Postmodern People Management I
Eighty thoughts about managing people in 2019. In no particular order.
1
Try to meet everyone where they are at: in their career, their work, their day.
2
Have an idea of what each person you work with needs to grow. Anywhere from vague to specific is ok.
3
Try as far as possible to focus on growing strengths.
4
Tackle weaknesses only so far as they have a negative effect on others and cannot be mitigated by strength across the team.
5
You won’t get far addressing strengths or weaknesses unless the person you’re coaching agrees with you.
6
You will not succeed at coaching unless the coachee owns the work of their own growth.
7
Don’t force anyone to grow. Let the fields lie fallow for the necessary seasons.
8
It’s not your responsibility to push anyone forward in their career. But use your time, knowledge and expertise to help them toward their goals.
9
Question your own perceptions of a person’s abilities and mistakes. Get feedback and insight from others to challenge your understanding.
10
Remember that (for most people) nobody can criticise them as well as they already criticise themselves. What you’re saying is at best old news, and at worst fuel for the inner critic. There’s little value for you here.
11
Don’t pass on feedback uncritically. Work out whether you agree, whether it’s valuable, whether it meets the criteria of good feedback. This applies to both positive and negative feedback.
12
Don’t share all the feedback you hear about someone with them. Evaluate how valuable the feedback is to the recipient. Sometimes it’s best to eat it.
13
Worried about needing to give enough negative feedback to a narcissist? It won’t work on them because they’ll discard what doesn’t fit their idealised world view. Looking for narcissists isn’t a good use of your leadership time.
14
Some people find it easier to complain than others: take all complaining seriously. If someone quiet and hesitant starts complaining drop whatever you are doing and give them your full attention.
15
“Equal” and “fair” are not the same thing.
16
Believe someone’s self-expression about their abilities and talents over your own perception and desires.
17
A bad relationship in a team will be a handbrake on the team’s ability to adapt. It’s your job to fix that relationship.
18
Teach everyone to lead. Doing unpleasant work, building relationships and healthy delegation are valuable skills for anyone.
19
Accepting a mistake with kindness and patience might be the difference between a colleague feeling safe or not.
20
There is no such thing as laziness. Remove the concept from your thinking. Why do people do what they do? What circumstances, disincentives, challenges and systems operate on the person you’re thinking of, on all of us? You might be able to find out; you might never know. Be kind.
21
Don’t be let down by a resignation. Be excited that they have found something better for them.
22
Spend your time and energy changing the systems that affect your people, and you’ll find that people change along with it.
23
When you change things you’ll find out how much investment there was in the status quo. Putting in work in advance will help you (and others) be less surprised.
24
As soon as you find out that the person you are giving feedback to already knows, stop.
25
Forcing someone to move their desk might be an exceptionally stressful experience for them. And so on for every other sort of change. Be mindful when change happens and cushion the blow as much as you can.
26
Learn Tuckman’s stages of team development: Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing. You’ll see much of it when a team changes. Being careless with change keeps a team in the first two stages.
27
Every team member is responsible for psychological safety, so express that as an explicit expectation. Some will take to it more naturally than others, some will need coaching and training—we all have strengths and weaknesses.
28
Be sure to apologise when you make a mistake; or push someone too hard; or overestimate or underestimate someone; or forget something important; or practice unhealthy values.
29
Accept an apology with dignity and compassion.
30
Learn about Theory X, Y and Z of management. Then learn to give up control, and keep giving it up.
31
Push decision-making down to your subordinates, as far as you can.
32
A bad system will beat a good person every time.
W. Edwards Deming
33
Sometimes you have to use your authority to force a decision. People might not like it, they might even say “you said you wouldn’t do that.” This is the part of the job that isn’t fun and shouldn’t be.
34
You may find your team isn’t as advanced as you in technology, process, safety, etc. Resist the urge to set “getting the team there” as your goal.
35
You can’t do everything. Find satisfaction in seeing it done by delegation, rather than by doing.
36
You shouldn’t do everything. Give others opportunities, challenges, experiences, and you will find more time for things that grow and challenge you.
37
Thinking about people, where they are at, how they are doing, what they need and want—this is time well spent.
38
Small frequent changes over time lead to continuous improvement. If you have a grand plan for your team or people you’re working against that.
39
Make it clear over and over again that people don’t have to choose between their families and their job.
40
Don’t try and create good culture. Rather: praise healthy actions; treat everyone with kindness; apologise; laugh.
41
People will behave in ways that may not make sense to you. Accept that as it is. You might ask them about it, if it seems prudent to do so. Be ready for the answer to make no sense either. Remind yourself that you don’t always know why you do what you do.
42
The standard you walk past, is the standard you accept.
David Hurley
43
Treat your customers and your stakeholders with respect. Some venting from the team in times of stress is appropriate, but don’t lead it, and don’t let it become a habit.
44
Look for related teams to work alongside. Share what you know and have with others. Support teams doing great work where it won’t credit you.
45
Show disdain for silos.
46
Accept people who choose to specialise, if they fit into the team.
47
Homogeneity of team membership leads to poorer quality, less valuable work.
48
We are all unquestionably biased. You’ll never eradicate bias in yourself, but time spent discovering your biases and (if necessary) mitigating them is worthwhile.
49
You’ll get more out of listening than talking. Listening is an active skill, emotionally intense and does not come naturally. If you are more of a talker than a listener find some coaching and practice for when you’ll need it.
50
Not everyone knows how to process feedback. Before you start dishing it out, teach them how to filter or reject it.
51
If you set goals and reward people or teams on whether they reach them, they won’t worry too much about what they do to get there. Beware of perverse incentives. Focus on right behaviour over right outcome.
52
Don’t offer outsize rewards—you tempt people to disdain each other, processes and customers.
53
I hope your team is intrinsically motivated enough not to need external rewards, and I hope you reward them anyway.
54
Be wary of chasing friendships with your team. You are setting yourself up for bias and conflicts of interest.
55
Team members going around “the process” to get things done are a warning sign of a bad process or bad relationships. Work on those things, not the team members.
56
Nothing kills motivation quite like micromanagement.
57
Trust is the most powerful tool in your toolbox. You’ll never have enough certainty about whether to trust or not so just do it, accept mistakes gracefully and keep trusting.
58
When your team is ordered to do something they won’t like, don’t pass your frustration on to them unfiltered. Talk about the compromises; the difficult choices; the information we don’t have and won’t get; and trusting others even when we don’t understand.
59
Don’t let a good idea become a rule. Teach people to craft tools for their toolbox and show them the nuance of when and how to use those tools.
60
Bend the rules sometimes but only when using that power makes a real difference to someone less powerful. If you do it because the rule doesn’t make sense then you need a new rule with more nuances.
61
Every team has their jargon (beyond acronyms.) “Easy” or “quickly”: for whom and by what process? “Just” can hide a waving away of complexities. Find the jargon that leads to unhelpful thinking, unpack the underlying assumptions, then give people different words to express what they need. The most effective tactic here is humour.
62
Having checklists makes more sense once we realise how truly unreliable our memory is (The easiest way to realise this is to simply wait and become old.)
Bonus: a checklist makes a neat package for delegating.
63
It’s OK to keep being involved in deeply technical work. Remember then that you are signing up for two jobs and won’t do either as well as if you focused on one.
To save yourself from burning out: get support; be good at delegation; and say “no” a lot.
To make sure your team is not left behind: delegate some coaching and 1-1’s to your lieutenants or peers, then check in with everyone regularly.
64
Structure your job interviews around helping the candidate shine, and doing many little things that will set them at ease.
65
Before each interview put out a bottle or two of water for the candidate—interviewing is thirsty work.
66
Most organisations do not deal with toxic behaviour quickly enough. They wait for it to get worse and inevitably chase people away. Treating toxic behaviour with the urgency required might find you accused of overreacting, by people with no better plan than “Can’t we all just get along.” Toxic behaviour kills teams, projects, companies—persevere in this thankless task.
67
“Loyalty to the company” is a relic of a long forgotten past. Like those other relics, return it to the museum.
68
Don’t forget to stop sometimes and remind yourself that it’s just a job, just a company. Make sure your team knows you think that.
If you believe you need to coerce people into working this statement might seem dangerous. If you see your work as getting out of people’s way because they want to do their best work, you’re freeing them to choose what is meaningful.
69
It takes a village to raise a team. Share your responsibilities with your peers and subordinates—we all have strengths and weaknesses.
70
Don’t speak for someone unheard, give them a platform.
71
Let some things be done either well or not at all: interviews; feedback; and praise.
72
when the team changes, the culture must necessarily change. If it didn’t change, did your team improve?
73
We criticise bad meetings yet so often stop short of learning to do better. It is a skill like so many other parts of your work. Learn to run meetings well and teach others your techniques.
74
You’ll probably have to leave before people will say “you were right.” So stop holding your breath.
75
If someone keeps asking you for permission, delegate the task: teach them to give themselves permission.
76
People will tell you what you want to hear, for reasons either manipulative or anxious. Be then sceptical or kind as appropriate.
77
Gain a deep understanding of power dynamics and intersectionality and how it plays out with your team.
78
If you make it safe for people to bring as much of their whole selves as they can, they will. If you do it right you’ll get far more than you asked for: hurt; baggage; anger; honesty.
What do you do with all that?
79
Staying enthusiastic with your team is hard when there’s shit going down that you can’t talk about; you’re having a bad day; you don’t want to be here any more; you don’t know if they can do it; you don’t know if you can do it.
All I can say is “you got this bud. I believe in you.”
80
There will always be more work to do. Take care of your mental health and teach others to do the same.
