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#Leadership : This Is How To Turn Procrastination Into A #Management Technique…Sometimes the Best Thing you can Do is Not Answer your #TeamMembers’ Questions Right Away.

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You’ve just been promoted to a supervisory role, and you reallydon’t want to be the absentee boss who inspires articles like this one. So you make a concerted effort to be attentive and responsive–answering questions whenever your employees ask, and making yourself available whenever they need you. So much so that some days, you feel like you barely have any time to get your work done.

But it’s just part of being a manager, right? ……..Well, yes and no.

It is important to train your direct reports on the skills they need to do their jobs well–because if they excel, that’s going to reflect well on you. However, sometimes that training involves knowing when to put off their requests. Yes, you heard right: There are times when procrastinating can actually be a powerful management strategy. Here’s when and why.

Related: The Five Hidden Benefits Of Procrastination

YOU TEACH YOUR EMPLOYEES TO BE RESOURCEFUL

Think of a time when you desperately needed an answer to a question, but there was no one to ask. What did you do? You probably tried to find the answer yourself–whether it’s typing questions into Google, Slacking a coworker, or searching the company’s server because you know those files are in there somewhere.

So if your direct report comes to you for help, consider procrastinating. Push the request off a few hours. If someone approaches you in the morning, tell them you’ll get back with them to help first thing in the afternoon if they haven’t figured it out by then. Similarly, punt afternoon requests to the next morning.

As a manager, putting off certain requests–at least for a little while–prevents you from becoming a one-stop-shop for your direct reports. That way, they’ll learn to search for things themselves before coming to you. Over time, many of the issues, questions, and requests they approach you with initially will begin to evaporate. Everybody wins: You get some time back, and your team members learn to solve more problems on their own.

And when they do come to you with a question, you can be confident that they’ve attempted to find the answer themselves–and you’re more likely to have a productive discussion about the issue.

Related: Why Trying To Be A People Pleaser Makes You A Bad Boss 

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YOU HELP YOUR TEAM MEMBERS BECOME BETTER LEADERS

More importantly, when you don’t leap to help with requests immediately, you’re teaching a lesson about leadership that your direct reports wouldn’t otherwise learn. Some day, some of your team members will be sitting in your position fielding the requests that you’re fielding.

By encouraging them to solve problems on their own beforecoming to you, you’re developing them into more efficient, high-value workers and reinforcing the fact that you have your own priorities (which they should respect). Likewise, they’ll learn that it’s perfectly acceptable to prioritize their own work as long as they help out their teammates in a timely fashion.

Related: Five Questions You Should Ask Before Accepting A Management Position

When you push back a request a few hours, encourage the person who’s made it to keep working and not use your delay as an excuse to put the task aside.

Of course, sometimes the person making the request has exhausted every option, and they’re coming to you because they’re at their wits’ end on how to proceed. When their words or body language tell you this, go ahead and help. It really is okay to drop everything and help every now and again–just not all the time.

FastCompany.com | January 29, 2018 |  BY ART MARKMAN 2 MINUTE READ

#Leadership : 3 Ways to Guide Your Employees Toward Empowered Decisions…Traditional Top-Down Management can Create a Single Point of Failure within Each Department: a Middle Manager Held Accountable for his Team’s Projects and Products.

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According to a Harvard Business Review analysis released in September, U.S. companies are wasting more than $3 trillion every year on excess bureaucracy and management — which is equivalent to 17 percent of our country’s GDP.

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That’s an astonishing amount of money, and I believe one of the keys to reversing this trend is addressing a structure that has been an American business mainstay for decades: the corporate ladder.

Today, traditional top-down management can hold companies back. It slows down decision-making, holds back brilliant talent from making an impact and can create an unnecessary single point of failure within each department: a middle manager who is held accountable for delivering all directives and approving all of his or her team’s projects and finished products.

Related: “What Happens When You Empower Employees Instead of Micromanage Them?”

Now that many mass communication and collaboration tools exist to facilitate real-time company-wide work, it’s time to remove the excess layers of approval from your business and thoughtfully empower each individual contributor to take action based on his or her skills and capabilities. Here’s how:

1. Modernize your company through empowerment.

In today’s fast-paced world, a company’s decision-making process needs to be streamlined, swift and agile. The traditional corporate hierarchy hampers all of these things. Its numerous layers cause traditional companies to move at a snail’s pace when making decisions and reacting to market conditions.

Embracing employee empowerment won’t just accelerate your company’s rate of innovation; it will lead to happier teams and attract free-thinking and creative job-seekers to your brand.

That’s important because many of those job-seekers will be millennials. In one study,  76 percent of millennials surveyed reported being more satisfied within a creative, inclusive work culture, while only 28 percent felt that the companies they worked for were making full use of their skills.

The message? You currently have a huge opportunity to attract these future all-stars.

Related: “3 Steps That Will Empower Your Employees to Act Like CEOs”

Not that that opportunity will be easy: It takes hard work and dedication to create a culture of autonomous, empowered employees — and that certainly won’t happen overnight. My organization, Lifion, is devoted to achieving this type of atmosphere in our own workplace, and we are excited to help others do the same as we learn what works and what doesn’t.

These three strategies are our focus areas as we progress on this journey:

1. Showcase your mission, vision and values early and often.

An alarming 61 percent of employees say they don’t know their company’s mission. How can these individuals ever feel empowered to make smart decisions without first seeking approval from a manager?

Go out of your way to make your mission, vision and values apparent to your entire team. These three foundational elements describe what you do, where you want to go and how you want to get there — and if employees don’t intimately understand them, empowered autonomy is nearly impossible to achieve.

Put up posters in your office that highlight your values. Frequently refer to your vision when interacting with your team. And post your mission statement on your website for the entire world to see. Then, take it a step further by building tools that help your employees assess whether they’re successfully embodying these principles.

For example, we’ve created surveys of self-reflection for our team that break down our organization’s values into simple bullet points and ask how frequently employees believe they practice each concept.

 

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2. Develop a decision framework. 

A decision framework teaches employees how to make decisions that benefit the company without first seeking approval from their  managers. In its most basic form, the framework can be set up like this: If you have high confidence that your initiative will be successful — and the actions you want to take are low-risk — go ahead and make the decision. However, if you’re looking to make a high-risk decision that you have low confidence in, make sure you talk it over with other people and seek approval.

Of course, not all situations are cut and dried, so there should be a gradient of low-, medium- and high-impact/confidence built in.

The key to instilling this framework is to lead by example. Articulate your thought process to your team when you make a decision. This will build their confidence and show (not tell) them how to act autonomously. As a bonus, in doing this, you’ll be coaching your younger employees to become better leaders themselves. Ninety-one percent of millennials aspire to be company leaders, so they’ll appreciate this training.

3. Shrink the approval process.

If employees are accustomed to seeking managerial approval before taking action, it’s going to take a little time to break them of this habit. Consider this a weaning process in which they learn what types of initiatives are guaranteed to be approved and which ones tend to require discussion.

When employees come to you seeking approval during this transition period, ask them why they’re feeling unsure about their project, and then provide your input on whether you agree with their concerns. Eventually, this will help them understand your thought processes and priorities, making them more capable of anticipating what does and doesn’t require approval.

When approvals occur only on an as-needed basis, key decisions and pivots won’t be delayed — and this will lead to growth. A recent study shows that when employees are given the autonomy to make decisions, the companies they work for grow four times faster than companies with traditional management structures. These companies also experience a third of the turnover.

Related: “What Bad Managers, Good Managers and Great Managers Do”

In modern times, the traditional corporate hierarchy can be highly inefficient and wasteful. The business world moves a lot faster than it used to, so it’s essential for today’s companies to streamline their decision-making processes as much as possible — and thoughtfully empowering each individual contributor is a giant step in the right direction.

Instill your values and goals in your employees, and empower them to make decisions that propel your company into the future.

Entrepreneur.com | December 23, 2016 | Amit Maimon

 

#Leadership : Five CEOS On The Skills It Takes To Land The Corner Office…These Business Leaders Share Some of the Skills they Didn’t Expect They’d Need Once they Tot to the Top.

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The lure of the top corner office is strong, but there’s a reason not everybody grows up to be the head of a company—the job is a massive undertaking. CEOs are asked to do it all: setting strategy, closing deals, hiring people, firing people, calming irate customers, fixing broken light switches. And sometimes that’s just by 10 a.m. on Monday.
CEO Image Getty

Of course, the job doesn’t end there. Monster talked to several CEOs to find out what must-haves you need before you can consider yourself cut out for the gig.

1. HOW TO SAY NO

Whether you’re leading a team of 20 people or you’re a giant in the industry, it can be hard to turn down opportunities to grow, says David Nilssen, CEO of Guidant Financial, a small-business financing company based in Bellevue, Washington. CEOs are often looking for new ideas and markets, and when opportunities come up, it can be tempting to take every one.

But a CEO has to learn how to say no.

“The ability to scale will come from stripping out distraction and complexity from the system,” Nilssen says. So focus on whether these opportunities are really ones you can fulfill or merely serve as a distraction from your main mission.

 

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2. HOW TO PITCH

Sometimes, the opportunities don’t come knocking; sometimes you need to do the knocking. You have to be able to make a case for your company to outsiders.

“That applies whether you’re looking for investment dollars or appealing to the board of directors on something you really want to make a priority for the company,” says Clark Benson, CEO of Ranker.com, a Los Angeles-based company that compiles crowdsourced lists online.

“You just really need to know how to pitch, and it’s not as easy as it sounds,” he continues. “It’s a learned skill that you have to invest hours in to be really good at. You don’t really realize how much you, the CEO, are also expected to be the hype guy.”

3. HOW TO READ FINANCIALS

Anne-Marie Faiola, CEO of Bramble Berry, a soap-making supply company in Bellingham, Washington, says she wishes she had had the ability to read financial statements before she started her business.

“Unfortunately, I learned how to read those reports the hard way—by being embezzled from or by having to draw on a line of credit because I couldn’t read a cash-flow analysis properly,” she says.

Faiola went back to school to get an MBA, focusing on accounting. “This is a skill that can be learned,” she says. Even getting familiar with the basics of business finance can help prevent disasters down the line.

4. HOW TO TAKE CRITICISM

“When you’re at the top, you’re the primary target for people’s criticism,” says Timothy Trudeau, CEO of Syntax Creative, a San Diego-based digital marketing company focused on music distribution. “You need to be able to hear this criticism and do something about it, all the while not taking things personally.”

At the core of criticism lies a valuable learning opportunity: People are telling you they want to see change. As CEO, change is something you need to know how to facilitate. Writing off criticism as mere complaining misses the point entirely.

And when the criticism isn’t warranted, you’ll simply need to find ways to move on. Trudeau says CEOs must take the high road, even if they have been treated unfairly.

5. KNOWING HOW THE WORK REALLY GETS DONE

When Erin Jump Fry became CEO of Fancy Fortune Cookies in Indianapolis in 2005, she knew she’d have to be familiar with the business—but she didn’t know that would include details like how the baking machines worked.

“As the person who has to approve equipment purchases and repairs, I eventually realized I needed to have hands-on knowledge of how all our custom machinery works so I could source upgrades and additional machines, and know how to talk to engineers and machinery designers in their terms,” she says.

Even though the day-to-day details are no longer in your job description as CEO, understanding your production processes has serious benefits. Knowing how the sausage gets made at your company can help you identify efficiencies and estimate your ability to scale. And if the need arises, you can step into different roles in an emergency.

“I didn’t expect to have to pitch in and work production for huge orders,” Fry says, “but when someone calls in sick on a day when you need to ship 40,000 cookies, then it’s all hands into the bakery.”

FastCompany.com | MARY ELLEN SLAYTER, MONSTER |  11.16.16 5:00 AM

#Leadership : 3 Signs You Have Succumbed to Helicopter Management…There is Nothing Efficient about Hovering Over the People you Hired because you Trusted they Can Do the Job.

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Helicopter parenting took off in the 1980s, when paranoia was at an all-time high over child abductions, and the U.S. was in an economic boom that made things like SAT prep classes and expensive extracurriculars the standard. For years now, there have been discussions about how helicopter parenting is ruining America’s children and we know that helicopter managing (more commonly known as micromanaging) can be just as damaging to an entire company as it can be to an individual’s career.

Free- Lock on Fence

However, few of the guilty are conscious of their overbearing ways. As a Stanford dean wrote in a book on the rise of helicopter parenting on college campuses titled “How to Raise an Adult,” even she — an academic writing about the phenomenon — failed to fully realize that she and her husband did a fair amount of helicoptering in their own home. You can notice helicoptering, dislike it and still be guilty of it.

Just as certain cultural factors seeded this style in parenting, others have seeded it in the workplace, making it more tempting than ever to micromanage. The rise of open offices, real-time messaging and collaborative tools like Google Docs make it downright easy to jump into a team member’s work and take the reins.

Like helicopter parenting, helicopter managing often comes from a good place. You don’t want to see your reports fail and you want your team to succeed. That’s why, as Harvard Business Review writes, “Micromanagement has a way of spreading in organizations, where goals and accountability are intricately nested. What your team delivers affects what you deliver, and so on up the chain of command — so the pressure is on everywhere to make sure everyone comes through.”

If you’re being micromanaged, you’re more likely to micromanage your own reports, and then inefficiency spreads throughout the organization. This inefficiency can stunt growth and hurt the company long-term if it’s not rectified.

Here are a few signs you’ve slipped into helicopter managing:

1. Your employees are getting testy.

You ask for status updates multiple times before something’s due, you make to-do lists for your team members, you jump in and offer advice when a team member hasn’t asked for it, and when you ask your employees the status of something, they usually reply with “I’m on that and will update you in our next meeting.” Not every exasperated employee is being micromanaged, but if your entire team is getting irritable, you might want to take a look at your management style.

The habit of overly checking in within open office environments can feed this exasperation. “Wide-open workspaces and copious real-time data on how individuals spend their time can leave employees feeling exposed and vulnerable,” writes Ethan Bernstein for Harvard Business Review. “Being observed changes their conduct. They start going to great lengths to keep what they’re doing under wraps, even if they have nothing bad to hide.”

Related: The 3-Step Cure for Micromanagement

It’s easy to fall into a vicious cycle. You might intervene to make sure you  support employees every step of the way, the same way well-meaning helicopter parents can now spy on their kids’ homework. But when you insert yourself too much, they often feel less empowered to step up, and then you feel more like you need to direct, thus creating an unhealthy dynamic that never stops.

 

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2. Your team isn’t failing — ever.

Everyone needs to fail every now and then in order to grow and, if you’re honest with yourself, you’ll realize that some of the most important lessons you ever learned were because of failure — even minor failure. And while it’s really important to note here that employees are by no means like children, there are still parallels in the relationship:  failure is a difficult thing to watch both as a manager and a parent. Slate writes, “When children aren’t given the space to struggle through things on their own, they don’t learn to problem solve very well… The other problem with never having to struggle is that you never experience failure.” Substitute “employees” for “children” in that statement, and it’s equally true.

It’s extremely challenging for as a manager to see an employee do something that you know will not work out. You’ll always be tempted to jump in, and you also can’t always let people fail. Being too hands off could cost the company millions, so you have to find a balance.

People think not micromanaging should be easy — it sounds like less work, in theory. However, one of your jobs as a manager is to find the times it’s okay to let an employee try something new and perhaps fail, as long as you take the time to walk your team member through anything that goes awry and how to improve next time. The whole process can feel painfully slow and less than efficient, especially when you see the mistake before it happens, but it’s still good management.

So don’t deny your team members the opportunity to learn from occasional failure. Ultimately, these small failures will grow your team members in ways that will help grow the organization, too.

3. You’ve lost sight of the big picture.

Suddenly you’re nearing the end of the quarter, and you realize you’re still carrying too much of the workload of your team, and it could even affect your overall success for your larger corporate goals. Sometimes when you get too in the weeds with everyone else’s day-to-day tasks, you fail to see the big picture and think strategically about what needs to happen to achieve your goals. It’s also tough to hit your goals and grow in step with your company when your team isn’t growing at all.

Related: Entrepreneurs Can Save Their Startups When They Stop Micromanaging

Realistically, you can’t hit big picture goals and intricately manage every moving piece at the same time — it becomes too easy to lose focus. Similarly, helicopter parents might achieve amazing goals along the way, like getting their child into a top school or ensuring they play piano well, but they often miss the big picture goal, which is raising an independent adult.

Sometimes it’s hard to take a step back and ask yourself if you’re a helicopter boss. However, you have to recognize when it’s happening, and not just because you’re risking a bad reputation as a manager: it’s harmful to a company’s bottom line. The good news is that micromanaging is a bad habit that can be broken — it just takes recognizing it, stepping back, and training rather than “doing”. Sometimes the hardest part of parenting and managing is letting go, but doing so is key to the health and growth of everyone involved.

 

Entrepreneur.com| October 24, 2016 |  Katie Jansen, Chief Marketing Officer, AppLovin

#Leadership : Management is a Minefield- 10 Things the Boss Wishes You Knew…What Kinds of things Do Managers Wish Employees Better Understood? Here are 10 Things Bosses Wish Employees could Empathize with, to Realize that Being in Charge doesn’t Necessarily Mean that Every Day is a Picnic.

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If you’re a part of the rank-and-file, it can be hard to get inside the head of management or your company’s leadership team. They seemingly make decisions merely to anger or stir up the lower-level employees, and the boss can be amazingly inept or unable to respond to employees’ concerns. They can devise and deploy stupid rules with little logic or reasoning, and some even seem like they’re out to get you if you rub them the right way.

business woman with her staff, people group in background at modern bright office indoors

It can be hard to figure out what’s going on in the C-suite. But you have to realize that the boss is only human, and has a job to do. As difficult as it is to try and rationalize or figure out the logic behind some decisions, empathizing with the decision makers can be just as hard. Giving it a shot, though, may go a long way to explaining some of their flabbergasting decisions.

What kinds of things do managers wish employees better understood? Here are 10 things bosses wish employees could empathize with, to realize that being in charge doesn’t necessarily mean that every day is a picnic.

1. “I have a boss, too.”

You have a boss, and your boss has a boss. That means that the same issues or negative feelings you’re harboring toward your boss? Your boss is harboring many similar feelings toward their boss. Everyone’s a part of the chain, when it comes down to it. Even the CEO — they answer to shareholders.

 

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2. Honesty goes a long way

If you can get something done, great. If not, don’t pretend that you can — just tell your boss so they can figure out an alternative. If your manager or team leader is counting on you to take care of something, especially after you’ve assured them that you can do it, they’re banking on the fact that you will. Don’t blindside them at the last minute by coming up short. Just be up front about your ability to handle a given task.

3. Scheduling is very difficult

In certain businesses and workplaces, scheduling employees is a nightmare. If you’ve worked in a restaurant, for example, you have an idea of the juggling act that building a schedule can be. Many employees have school, families, or other jobs they need to attend to, and asking for a day off at the last minute isn’t as easy as slotting in another name.

4. 9:00 does not mean 9:10

Some jobs allow for some leeway in when you come and go to work. Others do not. If your boss needs you at work on time, that means you need to be there on time — not 10 or 15 minutes late. You may send the message that you’re not coming in at all, and send the rest of the staff scrambling to cover your station. Everybody’s late from time to time, but if you make it a chronic habit? You’re only giving your boss ulcers.

5. If you’re quitting, let them know

People quit jobs all the time. But there’s a reason the “two week” rule exists — it allows both parties, the quitter and and the employer, to have some time to cover their bases. Yes, companies lay people off with little or no warning all the time, but if you have a good relationship with your employer, or don’t want to burn any bridges on the way out, give a heads up so they can replace you.

6. They don’t want to be there on Saturday or Thanksgiving either

Yes, working nights, weekends, and holidays sucks. Nobody wants to be there, not even management. But the world doesn’t stop just because it’s your favorite holiday, or because it’s Sunday. Somebody has to work, and somebody has to take the reins. If you’re complaining about having to work Black Friday, your complaints are probably falling upon deaf ears; your boss is probably just as stoked to be there as you are.

7. The boss isn’t out to get you

Management doesn’t want you to fail. They’re not typically setting traps or land mines for you to walk into, to give them a reason to dock your pay or write you up. They want you to do your job and be good at it. If you’re doing well, it makes your manager look better. Sure, some employee-employer relationships can fray, but it’s rare that someone in charge is gunning for you. Paranoia isn’t going to help.

8. They’re your boss, not your friend

Ever hear about awful parents who try too hard to be “cool,” and let their kids run amok? It’s similar in the workplace. Your boss is there to manage you, not be your bud. While you may have a good relationship with your manager — which is great — you don’t need to tell them how trashed you got last night or invite them to smoke a joint with you during a break. Respect the relationship, and professional boundaries.

9. Management knows you’re screwing around all day

Do you really think nobody realizes that you spend half of your day surfing Facebook, Snapchat, and Reddit? They know — so you don’t have to scramble to cover your tracks every time you’re on your phone and somebody walks up behind you. Of course, if you’re on the sales floor or in a customer service position, then this can be a real problem. But managers know that you’re not always being productive.

10. Saying “I don’t know” is OK

Sometimes, you’re not going to know the answers. Not sure how to work a machine or piece of equipment? Ask for a run-through. Does a customer have a complicated issue or question? Don’t B.S. them, and give them bad information. Even if it’s a little uncomfortable, ask for help from a higher-up, and treat it as a learning experience.

Follow Sam on Facebook and Twitter @SliceOfGinger

 

CheatSheet.com | July 30, 2016 | Sam Becker