Have you ever attended a meeting where, regardless of the the topics covered, everyone left feeling deflated and depressed?  Or maybe, you had a one-on-one with your manager where your first instinct at the conclusion of the get-together was to go home and cry or spend the evening at a bar?  Almost everyone has, of course, because we’ve almost all had the occasion of working for someone who doesn’t have the slightest clue about how to motivate people.  Sometimes, in fact, these people do just the opposite.

I’ve been in meetings (come to think of it, I may have even run some of them) where the person in charge gave an impassioned speech that was followed by fruitful discussion and was on the path to conclude in a seemingly upbeat and positive way.  One that would cause people to leave energized with a strong desire to go out and solve big problems or make tremendous progress.  Instead, though, these meetings were concluded with a few words that sucked the air out of the room and the energy from people’s drive.  They create a motivational black hole from which no positive energy could escape.

There are simple concluding phrases that have such an impact, like “do your job” or “work harder.”  Sometimes these messages need to be communicated one-on-one of course, but in groups they’re almost sure to kill the mood.  My favorite motivational black hole message is the profound, “don’t screw it up.”  There are few more innocuous (from the manager’s point of view) messages that can be as deflating as this one.  It implies that screwing up may, in fact, be a possible intent of people’s actions.  “Gee, thanks Mr./Ms. Manager, if you hadn’t told me that, I might have decided that the screw-it-up path was the right one to follow – I’ll watch out for that now.”  After hearing this, does anyone think their manager has complete faith in their ability to succeed?  Doh!

Yesterday, I ran across some notepads with the message below.  I think every new manager should get stationary like this – maybe with some guidelines on how to use it, too <g>.  Just looking at it cracks me up and reminds me of the importance of simple messages. 

BTW, if you’ve never checked out the excellent messages from Despair, Inc.  You should.  You’ll laugh out loud, but the message comes through clearly.

Jason over at Innovation Zen has a great post up titled, The Process of Empowerment.  Empowerment is, perhaps, the most important tool a manager has in building strong and successful people and teams.  From the post:

[empowerment is] the process that provides greater autonomy to employees through the sharing of relevant information in the provision of control over factors affecting job performance.”

Effectively empowering employees results in instilling a fire-in-the-belly drive and motivational energy that can ignite people to achieve far beyond what they are capable of without it.  Again, from the post:

. . . when they have been legitimately empowered, it is more likely that their efforts will pay off in both personal satisfaction and the kind of results that the organization values.”

Knowing how to empower people is a tool that should be in every manager’s quiver.

Worth checking out.

Managing is hard.  It often involves loads of responsibility without commensurate control; it is sometimes thankless and unrewarding; and it always involves working with people that have a variety of often divergent goals and personalities.  And, just when you think you have it all figured out, the team or project changes and you need to adopt a new set of rules.

I don’t use the word rules here arbitrarily.  Every manager needs rules.  If not for their team, at least for themselves.  Rules help a manager bound the actions of his/her team and keep the team moving in the same direction, even when its members seem to all have a different compass.  Rules also help a manager get things done in a somewhat repeatable fashion and to keep his/her sanity while doing it.

I find basic rules calming.  They may not always accomplish what I hope they do, but they certainly make me feel better.  Many years ago I established a rule for myself for how I would use simple questions in my practice of management.  For me, keeping these questions straight became a cornerstone of my management style – the simple questions I asked and how and when I asked them set the baseline for the culture of the group and how things worked within it.

As you might expect, the questions were simply, how, what when and why . . .

• The first questions are directed to the manager him/herself.  It’s the manager’s job to be able to answer the basic questions of what and why.  That is, what needs to be done and why the group needs to do it.  Answering these questions and making those answers profoundly clear to the group is the most important part of how a manager leads.  Good and meaningful answers will compel the team to rise to the occasion and carry the successful completion of the project as their own.  They can be motivational and exciting.  Ultimately, they paint a picture of what can be if great things are achieved with the project and they make people feel great being a part of it. 
• The next question is directed to the group now charged with the project at hand.  The manager needs to ask the group when the project will meet certain milestones, the biggest of which is, of course, “when will it be done?”  By letting the group members determine when milestones will be achieved, they become deeply involved with the project, taking it on as their own.  Generally speaking, they also usually know a lot more about what needs to be done than the manager and are better equipped to answer this question correctly.
• Inevitably, milestones will be missed and new information that will feed back into the direction of the project will be discovered.  It’s then the manager’s job to ask why.  It’s very important that the manager and team understand why problems have occurred so that adjustments can be made to the project or even the team, itself.  It’s also almost guaranteed that new information about the project and how it is being completed will be learned along the way.  This information needs to be exposed as soon as possible to have the most positive effect on what is happening.
• Hows are questions asked by the group members of themselves.  Hows form the basis of the key challenges of the jobs of each member of the group.  Each person being able to manage how things are done for their part of the project is motivating.  Completing a task as outlined and planned by oneself is even more motivating.  When people are told what to do and how to do it, they’ll almost never get motivated by the project.  If they get to invent, plan, discover and implement themselves, though, they will be driven by their ownership of their work and will take pride in its successful completion.

That’s it.  Pretty simple.  Of course that doesn’t encapsulate the entire range of management questions that need to be put forward, but it’s a great start.  Keep in mind that it’s not only the particular questions that make this basic rule powerful, it’s how and when you ask them.

Additionally, remember that none of these questions gets asked just once.  They should be asked throughout the execution of the project.  For very senior groups they might just be asked once in a while.  For junior ones, they should get asked much more frequently, even multiple times per week.  Asking the questions, including those directed to the manager, keeps the group aligned, informed and motivated.  A simple management rule that goes a long way.

In my younger days as an entrepreneur (entrepreneur in training?) – all those many years ago – I had plenty of temper and virtually no control.  I mistook any disagreement with my opinions as a personal attack and felt I had to vigorously defend my position at all times and usually very loudly.  While I’m sure that I can blame something my parents did or didn’t do for this deep-seated and subjugated rage, it probably had more to do with the fact I often felt that I didn’t know exactly what I was doing and I was afraid that people were going to find out.  Getting loud and obnoxious was my way of trying to mask this fear, along with my insecurity, and to feel like I was in control.

There you go.  There’s enough business therapy in that paragraph to save you a bundle at the psychologist’s office.

Not every manager has to deal with such demons.  There are loads of people with the wisdom and self-assurance to find their path to excellence without making fools of themselves or, at least, not wasting so much time.  My guess is that I’m not alone in the camp of having to work these things out, though.  In my case, I was very lucky.  I had an older and wiser mentor who took me aside after making a fool of myself and made me repeat the mantra, when you yell you lose power.  At first, I didn’t get it, but I eventually came around to snatching the pebble out of my master’s hand.  Yelling just shuts down the discussion.  Less information is put on the table for fear of the negative response and people don’t even think about commenting on actions or decisions because of the likely reprisal.

Because my mentor was a patient man, he just chocked my slow progress up to my being dense and kept at me.  Every Friday evening, he reviewed the number of times I had lashed out that week and gave me informal goals for the coming weeks.  Slowly, but surely, I learned and eventually moved on to more advanced concepts like, just shut up and listen, and, make sure you understand what the other person is saying before you pass judgement.  Revolutionary.

It was a real epiphany for me.  I started to listen and my responses turned from loud retorts to probing questions.  More got done, the groups I led moved faster and people started to be interested in telling me what they thought and how they were doing.  Discussions got better, more issues and advantages were exposed before they became crises and my direct reports began to enjoy their jobs more.  My job as a manager got easier, too.  Funny how seemingly small changes can have such a major impact, huh? 

Listening, probing and responding thoughtfully are important for everyone no matter what they do or who they interact with.  For managers, though, these skills are absolutely critical.  In fact, they represent the the most important and basic skills of a successful manager.  If you find yourself in a situation like mine a local mentor is a real asset.  If one isn’t around, though, changing the way you operate to adopt these principles isn’t hard.  Review your performance after each meeting and interaction.  It’s not a formal process, but the reflection will help you make minor adjustments for the next time.  The results will definitely be worth the effort.