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MT Forum Friends,
I’m trying to help others in my office adopt the MT-Way, so I put together the attached summary of the Manager Tools Basics (plus Mentoring). I’d like your input.
Most of the summary is verbatim, closely paraphrased or inferred from MT material. The only content I added was the second row in the attached describing the difference between the tools.
Some cells in the table are blank because I could not find material on the topic. Is there material to fill in these blanks? For example...
- I could not recall a quality standard for feedback or coaching that was as clear as the standard for one-on-ones (i.e., Do you know the names of your direct's kids? Is the O3 regularly scheduled and rarely missed?)
- Coaching and mentoring do not have a cheat sheet summarizing the content (for non-subscribers).
What do you think? Am I on target? What should be added, dropped or edited?
Regards,
Tim McCormick
My take
Feedback deals only with behaviors. It must be something the person did or said that is given feedback. The impact can be someone's interpretation or feeling, but the key to feedback is to focus on the future behavior or speech. Therefore, your standard or measure for feedback would be:
Addresses only behavior or speech; Targets future behavior or speech; Delivered without anger (if you can't smile, don't give feedback)
In addition, you may want to include something along the lines of "trying to give one feedback per direct per day." This is not directly stated in the podcasts, so the numbers may vary, but continual feedback is part of the system. The manager needs to try to determine a level of feedbacks delivered that meets the desired consistency of application. Please note that I did NOT state that you should give one feedback to each direct each day. This is a quantitative measure, not a targeted measure. You might give all of them to one direct one day. Also note that this is not directly stated in the MT guidelines, but it was made clear in the MT conference that some measure of daily feedback should be quantitative.
As for coaching, "Is the goal achieved?" The metrics for that will vary for each goal. It is obvious that in the "How?" section, you need to add "Develop sub-tasks that lead direct toward the goal." Your resources comment does not address the fact that you need to break the goal into multiple sub-goals, each easily attainable and measurable, all with reported results. If you remember the podcast, which I haven't listened to in over a year, they said that once the resources are identified to follow-up with (for example):
Identify resource you will use before next O3; Obtain the resource so chosen by the following O3; Read three chapters before the subsequent O3, etc.
Note again that each of those sub-tasks need to be reported as "complete" to the manager before the next sub-task is determined or assigned.
Each of those sub-tasks being achieved are then measures of whether or not the goal is being approached or attained. To repeat, these metrics will vary from individual to individual.
I did not state in this response whether or not your matrix is a faithful summary of MT practices. It's not my system, so it is not my place or within my abilities to make such a designation.