mgr 101

introduction

Managing is all about delegation, otherwise manager will be a staffer, doer;

The first of element of delegating is about communicating, telling others what to do;

Second is motivation, giving others power to accomplish their tasks;

The third is follow up, checking out what others have done;

The last one is learning: help others and manager himself to learn mutually from the task experience.

Chapter 1

Manager is like parents, a cool, motivating and delegating manager will generally impact his direct reports the same way, passing those good qualities and skills to his direct reports, and team members in general, even their family members;

A good manager is like a good commander-in-chief, and the impact of his leadership reaches far beyond.


Chapter 2


In a way it is about ego. Good delegating makes both sides in general and employee in particular feeling good, feeling good about their jobs, their self esteems and positive feelings reinforce itself, improving their job performances ultimately.

On the other hand, lack of delegating makes negative feelings , and negative feeds and reinforces itself as well.


Good feelings

Helping people grow and develop;

Meeting challenge and accomplish

As individual and as a teem


1). Customization

Like parenting, a good manager is not only managing by principles and slogans, but also by knowing their employee well and individually, and finding an individual, fitting and effective method to manage him or her.

Everybody knows management principle and jargons in words, but how to carry them out in spirits and in reality?

Knowing your employee well is the first step, does he want to grow/? Where? What is the pros and cons of his job skill and overall ability? Is he a doer or communicator? A people person or not a people person? Etc


2) Communication

Jones and Jennifer flyer story
Instead of asking employee when delegating

“do you understand what I want you to do”

vs

“could you tell me what are you going to do?”

Jones:

“ I even ask her repeat what I said, as an insurance”.



3) seeing from employee’s perspective

To better understand his or her point of view

4) following up is important too

James and Jason story

Jason, as a employee, also making mistake in understanding himself, his ability to figure out what James really want him to do, his shyness in asking james questions;

even everything went well and Jason understood in the first time, he could forget;

So follow up is important too, in addition to clarity. Clarity could fade over time.

5)manager needs to acknowledge his mistake


Delegating is always a forever learning and improving process, employee could be shy in asking questions and manager could be shy in acknowledging the mistake on his part, acknowledging one’s mistake is the first step in improvement.


Say sorry when you have to . Like james said to Jason.


Chapter 3 Be specific in delegating means laying out concrete and detailed parameters, such as time frame,

Jones and Jennifer’s 2nd time

Be specific in delegating means laying out parameters, such as time frame, etc

Most employees want to do their jobs well, it is really a manager’s job to communicate and delegate the tasks well to them.

Chapter 4 Be specific in setting up upper boundary parameters

Jones and Jennifer’s 3rd time and James with Josh .

The previous chapters are about setting up lower boundary parameters such what to do and when to finish;

Upper boundary is about what an employee cannot do: authority level
Because employees are not managers, they cannot make decisions with impact on department’s resource, such as involving others to work on her or his individual project.


“Do whatever to accomplish my project” very often exceeds an employee’s authority level.

Again, it is a manager’s job to communicate to the employee about what authority level he or she has in working on a particular project.

Chapter 5 check point and debriefing


James with Jessica and Jones with Jennifer’s 4th time.



Set up check points on an employee closer to each other at the beginning of a project, because

1) the learn curve is always steeper at the start: once learned, it is a lot of easier going on afterwards

2) find out missteps sooner than later to avoid higher cost

Debriefing

Debriefing at end of a project is as import as delegating in the beginning

Debriefing is about mutual learning from the project, and its process;

it is also about mapping out about futures, such as expected improvement on employee side and on manger side as well.

Debriefing is also a soft “performance review”, as opposed to the year-end hard performance review.

Chapter 6 & 7 Manager needs a manager too

James was lucky to have Jones as his “manager” to help him grow and develop.

Self-learning through theory and practice is also a manager’s manager