Everyone hates reporting to a micro-manager—those leaders and supervisors who watch an employee’s every move and who always have a better way of doing something. But micro-managing is very appropriate in some cases—for example when an employee is brand new to a task. How can you, as a leader, provide people with the direction and support they need without seeming overbearing? Here are three tips:
Be clear on goals and tasks. People need different levels of direction and support depending on the task they are facing. As a leader your job is to clearly identify each of the tasks an employee has on his or her plate.
Know your people. Most employees are good at some of their tasks and still developing skills in others. A good manager tailor’s their direction based on what an employee needs and their level of experience. For example, a salesperson might be great at booking appointments but not so great at using the new conferencing technology to demonstrate the product. A good manager will recognize the difference and trust the salesperson to book appointments their own way while at the same time using a more directed, hands-on managerial style, when it comes to using the new software.
Provide the right level of direction and support depending on the task. In this case, the manager needs to take a very hands-off approach when it comes to appointment setting, while at the same time using a very hands-on approach to learning and using the new software. As long as the manager uses the right style with each task, it won’t feel like micro-managing to the employee. It will just seem like active, helpful leadership.
Very few employees are experts at all of their tasks these days. Most people are good at some and still learning in others. By adjusting leadership style to fit the task at hand, managers can move their people to higher levels of performance without the danger of being labeled a micromanager.
Join The Ken Blanchard Companies for a special complimentary webinar and online chat beginning today at 9:00 a.m. Pacific Time (12:00 noon Eastern). Senior Consulting Partner Carmela Southers will be speaking on the topic of Leading In A Virtual World. The webinar is free and seats are still available if you would like to join over 500 people expected to participate.
Immediately after the webinar, Carmela will be answering questions here at LeaderChat for about 30 minutes. To participate in the online discussion, follow these simple instructions.
Instructions for Participating in the Online Chat
- Click on the COMMENTS link above
- Type in your question for Carmela
- Push SUBMIT COMMENT
It’s as easy as that! Carmela will answer as many questions as possible in the order they are received. Be sure to press F5 to refresh your screen occasionally to see the latest responses.
We hope you can join us later today for this special complimentary event courtesy of Cisco WebEx and The Ken Blanchard Companies. Click here for more information on participating.
In a recent column at Forbes.com business consultant Terry Waghorn, (who co-authored Mission Possible with Ken Blanchard) interviews teams expert Patrick Lencioni about the challenges of managing virtual teams.
Lencioni points out that the key to being a more effective virtual leader begins with acknowledging the fact that working remotely posing serious challenges. As Lencioni observes, “E-mail and voice mail and texting and instant messaging have all become so second-nature that we too often assume that a team member’s physical location makes little difference to the team’s effectiveness.
That doesn’t make sense to Lencioni who uses a family-based analogy to make his point. “After all, no family would say, “Well, Dad lives in New York, Mom lives in San Francisco, and the kids are spread around the country, but thanks to my iPhone and computer, it’s no different from living under the same roof.”
Lencioni observes that simple, daily interactions help build the bonds that people need to “thrive during good times and survive during challenging ones.”
For teams that don’t have the opportunity for daily interactions at the jobsite, Lencioni recommends that team leaders:
- Build relationships within the context of work
- Revisit their purpose, values and mission
- Develop trust and determine methods for hashing out differences remotely
To read the complete article visit: http://www.forbes.com/2009/10/16/virtual-meetings-conferencing-leadership-managing-lencioni.html
