Mark and Mike discuss the single most effective management tool - the one-on-one.

Mark and Mike continue their discussion on the single most effective management tool available today - the weekly one-on-one.

In the podcast, we refer to both a written summary of the key points for conducting one-on-ones, as well as a form useful for documenting your one-on-ones.

In today’s show we continue our conversation on one-on-ones. In addition to a brief review (very brief — not a substitute for listening to the previous two shows!), we review a number of questions and finer points:

1. I did one, and it was extremely awkward. How long will it take to get used to them?
2. In the first one, some of my folks were scared - why?
   In my first one, they didn’t seem too open to share personal info - what can I do about that?
3. My folks didn’t like me taking notes. What do I do?
4. I don’t like taking notes - can I just chat with them?
5. How do I follow up on old items?
6. What do I do if someone keeps reporting that they haven’t done something? I’ve got a forum to talk to them, but what do I say?
7. How can I reduce my folks coming to me between O3s with stuff that is best covered in the O3?
8. What if someone doesn’t show?
9. What if my team is spread across the entire continent, or one of my folks is travelling that week … Can I do these over the phone? And if so, what should I do differently?

In this week’s podcast, Mike and Mark share a technique managers can use to give feedback to their team members. Feedback is the most frequently-used tool of effective managers. What is feedback? Feedback shows someone the impact of their behavior, allowing them to change ineffective actions or continue doing things that help the team achieve its goals.

The dirty little secret of most managers is that while they are DESPERATE to get feedback from their bosses, they then visit that same sin on their own team. Every time Mark asks groups of executives and managers if they’d like more guidance and response from their boss, everyone raises their hand. On the other hand, every group also believes that their team is hearing everything the team needs from them. Of course, it’s not true.

Another example of how little feedback is intentionally given is how managers defend themselves when we challenge them. “You don’t give enough feedback,” we suggest, and the common response is “I give detailed annual reviews,” or, better but still trivial, “I do quarterly reviews”. This is a great amount of feedback/guidance if you’re willing to wait 90 days or a whole year to change/improve anybody’s performance.

We believe the reason this is so is a combination of fear of conflict, and lack of skill. Basically, you probably see things all the time that you don’t like or would like to improve in some way. We think a lot of your fear is retention related: “Well, what I have to share is not that big, and if I say something, he might get mad and quit, and gee, he may not be great but he does more work than an open position would…”

The other reason is most managers don’t know how - this show will teach you.

Today we discuss the fine art of Coaching. Most managers probably think they do a fine job coaching their teams, but guess what? You probably have several misconceptions about coaching that prevent you from getting the absolute best out of your team. Today, we discuss coaching at length and present a coaching model that you can start using today to improve your coaching abilities. It’s both easier and takes less time than you think.

To improve your understanding of the Coaching Model we discuss on the podcast, download and print the Manager Tools Coaching Card prior to listening to the podcast.

Today we continue our discussion on Coaching. Now, if you haven’t listened to last weeks show where we introduced the coaching model, I strongly suggest you go back and listen to that show first. Also, if you haven’t downloaded and read the Manager Tools Coaching Card yet, please do so. You may just want to print it so you have it available during the podcast. It will assist you greatly in following the coaching example we present today.

If you’ve ever scrambled around at the last minute to prepare to interview someone, and then not felt good about the results, you’re like a lot of other managers we know. For some reason, even though we have all been frustrated at times by team members who aren’t as good as we want them to be, we STILL under-invest in the process which could improve the quality of our team — recruiting.

We think interviewing is a real opportunity for most managers — it’s not hard to understand, or to do it right, but we’re guessing that no one’s ever told you how or given you a detailed process. We’re going to show you how in detail over a series of many podcasts. In this first one on interviewing, we tackle interview preparation - what questions you need to ask yourself and your team/org about hiring someone new. We’re NOT going to tell you what questions to ask in the interview (yet). If you wonder why, well, give a listen. When you hear it, you’ll understand.

During the show, we made reference to the Manager Tools Interview Preparation Form. We think you’ll find the tool useful in preparing for your next interview. You can download it here!

We’ve gotten a great many questions, comments, and kudos for our show in July on the Feedback Model. Many listeners are discovering the power of feedback, of taking it out of the realm of the rare and into the stream of the every day. Not to sound repetitive, but most managers see feedback as akin to holding their breath - waiting as long as possible, and then creating a lot of sound and often fury. The Feedback Model tells us to see feedback like breathing - so regular as to become unnoticed.

Many of you have written asking questions about how to counter some of the typical responses to the feedback you give. “What do I do or say when they tell me they’ll ‘think about it’? What if they SAY they’ll make the change, only to continue in their ineffective behavior patterns? As you might imagine, we’ve dealt with these issues before, and this show talks about the approach to take, and once again, gives you SPECIFIC things to say and why they work.

We do a brief review of the feedback model at the front of the cast, but still encourage you to give a listen to our original cast, in the JULY Archives.

We got a great email recently from a listener asking about how to develop one of the managers in their company. The mail went something like this: “hey guys, love manager tools, really like the usability of the recommendations. But need some help. One of our guys has some management responsibilities, and we’d like to help him get better. Wonder if you can recommend some sort of comprehensive coaching program, with some resources or books that we can get him involved in.”

Well, if you’ve ever thought that about one of your managers, or maybe even yourself, this cast is for you. What we’re going to do is present you an abbreviated version of the manager-tools development philosophy, and then give you some coaching examples that would fit within it. Now, we say the word “philosophy with great trepidation. It’s one of those big words that books on management fill themselves up with, but that don’t really help folks like you and us get any better at what we do. So maybe we ought to say this: we’re going to tell you exactly how we develop people, and give you one example to get you started. More examples in a future podcast, as well as the inclusion of development plans.

Ok, let’s get this out of the way … this is not *really* a show about how to fire people. Rather, today we discuss how to take a poor performer and turn them into a good performer. And when, despite your best efforts, you are not successful in helping the person turn around, how to be in a position where you can fire the person. You may not feel good about it (that’s ok, you shouldn’t!), but you will be confident in your decision and be able to put your head down on your pillow and sleep at night.

There are six steps:

1. Feedback
2. Systemic Feedback
3. One on One Performance Discussion
4. Coaching
5. Formal Performane Discussion and Notification
6. Coaching Within Your Corporate Process

We’ll review these steps at a high-level today, and come back to them with more detail and some examples over the next couple of podcasts.

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