.

So, what has been your experience with this issue?  And how have you resolved it?

 

NEW MANAGER SKILLS: HANDLING TOXIC EMOTIONS

Toxic emotions in the work setting are an occasional occurrence and an occupational hazard.  You're fortunate as a new manager if you have a built-in "handler," an employee who knows how to defuse the anger, fear, resentment, jealousy, shame or guilt that inevitably surface among the workforce. 

Since the possibilities for a built-in handler are slim, you might as well get used to emotionality.  It happens.   When someone goes off, there's no reason to be surprised or all tense about it.  We humans are emotional animals and some of us handle emotions poorly.  In spite of the fact that most people get nervous as hell around emotions, there's nothing wrong with sitting and observing unless you sight blood.  Then you can take action.  (Sometimes the rush to psychology and patient cure is nonsense.)

Emotions are actually announcements.  They let you know that something important or valuable is going on.  Make certain you've got some clarity before you hurry to intervene.  In a job setting most people will eventually work out their s - - t.   Or, as one my exec clients once said to two of his directors, "You guys resolve your conflicts or you're both gone."  It worked.

FYI:  Employees think their job's on the line with an outburst, and they'll usually feel guilty or ashamed and may even come asking for forgiveness.  Don't kid yourself.  Some managers are shamans--witch doctors.  Get into that role.  After you go through the priestly rite of forgiveness, you need to find out what's going on.  Then you can ask what that person is going to do about his stuff in the future.  It's all really no big deal, in spite of what the lawyers say.  (This is not quite tongue in cheek, but almost.)

However, when toxic emotions continue long term, they can result in poor performance and lowered morale. The success of many projects depends on the effectiveness of handlers who can assuage the pain from toxic emotions and channel it for the good.  Indeed, recent research suggests that all decisions are emotionally based.  Some emotions like excitement, enthusiasm and inspiration are essential to leadership success.  The fact of the matter is that a great deal of leadership is about emotion management. 

So how do you handle toxic emotion in the workplace?

First, you need to know how to identify toxic emotions.  The emotional condition is an upset state, characterized by shock, diffusion and transference.  Shock is the most extreme form of emotional upset usually accompanied by the loss of an employee's critical skills.  Shock can be accompanied by diffusion, which is excessive physical movement, movement outside the norms of a person's usual physicality.  Transference becomes obvious when an employee begins to relate differently to his/her colleagues.  In short, when you see a person acting differently than usual, perhaps hand shaking, redfaced, perspiring, talking a blue streak or clamming up, you may well have toxic emotions on your hands.  After you've worked with a person a month or so, you can tell when their speech, language and behavior are beyond their norm.  Most organizational cultures don't permit yelling or other extreme emotions, which may well intensify the visible tension in an employee.

Toxic emotions present a number of problems for the new manager.  They make a person less predictable, take time to build up, and are slow to decay.  And most of us don't cool down very fast.  Emotion often feeds upon itself, creating a spiral effect.  When professionals are agitated, and thus less able to think clearly, you'll find that they are nearly compelled to make critical decisions.  People respond to emotion with emotion, resulting in an ongoing spiral, rather than resolution.  Finally, emotions are very self-centered, making the decision process very suspect.

What are the best ways to deal with toxic emotions? 

If your bell is ringing and you can sense the toxic emotions rising in yourself, take yourself out of the decision process.  My personal rule is that two situations require me to remove myself from decisionmaking:  fatigue and emotionality.  I've programmed myself to remember Voltaire's rule:  I've got so much to do, I need to go to bed.  Aside from lack of sleep, or burning the candle at both ends, toxic emotionality will quickly fatigue me. 

Second, don't spend much time trying to understand or resolve another person's upset.  Lower your voice, look him/her in the eye, perhaps touch them on the arm (depending on the culture), and say something to the effect of, "sounds like this is personally frustrating.  We can talk about it at another time."  If you're in a team meeting, a bit of good humor or levity will go a long way toward relaxing the individual and the team.

Some conversational styles accelerate toxicity. Judgmentalism and blaming rarely result in positive emotionality.  Skilled managers know how to delete judgmental statements from their conversation in order to keep people on an even keel. 

Positive feelings, like exhilaration and enthusiasm, are another animal.  They enhance performance and are purposefully generated by the new manager.

NEW MANAGER SKILLS: PROTECTING YOUR COMPANY'S REPUTATION

In Monday's Slacker Manager blog, Phil Gerbyshak responded to a question from a reader who had been fired for going public with her organizational complaints on the net.  Phil handled the question superbly from the perspective of a tech manager who also happens to be a well-known blogger.

I want to add to Phil's blog, but from a different perspective, that of new manager skills.  Protecting your company's strategy, processes and reputation is one of those managerial responsibilities you don't learn about until there's a need for it.  It's actually an act of street smarts or social intelligence, but since there is no handbook on either, it takes time to learn and recognize its importance. 

Though they rarely use this language, executives tend to view certain recurring complaints by employees as a form of organizational and personal attack.  Most execs have little patience for complainers and readily assign them to the never-never land of whiners who refuse to grow up.  That puts a  permanent ceiling on their future and may result in termination, given the opportunity. 

FYI:  Although complaint or whining is not punishable by death, termination may be the consequence under any number of organizational guises.  Mergers and acquistions, strategic alignment, plummeting revenue and outsourcing all provide legitimate means for organizations to relieve themselves of these workers.  Obviously, they may never learn the reason for lay-off, but duplicity is not a rare act for companies liable to suit for dismissal without cause.  Rahm Emmanuel's comment fits these needs perfectly: 

"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before."

Aside from personal non-business unhappiness, I've found that complaints have four different sources: 

• Recent grads sometimes bring processes and expectations from their college background, expecting that their employer will accept their recommendatation willy nilly.  The uninitiated avoid the hierarchy and go straight to senior management.  Inevitably (and it is inevitable), senior management rejects both the approach of these grads and their ideas.
• Recent hires who are experienced employees bring process notions and attitudes from their previous firm, not understanding that their recommendations won't fit the current firm's culture.  (Although hired for their task skills, studies show that employees from other firms often bring unwelcome behaviors and attitudes.)
• Over time most firms develop processes to fit their product and customer needs.  The rationale for such processes is not usually explained as a part of new employee assimilation, leaving the worker in a knowledge limbo.
• Better firms align their operations to specific  business strategies.  Few employees understand business strategy until they achieve director or group manager level.  Since strategy is rarely obvious at lower levels, it may result in a failure to make sense of organizational processes.

Although most employees are not perturbed by such situations, a small percentage will readily complain about the organization.  On the one hand, some of these employees may become exceedingly valuable to an organization because of their insights and commitments. 

On the other hand, some employee insights and complaints have negative implications.  In those settings it's a manager's role to create work expectations, draw behavioral parameters and deal constructively with complainers.  Verbal complaining may need to be dealt with much the way you deal with verbal harassment.  Although employees have been educated regarding harassment, they also need to be educated about the morale issues of complaining.  And, you will need to help them problem solve their issue, or even recommend that an employee might be happier in another firm.

With awareness, managers can become especially useful to their employees, circumventing much potential frustration through the educational process.  However, it is important to move fast when you learn of complaints to keep them from festering. 

The fact of the matter is that many employees are grossly unaware of the cultural rules about complaining.  Street smarts is developed over time.  It's not innate.  And so these settings are a natural for teaching employees to bring their complaints--with recommendations--to their manager.  Failure to deal with complaints early on can make employees far more difficult to deal with once their ideas have been personally institutionalized.  

This may sound tough and insensitive but it's more reality than most want to admit. 

I'm sure some of you  will disagree, but I'm very curious about your attitude and questions toward these issues.

NEW MANAGER SKILLS: PERSUASION AND INFLUENCE MANAGEMENT

Over the past 50 years the understanding of persuasion has gone a long way from the myth of the used car salesman, the fastest mouth in the West who uses trickery and questionable ethics for a one-time sale.  The old emphasis on persuading another person to your beliefs is not only inept, but it won’t work on a long-term basis.  Inside the business organization the hard sell is nearly dead: people quickly understand that they’re being taken advantage of and lose their respect and willingness to cooperate with such traditionalists.

 

The new influence management

Today we understand persuasion or influence management as the process of  finding common ground and mutual agreement on important work goals and objectives. 

 

What does influence management look like?  Those adept at gaining real influence (truly persuasive individuals), use conversations to collect and share essential information about their mutual objectives.  If their objectives are important, it’s rarely a one-shot conversation, but more like a campaign. These influencers are very good at active listening—and obvious about it.  They test their ideas with trusted confidents and they work hard to understand the perspective and mindsets of those whose support they need.  And inevitably, as they begin to understand the other’s take on a subject or project deliverable they make adjustments by giving on some issues to get on others.  Achieving the support and help for your projects and objectives is rarely duck soup.  It can entail a lot of conversational leadership and interpersonal smarts. 

 

In short, when you need genuine internal commitment from people, these fundamentals are necessary for long-term success.  Based on the immensely relevant research and practice in today’s world, the old hard sell has very limited relevance.  That’s true in marriage, negotiation, influence management—and in the organizational hierarchy.

 

Stay tuned for my blogs on influence management.  I’ll be showing how to make the rubber hit the road.

 

I've very curious to know what specific questions you have about influence management.

NEW MANAGER SKILLS: MANAGING UP

Old images die slowly.  Many businesspeople still operate as though the organization is a pyramid with all the power at the top.  This is not just Boomer-speak, it's just as true of Gen-Y.  Late last year, Elizabeth Garone, in a Wall Street Journal article, addressed the topic.  The comments were more interesting than the article which, although reflective of some views of the subject, never got around to explaining what "managing up" actually means.

In contrast to fairly tangible competencies like project management or marketing research, competencies which developed a constructive definition and value, some people skills get relegated to a cynical dustbin.  Indeed, I suspect that anything with political overtones lends itself to the pejorative.  And managing up, like passing a congressional bill has political overtones.

FYI:  Politics is the human effort to gain cooperation.  In a democratic society almost every relationship requires political action. And that includes the successful management of your teenagers and their achievements.

The competency of managing up is a complex set of skills for gaining cooperation from your boss, especially when you're managing projects and people.  Although Peter Drucker wrote an article on the subject in the 1960s, John Gabarro and John Kotter defined and clarified it in a Harvard Business Review article in 1980.   Nearly everything written since about managing up or managing your boss is latent within that seminal work.

Gabarro and Kotter make it very clear that managing up is not about apple polishing, cozying up or brown nosing.  Indeed, as they point out the boss/employee relationship fails because the two don't recognize that the relationship involves mutual dependence between two fallible human beings.  To quote them,

Failing to recognize this, a manager (or employee) typically either avoids trying to manage his or her relationship with a boss or manages it ineffectively.

To simplify, managing your boss is a matter of mutual understanding and mutual benefit.  In coming days I will prescribe some well-tested strategies and steps that you will find immediately useful.  When Harvey Golub was CEO of American Express Financial Planners in Minneapolis, one of his comments regularly went the rounds of his workforce:  "If you don't understand influence management and how to manage your boss, you'll have very little success in this company."  That's a reminder, I believe, that applies to any organization.

A question:  how do you understand managing your boss, or managing up?

NEW MANAGER SKILLS: LEARNING

Be sure to check out my sixth and last post on slackermanager on Wednesday, the 18th.  With an emphasis upon continuous learning, the post lays out a number of keys for smart learning.  In today's economy, learning new skills and gaining new competencies is the real path long-term employability.

Check it out!