7 More Management Malpractices
1. You plan minute to minute. If there is something that happens that is out of the ordinary, you are ill equipped to handle the situation, relying instead on the “Break Glass in Case of Fire option.” Your shop is littered with broken glass.
2. You are either “Fear” driven or “Scorn” driven. You make decisions based on the Fear of failure or the Thoughts of others. You have stopped being Assertive.
3. You don’t take the time or effort to save your Boss from themselves. When passing out information from the Boss, you preface everything with the disclaimer “This is not my idea and I don’t agree with it, but this is the way the Boss wants it.”
4. You don’t take a minute before making snap decisions. You’d rather “go with it” and hope for the best. Your employees know this and count on it.
5. You are “liked” focused and not “respect” focused. You’d rather pal around instead of making the tough decision.
6. You don’t confront when it’s time to confront. You have become the “Avoider”. When an employee does something wrong it’s never the “right time” to correct the behavior.
7. You can’t describe the future. Any future. The company’s or yours. You’d rather spin your wheels trying to correct “past mistakes.”
The Fix.
1. Become a planner. Try to imagine every scenario possible. Envision the most outrageous, the most impossible and improbable and then plan for it. Like one day you come into work and the computers are down, the phone system is crashed and half of the department is out sick with the flu. You know, the scenarios that “never happen.” After formulating the plan, write it. Publish it and have your employees know it. Ask them to help you design it. This starts the buy in process. Remember, Murphy’s Law is never more true that when you are living it!
2. You have stopped being effective when you are Fear or Scorn based in your decisions. Look, you are the boss for a reason. Let me emphasize this. YOU ARE THE BOSS FOR REASON! Maybe you are a relative of the owner, maybe you are a college whiz kid or maybe you are an old hand. Whatever. You are responsible to the people you Lead! If you do not make a decision, who will? And if you are concerned about what an employee thinks about you personally, you are in the wrong place my friend. Rorschach yourself and see if you can find the pattern. Start making decisions based on SPECFICS and FACTS, not emotions. Become Assertive by understanding and protecting your rights and thoughts and acknowledge others rights and thoughts and not allowing them to dictate your ACTION.
3. Your position requires loyalty, to your boss and yourself. That means that when your boss is about to make a mistake, you help him/her see it before it becomes policy, procedure or an announcement. You are the Advocate. His/Her Advocate and the Employees Advocate. The position you take is dictated by the circumstances. Being a true Advocate requires courage and trust. If you have neither, you need to reevaluate where you are. When a decision is reached, the words that come from your mouth are YOURS. Not the Boss’s. If you disagree with something, you’d better have dealt with it before walking out of the office to “pass the word.” Sometimes it’s a smelly sandwich and you have to take a bite. Take the bite and pass the sandwich YOU MADE! Don’t pass the word with the preface “We have a new policy and I don’t agree with it but this is what the Boss wants.” Nice job. Way to inspire the troops. All you are doing is setting up you and your Boss for failure and that is not very loyal at all.
4. If you are making decisions “on the fly”, without a pause, or a minute or two of consideration, you might be stealing success from your organization, yourself and your employees. “Haste makes waste” is never truer than when you are redoing, retooling and reevaluating. Notice all the “re” that is going on. And, your employees may be counting on your hasty responses to circumvent or misuse a system or policy in place. Once the decision is made they have no responsibility and all of the benefit. In actuality, if you are not taking a moment or two, you are keeping them from seeing the bigger picture and actually taking options away from them and your organization. So, take a breath, tell them you’ll get back to them, and ponder for a minute or two. (This does not apply to life threatening or immediate emergency situations, like a fire, injury, or other circumstances that require action in order to save a life or prevent a disaster.)
5. You want to be liked. I want to be liked. We all want to be liked. If this is the primary focus and the criteria you use when making decisions, you are probably not liked and definitely not respected. Human beings require Leadership in an organization. Leadership requires making the right decision based on the facts and specifics of the situation. Making a decision based on facts and specifics will lead to respect and when people respect you, sometimes they like you. Not all the time. Do we, as managers make mistakes? You betcha! If our record of making decisions is based on facts and specifics then the message becomes consistency and an occasional mistake is expected and, if acknowledged, accepted.
6. You have stopped being proactive and now are reactive. Taking the time to correct an inappropriate behavior is a pain in the ass. I know it, you know it. We all wish everyone would just do “what they are supposed to do,” don’t we? Well, it does not work that way. People require course corrections from time to time. If you are the captain of a big Ocean Liner and going from New York to Paris, you wouldn’t take off from port, set the auto pilot and assume that all is well and you should arrive at your destination as planned, without checking from time to time on heading, speed, wind and waves, currents and storms. And you wouldn’t expect your crew to run the bridge for you. You are the Captain, it’s your bridge and the ship runs in your direction on your orders. If you are not correcting employee behavior when it needs to be corrected, you are allowing them to run your Bridge. Inappropriate behavior requires intervention and correction immediately. Being silent is the same a condoning the behavior. Take action, identify what is wrong, explain why they can’t continue with that behavior, involve them in implementing a new behavior, and end it with an action statement that is time based.
7. When you are not talking about the future, you are trying to correct the past. And, there is no correcting the past. You can’t undo time. WAKE UP! There is no time machine and if you could go back what are you going to undo? Your action or their response? Leave the science fiction at home. Start by looking forward. Where you want to go and where you company wants to go. Start with the end in mind! Once you become forward focused, things start to fall into place. You’ll see people and resources you didn’t even notice before. And the actions required to bring the future to you will begin to take shape before your eyes. See, it’s not about the future being “out there.” It’s you reaching out and grabbing it and bringing it to you. You are not going “someplace”, you are bringing “someplace” within your reach.
Management is active, hard, changing, dynamic, challenging, fluid, fast, future based and NEVER ENDING!
Good Luck!
Leonard Buchholz is a Certified Trainer, Speaker and Author. If you are looking for a seminar leader that is “High Touch and Low Tech,” look no further. Leonard is known for energetic seminars that involve the participants. Seminar subjects include Customer Service, Management and Communications.
Reach him at leonard@bizprotraining.com or call 760-529-5635.
Author: Leonard Buchholz
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Pressure cooker
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