The Effective Manager

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3 Sentence Summary

An effective manager is someone who produces results while retaining and developing a high performing team. They do this by building relationships with their people, communicating clearly about performance, asking for more, and pushing work down. In this book, Mark Horstman provides practical advice and step-by-step examples for anyone who wants to learn the behaviors of an effective manager.

5 Key Takeaways

1. Get to know your people. For everyone that works for you, learn the names of their kids.
2. Talking about performance regularly is the key to better results and retaining your best people.
3. Ask for more. Like a good coach, a manager figures out how to get the best performance from each individual.
4. Make one-on-one meetings are a manager’s most effective tool.
5. Don’t give feedback when you’re angry. Use it to encourage good behavior in the future, not to rehash the past.

The Effective Manager Summary

What Is an Effective Manager?

• Your first responsibility as a manager is to achieve results.
• You must know what results are expected of you and how to quantify them.
• Your second responsibility is to retain your people.

Get to Know Your People

• A manager who knows his team members one standard deviation better than the average manager produces results that are two standard deviations better than the average manager’s results.
• Family is more important than work. Do you know the names of all the children of the people that report directly to you?
• Your directs don’t see you as a nice person. They see you as their boss.
• Talk to your directs frequently about things that are important to them in order to build trust.
• Getting to know your directs accounts for 40% of the total value created by engaging in the four critical behaviors.

Communicate About Performance

• Everybody wants more feedback.
• Performance communication accounts for 30% of the total value created by engaging in the four critical behaviors.
• If you build a great relationship with each of your directs and talk with them about performance regularly, you’re 70% of the way to getting results and retaining your team.

Ask for More

• Managers are supposed to create stress for their directs. It’s their job to push their directs to grow.
• Asking for more accounts for 15%.

Push Work Down

• Delegate work to your directs because their time is cheaper than yours.

One on Ones

• One on ones are meetings that are scheduled weekly for 30 minutes with each direct.
• Let the direct talk first in a weekly one-on-one meeting.
• Take notes. It elevates the conversation, making it more important.
• Create a dedicated notebook for your O3 notes for each direct. Don’t use your normal everyday notebook.
• Record and capture the feedback you give.
• Write coaching notes on the back of last week’s O3 notepaper.
• Never tolerate from your directs what you would not do to your boss.
• Asking for reports is not micromanaging. Expecting updates is not micromanaging. O3s are not a form of micromanaging.
• Announce the O3 and then wait to implement for 3 weeks. This allows time to schedule and to answer questions about the new process.
• O3 agenda is: 10 minutes for you, 10 minutes for me, 10 minutes for the future.
• You can be friendly with your directs, but NOT friends. 
• O3s can be a very effective tool for project managers and their supporting team members as well.
• Email 1.5x the number of your directs as available time slots.
• Email instructions to choose a time slot and communicate weekly one on ones starting in three weeks. Instruct them to reply all.
• Take it slow. Don’t introduce any other management tools for a few months. Let the team adapt and get used to the weekly one on ones and to ask questions about what’s working and what’s not.

Giving Feedback

• Feedback is not meant to focus on and explain what happened in the past. It is to encourage effective behavior in the future.
• Giving immediate feedback is ideal.
• Don’t give negative feedback until you’re ready to chuckle about it. You cannot be angry.
• The goal of feedback is neither to remind or punish.
• Don’t get dragged into a conversation about the past.
• Use systemic feedback only after multiple failures at improving with normal feedback. Systemic feedback addresses a moral hazard of committing to new behavior and then repeatedly not following through with that commitment.
• Start feedback only after 12 weeks of one on ones.
• Communicate the purpose of feedback.
• Walk them through the four steps and explain to them how you will give feedback.
• Share examples.
• Only give positive feedback for eight weeks.
• If your direct made a mistake, you want different behavior in the future. If they did something well, you want more of the same.
  1. Ask
  2. State the behavior
  3. State the impact of the behavior
  4. Encourage effective future behavior

Ask

• “Can I give you some feedback?”
• Asking directs for permission to give them feedback significantly increases their appreciation for your giving the feedback and also the likelihood of their effective future behavior.

State The Behavior

• When you…(insert behavior).
• Behaviors include the words you say, how you say those words, your facial expressions, body language, and work product.
• Do not address what you perceive to be an underlying intent/attitude/motivation.

State the Impact of the Behavior

• Think in terms of “here’s what happens…”

Encourage Effective Future Behavior

• Focus on changing future behavior.

Coaching

• Collaborate to set a goal.
  • Set an objective result and date by which it will be achieved.
  • Deadline, behavior, quality.
  • Quality defines the measure of success.
• Collaborate to brainstorm resources.
  • You, the manager, does not have to have the silver bullet solution every time.
  • Seek out the help of other resources.
  • Take a few minutes with your direct to brainstorm a list of possible resources.
  • Let the direct make the choices about which resources they use. Everyone learns differently.
• Collaborate to create a plan.
  • Create short term tasks and avoid long deliverables.
  • Urgency is a key driver in organizational behavior.
• The direct acts and reports on the plan.
• Coaching starts after 12 weeks of one on ones, 8 weeks of positive feedback, and 8 weeks of positive and negative feedback.
• Start by coaching only a few of your top performers.

Delegation

• Mastering the art of delegation is the key to long term success as a manager.
• Do not delegate a responsibility that you have not learned first.
• Delegate small tasks to multiple directs to free up time for the new task that just got delegated to you. 
• How to delegate…
  • State your desire for help.
  • Tell them why you’re asking them.
  • Ask for specific acceptance.
  • Describe the task or project in detail.
  • Address deadline, quality, and reporting standards.
• Delegate to your directs strengths.
• Delegate to their interests.
• Delegate what they need to get better at.
• Ask for acceptance before giving all the details. That way they will listen to the details with a sense of ownership.
• What you should delegate?
  • Reporting
  • Meetings
  • Presentations
  • Projects
• Start delegating right away.
• Share with your directs the delegation model and challenge them to do the same with their directs.

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