The Effective Manager: Completely Revised and Updated

Metadata

• Title: The Effective Manager: Completely Revised and Updated
• Author: Mark Horstman, Kate Braun, and Sarah Sentes
• Book URL: https://amazon.com/dp/B0C4G956C2?tag=malvaonlin-20
• Open in Kindle: kindle://book/?action=open&asin=B0C4G956C2
• Last Updated on: Sunday, June 11, 2023

Highlights & Notes

The Effective Manager, Second Edition, isn’t like most management books, because it isn’t written for your CEO.

We’ll tell you what to say and how to say it. We’ll tell you how to introduce your ideas to your team and how to counter their concerns.

Why? Because this is the book we wanted to read when we were managers, but nobody had written it. We wanted someone we trusted to tell us what to do. Not to tell us how to be—“be empathetic,” “be strategic,” “be candid.” That kind of guidance is always wrong. It’s not your state of being that makes you an effective manager. It’s what you do.

This book is about managing people. It’s about getting the most out of your direct reports. And it’s about that for two reasons: because most managers are pretty bad at that part of their jobs and that’s the most valuable thing you do as a manager.

Think about it for a minute. How do you know someone is a good manager? Literally, what is the definition of being a Good Manager?

Your first responsibility as a manager is to achieve results.

achieve results. Get your job done. Meet your numbers.

The military has a phrase that captures the connection between results and people beautifully: Mission First, People Always.

Your first responsibility is to deliver whatever results your organization expects from you.

About the only way to really feel good about what your responsibilities are is to have quantified goals. Numbers. Percentages.

The problem with not having clearly delineated responsibilities is that you can’t make intelligent choices about where to focus. You begin to feel that “everything is important.” You begin to “try to get everything done.”

Your second responsibility as a manager is to retain your people. Effectively managed modern organizations now measure retention in addition to results when evaluating a manager. It’s intended to be a brake against an unrelenting results focus. They want to ensure that your team members don’t leave your organization.

For today’s manager, it’s not enough to get results. You must do so sustainably, by retaining your team. The definition of an effective manager is one who gets results and keeps her people.

How well did this manager do her job, as shown in her results, and how well did she keep her people?

Since the standards demanded of your organization by its customers are the same, the standards of managers are the same: results and retention.

Managing people remotely is MUCH harder than managing a collocated team. For years, managers have been getting away with poor managerial skills because they’re collocated. It’s much easier to communicate with a team who’s collocated—we’ll tell you why later. And it’s communication that makes organizations work, not role power and org charts.

We don’t make it clear that managing is different than doing, and therefore we ought to teach folks how to do it.

Managing is the same everywhere, for everyone.

And what are those top four behaviors? The four critical behaviors most correlated with improved results and retention are the following: Get to know your people. Communicate about performance. Ask for more. Push work down.

Despite the fact that your primary responsibility is getting results, the most important thing you can do isn’t strategizing or task assignment or resource planning or priority analysis. It’s getting to know the people who have the skills who are going to get the work done.

Every person on the earth expects and deserves to be treated as an individual. Sadly, what most managers do is manage others the way they would like to be managed.

People and their behaviors are what deliver results to your organization. (Not systems, not processes, not computers, not machines.) Results are your primary responsibility. People are all unique—every one of us. What makes any manager think that one size would ever fit all? It might be easier…but it’s not more effective. And if you’re worried that it takes a lot of work, this book will show you that it really doesn’t.

First, what’s more important to you, your family or your work? For almost everyone, the answer is family, and rightfully so. Now, ask yourself the same question about your directs. What’s more important to them, their family or their work? Without much thought you realize, it’s family first for them as well. And you’d be right—we’ve asked. So, for your directs, their family is more important than work. And you say you know your directs pretty well. Here’s a test of that knowledge: What are the first names of all of the children of the people who report directly to you?

But most managers have no idea how one‐sided their conversations are with their team members. They have no idea how little those brief conversations actually build relationships.

One way to think about this perception disparity is to imagine that for the vast majority of us as bosses, we have a sign on our forehead. It’s visible to all of our directs. And it says, Watch out. I’m your boss. I could fire you. When you control someone else’s addiction to food, clothing, and shelter, they’re going to see you through a different lens than you see yourself.

If you doubt this, if you think that you’re different, that you’re loved and not feared at all by your team, think of it this way: Do you tell your boss EVERYTHING? Of course you don’t. And neither do your directs tell you everything. Because you’re their boss.

Our role power as our directs’ boss distorts the relationship.

When I trust my boss, I spend less time worrying about what her intentions are and whether I have to cover myself on all of my work. I don’t have to second guess the “why” of a task or delegation or ask my colleagues for political support if I decide to push back on something. More time for results.

When we give managers an org chart of them and their directs and say draw your team, they generally circle themselves and the team as a whole. But when we give that same instruction to the directs on that team, they circle themselves and their peers…and leave the manager out. And that’s okay. Because for all the talk of managers and their directs being a team, you don’t actually need to be a pure team. You need the ingredient that makes high‐performance teams high‐performing.

If you’re going to create trust and trusting relationships with your directs, then, you’re going to have to talk to them frequently about things that are important to them.

You can probably see the quality and quantity portion of that guidance. You’ve got to “talk to them frequently”: that’s quantity. And “about things that are important to them”: that’s quality.

Getting to know your directs accounts for 40% of the total value created by engaging in the four behaviors.

Would your performance improve if you heard more often from your boss about how you’re doing? Most professionals, when we ask them that, give a resounding yes. We also ask this question: Provided it was done politely and professionally, would you like more feedback/input from your boss/organization about your performance on a more regular basis, regardless of whether it was positive or negative?

If you want more performance communications from YOUR boss, you know your directs want the same thing from you. In fact, as a general rule, whatever you’re thinking you’d like from your boss, it’s likely your directs want the same thing from you. Far too many managers have this unsustainable thought: Well, I don’t get along great with MY boss, but MY people, they LOVE me.

At times, play at the highest level approaches beauty.

One once said that he thought he turned 5,000 double plays every spring. 5,000! In a normal season, turning 150 is an outstanding accomplishment! Why that amount of practice? They know that creating and using what feedback tells them will make them better, when it matters.

Even the technology we use every day relies on communication about its performance. Every machine you interact with—smartphones, tablets, cars, computers, televisions—all have numerous feedback circuits built into them. They’re constantly checking themselves for being within tolerance, checking variances, within normal limits, to avoid a significant failure. (Try not to think of your car’s check engine light.)

If you want high performance, you’re going to have to talk about it with your directs. It matters more than anything else, other than your relationship with them. Performance communication accounts for 30% of the total value created by engaging in the four behaviors.

Well, this may surprise you: as managers, we’re supposed to create stress for our directs.

There’s distress: that’s the kind you mean when you’re “stressed out.” It’s a level of stress that impedes or hinders your performance. You’re overwhelmed, you can’t think straight, and you feel fearful, uncreative, frozen.

The ideal place for your directs to be for maximum output/results is right on the line between distress and eustress. Almost over the line into fear, but not. Lots of anticipation and energy, but not panic. And the only way to know where that line is, for each direct, is to push each of your directs into moments of distress and pay attention to where they start to lose effectiveness. Everyone has their own point of diminishing returns.

• Update

Most managers, when workloads increase, have a reflexive response of wanting to hire more people. It’s natural, but this isn’t what your leaders want. They want the output of the organization to increase without increasing headcount. Why? Because headcount is expensive, and the reputational risk of layoffs, if they overshoot demand, is enormous.

But the principle remains and is a core part of organizational theory: it’s better to grow capability by increasing the capability of the people you have, than by hiring more people. It’s cheaper, it’s more durable, it’s faster, it adds goodwill to the firm, it strengthens existing relationships, it strengthens succession planning, and it reduces risk from bad hires.

Asking for more accounts for roughly 15% of the total value created by engaging in the four behaviors.

The direct should do the job, not the manager, because the direct is cheaper labor. If we can achieve an acceptable quality level with less cost, for all but the most important things we do, we should do so.

The question becomes: In a world where everyone is busy with too much to do, what work is most valuable to the organization? That’s the work we have to get done, right?

Pushing work down accounts for roughly 15% of the total value created by engaging in the four behaviors.

And that’s the Manager Tools Trinity. Managers can engage in four behaviors to most effectively produce results and retain team members: Get to know your people. Communicate about performance. Ask for more. Push work down.

It’s easy to look at an organizational chart and see who works for whom, who reports to whom, who works in which organization, and who outranks whom. But it is not the lines on an org chart that make organizations work; it’s communication.

Communication is the glue of an organization. It may be even more than that: it may be the blood that runs through an organization giving it life.

If your desk is more than 50 meters from your boss’s, your chance at frequent communications (which is a precursor of trust) is marginally zero.

The more often we see someone face‐to‐face, the more likely it is that we will also telephone that person or communicate by another medium.

Our ability to band together for a common cause massively magnifies our individual capabilities. And it’s communication that makes an organization work.

So, communication is necessary for effective managers, and distance destroys communication. That’s all you need to know to answer the question, what is the effect of remote work on managers’ effectiveness: it’s ruinous.

However you manage, your techniques/behavior/philosophy must be both teachable to others and sustainable.

You know intuitively that it’s really not enough that someone can get their job done. They have to be able to talk about it, communicate about it, and explain it, even defend it if need

This is one of the unwritten rules that make human organizations so effective. We have to be able to communicate about our work. We have to communicate status and help others understand what we do and why it works.

What does it say about the most important systemic behavior in every organization—management—that the majority of us learned how to do it from somebody who was never taught it and privately worried that others would discover that they didn’t truly know what they were doing?

The way effective managers manage is visible to others in their organizations and teachable to others. And they can repeat the core behaviors in any situation, nearly anywhere.

Critical Behavior Manager Tool Get to Know Your People One on Ones Communicate About Performance Feedback Ask for More Coaching Push Work Down Delegation

You’ll be interrupted less, you won’t have to check up on as much, you’ll see problems coming before they blow up, and you’ll make changes proactively rather than reactively.

if you follow our guidance on how to do them, you will get more time back in your calendar than you spend in your MTO3s.

Okay, so what ARE MTO3s? They are scheduled, weekly, 30‐minute meetings with each of your directs, where your direct goes first, and you take notes. Scheduled Weekly 30‐Minute Meeting With Each of Your Directs Where the Direct’s Issues Are Primary Where the Manager Takes Notes

The lesson here is clear: if you don’t schedule your O3s, the data suggest you’re only about 20% likely to do them.

But when you tell them they’re going to have time on your calendar every week, no matter what, you elevate them to the level of the rest of your calendar, making them important as well.

Directs all over the world DO tell us that having scheduled time on your calendar allows them to prepare for that discussion.

moving an already scheduled O3 to a different time because of a conflict has no statistically significant effect on the manager’s results and retention improvements.

You might also be thinking, “I’m too busy.” This is a rational response to another meeting in your already busy day, but part of the reason your schedule is so full is because you’re not spending enough time communicating with your directs. You’re using email too much. And email isn’t a good medium for a briefing or a Q&A discussion.

Seriously: go look. Compare this week’s busy‐ness to your calendar 4 weeks from now. It’s mostly empty, isn’t it? Your calendar is “always full” because you’re generally only looking at the active week, and maybe next week. That’s how calendars work: they fill up 1–2 weeks in advance.

Don’t start doing your MTO3s until 3–4 weeks from when you decide to start.

Knowing this, what would it say to them if you had O3s every other week? That they’re less important than what you’re working on now. (We’ve asked; that’s what they told us. Classic quote: “Meeting with my boss every other week, when everything else runs weekly, feels like he’s putting me on the back burner.”)

We won’t fall on our swords against biweekly O3s. If your results are like our data, you’ll get some improvement in results and retention: roughly 40% of what you’d get if you did them weekly. Why would you save only 50% of the time by going biweekly to lose 60% of the value? That doesn’t make sense.

There’s another benefit to weekly O3s that you lose if you go to biweekly: a significant reduction in interruptions.

A caveat: if you have more than 10 directs, it’s okay to start with biweekly O3s. Trying to find, say, 8 hours (16 half hours for 16 directs) in your week may be a bridge too far. Spend 8–12 weeks starting with MTO3s every other week. This allows your schedule to absorb the 4 hours a week. Then, move to weekly MTO3s. (This habit of stressing your calendar will prepare you well for executive life, if you aspire to it.)

Managers who conduct at least 85% of their O3s over a period of months achieve much of the results and retention improvement that having 100% of your O3s would get.

Once you fall below 85%, though, results and retention improvements are less likely. And if you ever fall below 50%, it’s better to just stop, in terms of the benefit (more like cost) and the time you’re spending.

We support and recommend one exception because we have seen it work well. If you’re a senior executive, you can schedule an hour. One of our chief executive officer (CEO) clients (and yes CEO’s have a role managing their directs, and need O3s too) told us once, “I need an hour for my One on Ones, and they’re still completely full. No way I could do 30 minutes. I just can’t finish everything we need to discuss every week with my directs. They all manage 100–300 million USD lines of business for the firm.” So he scheduled an hour.

O3s are not about differentiating among directs, but rather making time for each direct, to develop your relationship with them.

Also, don’t do O3s with anyone other than your direct reports. This means you don’t do O3s with people who report to your directs. We hear stories all the time of managers who are doing biweekly O3s so they “can meet with all 20 of my directs.” When we probe, we discover that they really only have four direct reports, and the other 16 folks report to their directs.

How DO you “stay in touch” with the rest of your organization who are “below” your directs? First, insist on your subordinate managers doing O3s with their directs. Your direct subordinate managers are responsible for their relationships with their directs. The way you maintain your relationship with your skips (and even levels below that, if that applies to you) is by keeping a strong relationship with your directs and relying on them to maintain relationships with theirs.

The agenda is simple: first, 10 minutes for your direct, then 10 minutes for you, then 10 minutes to talk about the future. The most important concept in the agenda is “first”: the key to the agenda is letting your directs go first. We shared the story before of our very first effort with agendas, letting managers go first: disastrous. If you go first, no matter how important the stuff you want to talk about is, our data show you will not get the value out of MTO3s we’ve discussed here.

Examples are: How’s it going? How are you? How are things? Your agenda… What have you been up to? Whaddaya got?

Ask questions. Take notes. If it’s important to your team member, it’s important to you. That’s how you build relationships.

Also, don’t send a list of topics to a direct that you’re going to talk about. In theory this makes good sense: they get to prepare, and the meeting will be more efficient. But what actually happens in far too many cases is that your team member will then spend time in their portion of the agenda addressing your list. It has been our experience that managers sharing a list of topics in advance steps on the direct’s agenda, reducing the direct’s satisfaction with the meeting.

A typical direct’s portion of an MTO3 includes updates about ongoing work, questions about problems they’re having, project status reports, requests for assistance with budgets or communications, requests for guidance about next steps or approaching a problem, verification of rumors they’ve heard, clarification of what you want or how you want something done, notifications of stuff they’ve finished, follow‐up on pending actions, reminders of stuff they need from you, etc., etc.

So, the answer to the question, “Are O3s personal or work related?” is “Yes.” O3s create a forum for both. Trust your directs to choose to talk about what’s important to them.

There is one exception to the “dealer’s choice” approach to topics for O3s. As a general rule, if there’s any information that you need to get out to your entire team, as opposed to just one or two directs, we recommend it go out in what we would call a “waterfall meeting,” and not your O3s. This waterfall meeting is likely to be your weekly staff meeting (There’s a Cast for That™) where you’re only having to say it once, to all of your directs at the same time rather than seven times, to each of your seven directs, one at a time.

An agenda that would be more representative of how O3s actually occur would be 15/15. Direct first, then you.

First, the answer to the question what should you do if you run short in any meeting is easy: when you’re done, you’re done. If an O3’s content runs out, you’re done. End the MTO3, and be thankful for the few extra minutes you get back.

A recent survey of MTO3 behavior showed that the average direct talks for 21 minutes.

roughly 65% of their directs talk “about the right amount,” 30% “talk too much,” and only 5% “talk too little.”

The agenda of a meeting always serves the purpose of the meeting, not the other way around. The agenda is there to facilitate the purpose. If the agenda is getting in the way of the purpose, you allow the agenda to be flexible to get to the purpose.

Don’t punish them for not opening up. Don’t be rude or demanding.

If you’re not taking notes, it’s not a Manager Tools One on One.

There was a theme—in O3s without note‐taking—that the manager didn’t care about what was being said from a professional perspective.

The lack of note taking added to the chance that managers and directs talked less about work. While in some cases that was appreciated, in the majority there was a general dislike. It made the O3 feel like a personal meeting—as opposed to a business meeting. The fact is, O3s are both, not one or the other. Trust is both personal and professional.

The problem with an O3 without notes isn’t the lack of notes. It’s the lack of interest and accountability that no note‐taking implies.

So, circle what you promise to do, underline what you promise to do, put asterisks on what you promise to do. But be able to see your deliverables—your promises—at a glance.

Where to Conduct O3s First, don’t do an O3 in public.

Directs do not need total privacy behind closed doors to develop a great professional relationship with you.

Our data show you get roughly 80% of the value from a phone O3 that you do from a face‐to‐face O3. The reason for the decline isn’t the O3; it’s the distance.

Here’s some basic guidance: Do MTO3s face to face whenever possible. Do Zoom MTO3s when you can’t be face to face but can do a Zoom call. We’ve measured webcam MTO3s as well. You get about 90% of the value of a face‐to‐face MTO3 with Zoom. Do phone O3s when you can’t do Zoom or face to face. The basics still apply. We’ve touched on the tools we’re going to use for this O3 … but again, let’s remember our purpose. Webcams and phones are tools, but the purpose is relationships. Primary focus on the team member Regularly scheduled Never missed 30 minutes—10/10/10 Take notes

The most common forms of pushback against O3s are the following three: It’s micromanaging. I don’t have time. We talk all the time

Never tolerate from your directs that which you would not visit upon your boss. And never do to your boss that which you would not accept from your directs. The Middleman Test is a good general rule to apply when you get pushback: Would I do this to my boss?

The direct who holds to the concept that a 30‐minute meeting once a week is overbearing and over‐burdensome is telling you they are either afraid of oversight—which is scary legally—or they are above it—which is a level of arrogance that could tear apart your team.

The problem today with the average manager–direct relationship is NOT one of too much management, but far too little. Management, reasonably practiced, in virtually every organization, provides necessary guidance, controls, and incentives far below a level that is intrusive or detrimental.

Micromanagement is the systemic and routine application of an intrusive relationship such that the manager assigns tasks, explains what to do, how to do it, and insists on total process compliance, and then observes the work in real time, corrects the work as it is being done, and in the event of divergence from standards, takes OVER the work and completes it himself.

A demanding boss is NOT a micromanager. Asking for reports is not micromanaging. Expecting updates is NOT micromanaging. Asking for one meeting a week is NOT micromanaging someone. Providing your direct a weekly opportunity to communicate with you is NOT micromanaging. Spending time communicating about tasks and deliverables and deadlines and successes and failures and growth opportunities and yes even family—NONE of this is micromanaging in any way.

All I’m asking for is 30 minutes from you each week. If you’re working 50 hours a week, that’s 1% of your workweek. That’s not micromanagement.

Sometimes, using your role power (“Hey, guys, we gotta do this because we gotta do it”) is a legitimate motivational speech. Remember, though, that when you DO use role power, it is always more effective when resting on a strong relationship foundation. Role power is heightened by stronger relationships with one’s team. So, after telling everyone why O3s aren’t micromanaging, you can also say, “I hear your input, and I’ve decided to move forward. I look forward to starting the process.”

To address this concern, when we announce we’re going to start doing O3s, we announce that they won’t start for 3, 4, or 5 weeks.

Another approach you can take to combat the “busy” defense is that if we’re all so busy we don’t have time for anything more, we better get our priorities right.

But being so busy that one can’t change has dangerous implications. As busy as everyone is, this defense, left unanswered, suggests that the organization will never change.

before trying to get more of everything done, get the most important things done first.

Work on the right things first. Then get more efficient at those right things, and you’ll have more time for either more right things, or some less important things.

But let’s do the time math for a whole year of O3s: 30 minutes a week times 52 weeks. But no, not really. Half an hour for 52 weeks minus 2 weeks of vacation for you. And minus 2 weeks more for your direct’s vacation. So, half an hour times 48 weeks. That’s 24 hours. If we assume 8‐hour work days, that’s 3 days. Every year.

One final response to the time pushback: pull rank. We don’t recommend you do this very often. We always start with Relationship Power. (You probably know this, but there are three forms of power or influence in organizations. Role Power—that which the organization grants you to compel others to act for the organization; Relationship Power—your own ability to persuade others because of their knowledge and trust of you; and Expertise Power—others’ perception of your technical, industrial, or topical knowledge that causes them to follow your guidance.)

Despite our modern digital communication tools, the nature of human relationships causes us to communicate far less with those who are distant from us.

What this means is that with the move toward more remote and hybrid workers, O3s become even more necessary.

If you have the chance to have any of your directs collocated with you, do so. If you can convince some or all of your directs to come into the office, we encourage you to try.

The second reason is fear of losing employees to other opportunities that do provide work from home options. In our experience, these fears are overblown. Remote directs are in fact much more likely to be harder to retain because of the lack of connection they have to their organization. And it is much easier to search for a different job when you are working from home.

Executive decisions are often the result of significant collaboration, trade‐offs, and yes, politics.

“When you look at the top of your organization, what you call politics, they call collaboration.”

The political capital required to achieve executive success is nearly impossible to build from a distance.

For hybrid workers, we encourage you to conduct your MTO3s face to face on the days when your directs are in the office.

What about fully remote directs? We recommend you do MTO3s with all of your directs, remote directs included, no matter what.

If you don’t have O3s with distant directs, their performance and your team’s performance will suffer noticeably.

Never introduce a change to how you manage your team without first introducing the change before you make it.

The best way to conduct MTO3s with remote directs is by using Zoom, Teams, or some other video call tool. It’s a richer form of communication than by phone.

Managers conducting phone O3s achieved a results and retention improvement score of roughly 80% of the improvement achieved by managers conducting face‐to‐face O3s.

With video, the degradation in results and retention from face to face was cut in half, with an improvement of roughly 90%.

Let’s walk through, step by step, exactly what to do to get your O3s started. Choose times from your calendar. Send out an O3 email invitation. Allow for possible changes and questions as you get started. Brief your team on your O3s. Do O3s ONLY for 12 weeks.

Take the number of directs you have, multiply by 1.5, and that’s the number of times you need to make available to them in the mail. (If you have an odd number of directs, round your answer up.) If you have six directs, for example, you need to find nine half‐hour time slots, or 4.5 hours. Why 1.5× slots more than the number of your directs? Because you’re going to let them choose the time they have, and we don’t want anyone to be “forced” to take the last slot you offered.

You’ll end up with a list (let’s say, again, for a team of six directs) that looks like this: Monday 3:00 p.m. Tuesday 9:30 a.m. Tuesday 11:00 a.m. Tuesday 2:45 p.m. Wednesday 10:00 a.m. Wednesday 11:30 a.m. Wednesday 2:30 p.m. Wednesday 4:00 p.m. Thursday 8:45 a.m.

You’re going to send out a broadcast email to your entire team, not a bunch of individual emails.

Here’s a draft of an email you can download and then edit, from our website: https://www.manager-tools.com/system/files/documents/1-Sample-1-on-1-email.txt?local=1.

Answer questions.

For 12 weeks, don’t introduce any other new management behavioral change. Just O3s, for 12 weeks. At the end, you’ll know your folks better, and you’ll be much more aware of how to deliver the next step.

If you use the Manager Tools Feedback Model, we guarantee you that you will be able to give positive or negative feedback easily, and routinely, taking no more than 15 seconds each time. And your directs won’t complain.

There are two parts to that thought: What do I say to her and what did she do? Let’s talk about the “what did she do” first. When the typical manager gives feedback, the focus is on what happened. We think about what happened in the past, and we ask ourselves how to talk to the direct. About what happened. In the past. Which we can do nothing about.

They get defensive because we talk to them about their mistakes! Which happened in the past. About which they can do nothing. And they feel trapped.

Have I made any mistakes in the last month? If you’re like the rest of us, you’ll privately admit, “Yes, a number of them, if I’m honest.” Did I intend to make those mistakes? Did I set out to mess things up on purpose? If you’re still like the rest of us, you’ll immediately say, and perhaps vehemently, “No, of course I didn’t!”

Well, remember, our directs are pretty similar to us. They made mistakes, but they weren’t actively trying to mess things up. They had good reasons for the mistakes they made! So of course, they’re going to respond to a discussion about their mistake with their reasons. The mistake may not be good, but at least their reasons were.

Plus, let’s face it: our role power increases their defensiveness. We control their addiction to food, clothing, and shelter, remember? Challenge someone who fears you more than trusts you, and you’ll get some pushback.

The purpose of performance communications (and therefore feedback) is to encourage effective future behavior.

But the moment we switch to a future focus, we free ourselves up to focus on something we (and they) can do something about.

Rather than thinking, “What can I say to this person about their mistake,” the right approach is to focus not on the past, but rather on what you want, which is effectiveness in the future.

Regardless of whether your direct was ineffective or effective this morning, the true purpose of any performance communication about either situation is exactly the same: you want more effective behavior, in the future. If your direct made a mistake, you want different behavior. If your direct did it right, you want more of the same.

The MT Feedback Model has four simple steps: Step 1: Ask. Step 2: Describe the behavior. Step 3: Describe the impact of the behavior. Step 4: Encourage effective future behavior.

Can I give you some feedback? Can I make an observation? Can I share something with you? Can I have a word?

Asking (and honoring a no if it is given) enables you to make sure that the direct is listening.

never ask a question of your directs if you don’t intend to honor the answer.

asking directs for permission to give them feedback significantly increases their appreciation for the feedback and the likelihood of effective future behavior.

So it really boils down to do you want to “act like the boss,” or do you want your team to be more effective?

By the way, it’s a common assumption that we only ask when the feedback is negative. That’s wrong; ask every time. If you only ask when you give negative feedback, your directs would soon understand that this was a signal—and know what is coming next. Asking only when you’re giving negative feedback separates positive feedback from negative feedback. While that may sound right—negative feedback is harder!—it’s actually wrong.

In fact, many managers make their jobs harder by delivering negative feedback in a way that conveys some sort of punishment. They growl. They treat their offending direct poorly for a time. They scowl. They make sure their direct knows he or she is “out of favor.”

Wanting isn’t the issue; feedback is needed as part of normal human interactions. This is such a serious problem that it’s considered wicked to expect anyone to perform without it. Do you intend to act with wickedness toward your directs when you choose not to give them feedback?

We thought not. So now, if you want your boss to give you the feedback, how can you deny that same feedback to your team members? Why is it okay for you to want it, but not give it?

You’ll notice we said “behavior.” This is an important distinction, and you’ll do a lot better giving feedback if we explain why we say behavior and what it means.

If you give feedback on anything other than behavior, you’re going to get a lot of resistance from your directs, your feedback won’t work, and for most managers, you’ll stop doing it.

Unfortunately, we are incredibly wrong in our belief that we can determine what someone is thinking or feeling. And that means we’ll be fixing the wrong cause.

There’s another reason worth mentioning about giving feedback about anything other than behavior: directs don’t like it! Nobody likes it when someone assumes they know what we’re thinking, assume it’s negative, and then attempts to correct it. Nobody.

They will very likely ignore your input or even actively resist and argue the point you are making.

What IS Behavior?

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The words you choose to say out loud to others are a choice, and different words produce different results. Your choice of words makes a difference in business results. Furthermore, certain words are known to produce distinctly better results in certain situations.

How you say those words.

Our friend Michael Swenson uses the string of words, “I didn’t say you had an attitude problem,” to illustrate this beautifully. If you say, “I didn’t say you had an attitude problem,” well then, someone else said you had a problem, I didn’t say it. If you say, “I didn’t say you had an attitude problem,” well then, I surely am implying you did. If you say, “I didn’t say you had an attitude problem,” well then, you’ve got some other kind of problem.

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Your facial expressions.

You might say that you mean nothing by it—but communication is what the listener does, and you’re still responsible for your communication. Meaning is determined 7% based on the words we use, 38% by tonal differences, and 55% by nonverbal—facial expressions and body language.

Body language.

Work product.

This means that your job responsibilities are a good starting point to think about what your behaviors ought to be at work. As a general rule, work product is defined more specifically behaviorally as follows: Quality—How does your work compare to accepted standards of effectiveness and excellence? Did you meet, not meet, or exceed the standard? Do you do your work correctly, according to standards? Quantity—How much work have you done? Did you meet your quota or minimum or the guidelines? This is certainly true in many jobs where there are numerical goals, though there are many jobs that are not formally measured where quantity and efficiency can be assessed and is thus a behavior. Accuracy—Does your work require rework, or does it meet generally accepted practices in your profession? Does it have to be checked or corrected frequently? Timeliness—Do you meet deadlines? Are you on time to work and to meetings? Meeting task deadlines is the same behavior as being on time for meetings. Documentation—You’re responsible for the communication (and analysis and ideas) you present to others in written and electronic form. Emails are behavior—you made choices about what you said and how you said it. This is very much akin to the words you say and how you say them, mentioned earlier.

In this step, we say what happened because of what our direct did. The model is built on the simple cause‐and‐effect principle: our direct did something—the cause—and something happened because of it—the effect. Obviously if the effect is good, it’s positive feedback, and if the effect is bad, we’re giving negative feedback.

Look for small behaviors, and the small impacts they cause, which happen every day. It’s easier to give feedback on small items, and all those small changes will add up.

Some examples of this step include the following: “I can focus on other areas that need my attention.” “Here’s what happens: the customer calls to thank me….” “Here’s what happens: I notice your extra effort….” “I appreciate it, and the team’s job is much easier….” “Our case for the new hire is that much stronger….” “The project stays green, and we dodge a political bullet….”

In adjusting/negative feedback, all we do is ask the direct to behave differently. All we want is for them to say yes, that they’ll handle that situation differently the next time.

Some examples that we’ve tested and work well include the following: “Could/can/will you change that?” “Can you do that differently?” “What can you do differently?” “How could that be better?”

We think this proves that the longer it takes a manager to give feedback, for any reason, the less feedback they give.

If your performance communications are about anything but behavior, it’s highly likely that your directs are going to feel attacked. And if they’re attacked, they’re going to defend themselves. And then we’re going to say they’re being defensive, blaming them for their reasonable response.

Of course you won’t, because results matter, not intentions, not reasons, not ideas. Results.

We know you probably think of yourself as a problem solver, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But from your organization’s perspective, problems are most economically solved at the level at which they are created. You’re a more expensive resource than your direct, so you solving their problems isn’t what your organization wants from you. Your organization wants you to do your job, and point out the miss, and ask for better, and have your directs solve their own problems.

You’ll discover that in many cases, this dialog will strengthen your direct’s belief that she was right because she had good reasons. Directs will confuse intent with action, and action with results.

Remember: all feedback is about future behavior, not past reasons.

At a very simplistic level, the rationale for feedback and root cause analysis are similar: something went wrong, and it needs to be fixed. Alas, root cause analysis and feedback can feel quite similar, but they are incredibly different. Root cause analysis by definition is a detailed review of past actions. It is specifically focused on isolating the original offense to the system and then trying to correct it. But feedback is most assuredly not that. It is about future behavior.

Give feedback to your directs as soon as practicable, but no longer than a week after the behavior. What does “as soon as practicable” mean? It means as soon as you can deliver it briefly, politely, and for the private use of your direct.

Notice that our guidance is not “in private,” but rather, “for the private use of.”

When you bring someone into your office and close the door, you’re making feedback into too big of a deal. Feedback is not “an important conversation,” about “an issue” or “a concern.” Feedback is simply a brief conversation with fellow professionals about their future performance. The vast majority of feedback is about small things: being on time, meeting a standard, being late, failing to check someone’s references. These are not conversations that require the kind of solemnity a closed door implies. Total privacy sends a message of importance, even seriousness, which isn’t appropriate for giving performance feedback.

Giving feedback this way, without all kinds of formality, lowers the perception of its significance. It eliminates the drama. And directs love it.

We only give feedback about the most recent occurrence of a behavior you’ve noticed.

do not wait for a pattern to appear before giving feedback!

the most effective positive and negative feedback sound identical.

Even when you give negative feedback, our data show that you will get the best results when you deliver it with a positive tone.

How could we claim that the purpose of our feedback is a positive future and then deliver it with a negative tone? Do you like it when you have done your best and something turns out wrong and your boss makes it into a big deal and hints at it being a big problem?

Question 1: Am I Angry? If you’re angry, don’t give feedback. Full Stop.

Question 2: Do I Want to Remind or Punish?

Question 3: Can I Let It Go?

First, if you do pass, go ahead and deliver the feedback. If you’re not angry, if it’s not about the past or about punishment, and if you can let it go, then go ahead. But if we don’t pass, what do we do? We either delay or defer.

Basically, a shot across the bow says, “I can reach you, and I can hit you if I want to.”

In other words, we recommend you give in when a direct argues or gets defensive.

Before we get to why the model works, and how directs respond, let’s address the assumption at the heart of the resistance: when directs make a mistake, they must be threatened or punished to change their behavior for the better.

And we’d guess you’re one of them. Does your boss need to threaten you to get you to change? We’d bet a good portion of managers who read this book will say, well, they certainly did threaten me, and at times punish me, but they sure didn’t need to.

Our data show (this is from two studies looking at more than 7,000 managers and over 20,000 directs) that 93% of directs change their behavior to become effective after just one piece of negative feedback using the MT Feedback Model.

This means that, on average over a very large sample size, we need to give only three instances of feedback using the model to change 99% of the ineffective behaviors. Thirty seconds of positive conversation, no threats, no punishment, for a 99% success rate.

In the Systemic Feedback Model, we do not change our tone in any way for any of these instances. Despite the fact that we are not getting effective behavior, these are still small things, and we’re continuing to trust that he will change. We do not escalate.

Austin, can I give you some feedback? <Sure.> [We have interviewed many recipients of Systemic Feedback, and they all say that at this point they were expecting negative feedback about the late report.] When you promise me repeatedly that you are going to change your behavior regarding timeliness, and then you don’t make the change you promised, the problem we have changes from being on time to one of honesty, or integrity. You’ve told me six times in the last couple of weeks that you would start being on time, and you have not done so. The question now is one of trust and not timeliness. I can handle someone on my team who is a little late every now and again. But I can’t tolerate someone whom I can’t trust, someone who promises things to colleagues and then repeatedly fails to deliver. What can you do about this much more serious problem? <I promise I’ll start being on time.> [Delivered very shakily.] I don’t think you’re seeing the problem. I didn’t give you feedback about timeliness. We’re past that, at least for now. I’m saying you’re not being honest with your commitments. People rely on us here. I rely on you. But lately you’re not reliable. You say one thing and then do another. Again, what can you do to regain my trust regarding your commitments?

You’ll probably never have to use our Systemic Feedback Model, but you can rest easy that the regular Feedback Model works exceptionally well, and in that one in a thousand chance that it doesn’t, you’ve got a powerful tool in your back pocket.

So, we give our direct negative feedback, and we ask him to change, and he says yes. But we’re smart enough to notice a look on his face that suggests he is unsure. At this point, it’s completely okay (and smart) to ask, “Do you need some help?” And if they’re open to it, make some suggestions. “Look, the way I always did it was like this. You don’t have to do it my way, but that might get you started.” Or “Ask around on the team. If that doesn’t do it, let’s discuss it in our next One on One. We’ve all been there. It’s okay to not know. But it’s not okay to not know and not ask for help.”

In those cases where they need help, offer it. But that might take 10 minutes, and if every time something goes wrong we have to spend 10 minutes on it, we’re never going to get anything else done.

If you want to be able to give more negative feedback, and have the negative feedback you give be received more positively, just give more positive feedback.

One characteristic we found among these highly impressive managers—at all levels—is their ratio of positive to negative feedback was around nine to one.

The vast majority of stuff that happens around here is good. And that’s true everywhere, or an organization will fail. If your organization is still around, that means most of the stuff in it is good. A lot of managers think their job is to look for mistakes, but it’s not. Our job is to achieve results and keep our people. If all I do is point out mistakes, I’m focusing on the bad in the organization. But 90% of it is good. Nobody likes it when they do nine good things, and the only thing that gets noticed is their one honest mistake. It makes people not trust their manager, and I work really hard to be trusted. Some managers say that we shouldn’t reward people for just doing their jobs, but I’m not “rewarding” them. I’m reinforcing what I want. That’s how I see positive feedback: reinforcement. When my boss points out something I did well, that’s reinforcement for me. Just imagine this one small example of behavior: imagine that everyone in your organization was always on time, rarely missed a deadline, and when they knew they were about to miss, they let you know in advance? How awesome would that organization be, right? Well, then why don’t we reinforce those things that would make such a huge difference?

you want to get better at negative feedback, give more positive feedback.

The fact is, delivering feedback to remote directs is no different than in‐person feedback is. But you’re not wrong if you fear it, because it definitely feels different, and you’ll feel like you have a lot less opportunity to observe behavior and deliver feedback about it.

Feedback is most effective when the direct trusts the manager.

Far too many managers think the silver bullet of management is feedback, but it’s not: the silver bullet of management is trust, through O3s.

Feedback must be verbal.

Verbal is roughly four times more effective.

The easiest way to give verbal feedback remotely is during your O3s.

The vast majority of managers overestimate how important or “big” something has to be to be worthy of feedback. Smaller, more frequent feedback is better.

the longer it takes us to give feedback, the less feedback we give.

Feedback is best when it encourages effective performance in the future.

What this means, interestingly enough, is that all feedback is encouragement. When we learn this, part of our hesitancy around giving feedback drops away.

Managers focus entirely too much on negative feedback. We want to “fix” our directs. We don’t want the hassle of dealing with problems.

Feedback is best when it’s about behavior.

Ask during O3s what your directs are working on, today and this week. Frequently, you’ll find out your people are misaligned with your priorities. When that happens, it’s time for negative feedback. If they are aligned, give them positive feedback.

Learn to Assign Deliverables, not Tasks Here’s the difference between tasks and deliverables. A task would be: “Create a five‐slide decision brief on your vendor recommendation.” Making that into a deliverable: “Send me a five‐slide decision brief on your vendor recommendation by close of business Thursday.”

they include with the core task the reporting of the status of the task with the task itself.

With a deliverable, you never have to wonder whether something is done. If you haven’t gotten it, it IS NOT DONE. That’s why including the sending/reporting function with the task itself is so powerful.

Some directs will complain that this is extra work. They are in fact partially right. But far too often the one doing the “extra work” is the manager, tracking down work that is supposed to be done but the direct has not notified anyone she did it. And the fact is, communicating about work status is a core responsibility of every manager. It’s not extra work; it’s a part of all of our jobs. If all you want to do is “your work,” and not have to communicate, go work at a company with just one employee: you.

Ask your directs to copy you on certain emails they send, or if they prefer, blind copy you.

Create public, real‐time work/project tracking websites, and review them publicly.

If work on something is going to take longer than two weeks and involves more than one person, it pays to break it down into daily tasks.

Finally, ask your directs what they want feedback on. You’ll be surprised by what you learn.

Bosses who are trusted have much better success delivering feedback, and MTO3s are the best way we’ve tested to achieve a trusting relationship.

We don’t recommend you start using the Manager Tools Feedback Model until you have done 12 weeks of O3s.

never introduce a change to how you manage your directs without first introducing that change before you make it.

When managers tell us that their directs are resisting getting feedback, even positive feedback, we find that in the vast majority of cases, one or two things didn’t happen: they hadn’t started doing MTO3s yet, so trust was low, or they didn’t brief their team in advance of delivering feedback.

If you start feedback after only a week or two of MTO3s, you’ll be learning two things at once (O3s and Feedback), reducing the effectiveness of each.

Whether you intend to or not, you’ll be sending the message that you really only did MTO3s to “soften the blow” of communicating more about performance. As we’ve said, most managers think that feedback is the silver bullet of management, but it isn’t; O3s are.

Yes, directs want each interaction to be brief. But they also want—and you will want—time to learn and digest each tool and its implications before you and they move on to the next one.

If you go too fast, your directs are going to start pushing back. If you try to move through each of the tools faster than our guidance, the resistance you get will cause the overall process to take longer than the timeline.

Announce your intention in your weekly staff meeting.

Feedback is an individual behavior, but announcing it to the team says everyone is going to benefit.

We don’t recommend giving the same briefing over and over again in your O3s—that’s inefficient. Not only will each of your directs assume they’re being singled out, you’ll have to answer many of the same questions.

If everyone is going to be affected by a new policy/system/process, it’s far better to brief them as a group.

Schedule 30 minutes for your briefing.

Use our materials. We’ve got a feedback document that gives you everything you need, free on our website. Hand it out to your directs. It will make it much easier for them to RECEIVE feedback if they know what’s coming and why it’s coming.

Cover the purpose of feedback:

Start by giving only positive feedback for 8 weeks.

If you wonder how much feedback to give, shoot for one item of feedback to one direct per day as you start. Not one delivery of the model to each of your directs: just one to any one of your team. That’s not that much. Even if you stumble a bit, that will only take 30 seconds. Start slowly with feedback. Don’t try to be a hero and give everybody all kinds of feedback. One bit of feedback a day. Just one.

If you can go five days in a row having given feedback one time, raise your limit to two, and so on.

Be nice. Over and over again, we learn that bosses who aren’t angry, who aren’t sharp, and who don’t “send a message” get MUCH better results.

Smile. Speak in a polite tone. Act as if the mistake that was made was sort of funny.

Be brief. Don’t take more than 30 seconds, and even that is almost too much.

Ask that they not do it that way next time.

Note that on many of these, we end with “Thanks.” This is a vocal way of ending the conversation by assuming their answer.

“When you do X, Y happens.”

What if a top performer asks for negative feedback before its time?

After 8 weeks, add in negative feedback. Notice we don’t “switch” from positive to negative. We just start looking for opportunities to give negative as well as positive feedback.

Stay as positive as you can.

you believe you should be “vigilant” against “mistakes,” two things will happen gradually: you’ll start seeing all the mistakes, and you’ll STOP seeing all the good things.

Positive feedback is much more powerful than negative feedback.

The third critical behavior for effective managers is always raising the bar and asking for higher levels of performance.

Coaching is the least often used tool among the Manager Tools Trinity.

Feedback takes seconds, but coaching takes months—it seems much harder.

It’s a way for you to supervise the self‐improvement process of one of your directs, over a series of months. And you can do it in 5–10 minutes a week.

The adult learning model says adults learn by doing.

It’s entirely possible that you will be able to accomplish the first three steps of each coaching engagement you work through in a single O3 meeting.

How do we set a goal? Easy. We describe a behavior or a result we want to achieve, starting with a date by which we want it achieved. For example, consider the following: *  By 1 December, you will attain certified network engineer status. * By 30 October, you will run the staff meeting successfully. * By 1 January, you will submit the capital plan without errors.

We use a goal structure called DBQ: Deadline, Behavior, Quality. We start with the deadline because deadlines drive behavior. And because we remember that coaching is a more powerful tool than feedback, we usually don’t set coaching deadlines of less than 4 months away. If someone can change their behavior in less than 4 months, they probably just need lots of feedback, and we don’t need a Manager Tools Coaching plan.

If you’re wondering how far into the future to set a goal for one of your directs whom you’re coaching, take whatever length of time you think it will take them, and double it.

It’s much better to build a development/coaching plan around winning the process than forcing the process.

You’ll note that we say behavior they want to improve. This is important. Coaching is a self‐improvement effort. We managers are responsible for assisting our directs and overseeing their own self‐improvement project.

You can’t coach your directs if they don’t want to improve.

You doing anything beyond planning and checking makes you better at that task, not your direct, which defeats the purpose. Adults learn by doing, and that means your direct has to be the one doing all the doing.

By I October, you will run a successful meeting. You will have an agenda, start on time, and end on time.

Hey, next week, let’s get started on your development goals. If it’s okay with you, we’ll start on running meetings. To make that possible, I’m going to give up my portion of our One On One, and we can spend that 10–15 minutes getting started. If you want to make that first session more effective, you could listen to the Manager Tools podcast on their Coaching Model, but you don’t have to.

So, we’ve got a goal, now how do we get there? By jointly brainstorming resources the direct could use to become more effective at the skill we’re coaching.

We take 2–3 minutes to come up with a list of potential resources we THINK that MIGHT be POTENTIALLY helpful to our direct in learning and doing this new or better skill. We write them down as we share them with each other.

The idea here is to go for VOLUME, not accuracy.

We’ve got a goal. We’ve got a pile of ideas to get us there. What now? Now we just create the first week or two of a plan. We choose one or two resources that we want to start with and write down a series of tasks (deliverables!) for our directs to help them start learning and improving their behavior.

The reporting (see the “send me” part of each of the following tasks) is what makes a task a deliverable. By September 15, send me a receipt for your order of the book Project Management for Dummies from Amazon. By September 16, send me a note on what you learned listening to Manager Tools podcast on project management. By September 19, attend another manager’s meeting and send me an email on what they did well/poorly.

We want to let our direct have significant input here because they will be the one doing the work. Don’t expect them to learn the way we did. Some people like to read books; others like to shadow a mentor. Neither is right; they’re just different.

But we recommend you start with lower‐cost stuff, like a book or a mentor or a podcast or blog‐reading.

Note here something that surprises a lot of folks: we’re only going to plan the first 1–2 weeks. We are NOT going to plan the entire 6 months of work. That would take too long, we don’t know enough, and things will change 10 times between now and then. We’ll never ever coach anyone with that model of full, long‐term planning.

Left to their own devices, the vast majority of professionals, asked to do additional, temporary work, that doesn’t feel urgent because the deadlines are too far away, will not do it.

And that means creating short‐term tasks. The short‐term task/deliverable approach is validated by your own experience on projects. If you start a project as a team member, and at the first few weekly meetings, nobody does any of their deliverables, and there’s a lack of energy around moving forward, you totally know you’re on a project that’s going to die. On the other hand, if in the first 2–4 weeks, every deliverable is neatly accomplished, and it’s “early green,” as we say, you’ll probably be thinking, this effort is going to be successful.

There’s something else to remember from our project management experience, one of the rules of project planning. Every project is in danger of being delayed by the longest unfinished task in the project. (If you didn’t know it, this really is a cardinal rule of task development in project management.) Thinking of coaching as a project, and knowing this rule, it makes no sense at all to assign someone a book to be read in a month and expect them to show up with it all read.

DEADLINES that are going to be enforced are the biggest creator of coaching success. Not clever learning events, but deadlines, plain and simple.

So, what the MT Coaching Tool model does is leverage what we know of human organizational behavior and sets short deadlines, on doable tasks, to increase the chance of completion, and create an “early green” state. Here’s an example of how we might go about getting a book read which was one of our resources. By 3 p.m. today (Monday), send me a list of five possible books on project management. By 9 a.m. tomorrow (Tuesday), ask me for my five book suggestions if I haven’t already replied. By 2 p.m. Tuesday, send me a receipt for the book you bought. By 3 p.m. Wednesday, send me a three‐sentence summary of the first chapter of the book you bought. By 2 p.m. Friday, send me a three‐sentence summary of the second chapter of the book you bought.

Also notice the use of tasks that are not done until they are reported on as being done. Yes, work is “done” in the mind of the doer when she finishes the task. But the work has no value to the organization until the organization knows it’s done.

The answer is the direct, for two reasons. First, they’re the first to know, and reporting is always easier for the one who did the work. Second, the direct can report on it in less time than the manager can find out, at a lower labor cost per minute too.

There’s something else that’s important here as well. The adult learning model reminds us that we learn by doing. Whenever possible, we look for opportunities to observe our directs engaging in the behavior we want, to provide them feedback on what we observe, and we make that a regular very‐short‐scope task.

When the direct we’re coaching runs out of tasks, we just sit down in the next O3 and either extend with the resource they’re already using (more mentor meetings, more book chapters), or we go back to our resource list to see if there’s something there we could use to help move toward the goal. When a particular resource doesn’t seem to work, we stop using it. This is particularly important to remember when we and our directs are different in style or behavioral tendency.

And when they finish the entire engagement by achieving their DBQ goal, celebrate with them.

But the vast majority of your coaching work is identical whether you are collocated or distant from your directs. During a coaching engagement with one of your directs when you’re collocated, 95% of YOUR work will be done during your One on Ones (O3s).

Our experience with thousands of managers doing MTO3s over Zoom and coaching directs shows that there is almost no difference in coaching using the Manager Tools Coaching model.

If you only assign tasks, and not deliverables, while coaching a remote direct, you will be forced to check up on every deadline of every task, or only find out the status of all of each week’s tasks at the end of the week, during your MTO3.

A CSB is just an online spreadsheet that lists, vertically, the deliverables your direct agrees to undertake during the coaching process. First task, row 1, second task, row 2. List each task in column A, and list its date in Column B. You’ll only have 1–3 weeks of current tasks live at any one time, but after, say, 20 weeks, you might have 3–5 tasks spanning rows 100–105, with the previous rows showing all those previously completed tasks. If you want to get fancy, you can set up some logic in your spreadsheet that turns a cell red if the date in its deadline cell is in the past. If you want more guidance about the subtleties of such spreadsheets, There’s a Cast for ThatTM, about the Manager Tools Cypress spreadsheet. It’s been used for hundreds of thousands of tasks.

And you’ll probably want to start with your top performers.

Brief your team. After you’ve introduced O3s and feedback to everyone on your team, it’s time to brief them on how you’re going to begin coaching them on their skills and abilities.

Note that if this book is your first exposure to our guidance, and you’re not doing MTO3s or using our MT Feedback Model yet, starting coaching won’t happen until nearly 8 months from now. (Start date plus 3 weeks to start doing MTO3s plus 12 weeks of MTO3s only plus 8 weeks of positive feedback only plus 8 weeks of both positive and negative feedback equals 31 weeks.)

Start with Your Top Performers

The general key to rolling out such tools is brief them before you use them.

never introduce a change to how you manage your team without first introducing that change to your team before you make it.

What he was seeing was the gradual change in managerial life—from being smart about STUFF to being smart about PEOPLE. Basically, at some point your technical or industrial smarts run out, and you’ve got to get smart about people.

Then he had the realization that separates all great executives from managers: that people were what executive effectiveness was all about, and it was no longer about the technical (or other) work.

The leverage equation became simple. You want the best people you can get and then you want to make those people as effective as you possibly can.

And in our experience, the single biggest reason for new executives being forced to pursue other opportunities is their failure to learn how to delegate when they were a manager.

Well, you’re right, but here’s what you’re not seeing: when you look up at the top of your organization, what you call politics, those executives call collaboration. Trust us, there are no executive roles that aren’t rife with politics.

But here’s the thing: politics is just a slightly dirty word for the collaboration that is happening. Politics are nothing but relationship effects in decision‐making. Executive decisions are never made solely on the basis of logic and data and rationality. Executive decisions always include the relationship effects that exist in your organization.

So, this new executive has one‐third of her schedule taken away. And concurrently, she’s given a bunch of new responsibilities, basically tripling her workload. And this is when things start to break down.

A manager’s primary ability to achieve her responsibilities comes from maximizing the effectiveness of her directs. The biggest lever she has to accomplish her responsibilities is the trusting relationship she creates with those directs.

But the modern organizational manager is not just responsible for meeting standards that lead to survival; he is also responsible for growth. For the organization to grow, it must not just keep up. It must produce both more value than the rising tide of human evolution and more value than the other entities that address the needs of its customers.

The solution managers have for growing the capability of the organization beyond their team’s responsibilities is delegation.

Delegation helps the organization most easily grow its productivity by transferring work from a higher cost center to a lower cost center, which is to say from a manager to a direct. After an initial period of change, when quality decreases slightly, the output of the team is unchanged but the cost of what the manager and his directs just did went down because the direct is now doing work that the manager used to do. The organization also gains the time in potential productivity that the manager used to spend doing the delegated task. Assuming that the manager uses that time wisely, delegation leads to less costs to produce the same output and also producing more with the same number of people.

Delegate one of the big gray balls. Delegate the big black ball. Delegate one or more of the small balls. Let’s take the options in order since the first two are wrong, and the last one is right. ;‐)

The lesson: one of your small balls is a big ball to your direct. They don’t know how to do the task, it’s new to them, and the expectations are higher. They have to spend a lot more time than you did to get it done. So your small ball/responsibility, when it drops down a level in the organization, becomes a big ball for your direct.

Splitting a big ball among multiple directs is generally not a good plan. If the ball were easily splittable, it would have probably already split itself up into small balls. Managing multiple people’s work and coordinating them to come together to achieve one result at this level makes your life harder.

You can’t delegate a new big responsibility because you don’t know how to do it yet. If you don’t know how to do it, how are you going to help your direct to understand it? How are you going to know if they’re following the right path? You need to understand the project before you can delegate it.

So the answer becomes to delegate one or more of the small balls.

So the only solution to this delegation cascade is the individual contributor must stop doing something.

When we get to the bottom of the organization, since there’s no one to delegate to, the individual contributor “delegates to the floor.” He stops doing some things.

And that lays bare the lie that managers must “protect” their people. The reality is quite the contrary: organizations’ existences, which are predicated on growth, require professionals at all levels to accept delegations. Delegating and the acceptance of delegation are a core professional behavior necessary for long‐term organizational success.

Don’t delegate your primary responsibilities.

Don’t think about yourself. Many managers delegate responsibilities that they don’t like, don’t need, don’t want to do, or aren’t good at. This is called the “push” model of delegating: we “push” things down to our directs.

If your directs realize you’re getting rid of work you don’t like, don’t need, or don’t want to do, they won’t see delegation as a trust‐based behavior. They’ll say no because they don’t want to be your trash bin. And rightly so.

Rather, think about your directs.

What does he want to do? What does she like to do? What does she need to do for her growth? What is he good at?

THIS is called the “pull” model of delegation. You’re not pushing down stuff you don’t want; you’re letting your directs’ needs and wants “pull” responsibilities toward them.

If your directs want to, need to, or are also good at it—and they can do it close to as good as you can—you ought to seriously consider delegating it to them.

The standard you ought to apply when thinking about delegating is, “Can she do it as well as I did it when I first started doing it in this role?”

1. Reporting.

2. Meetings.

3. Presentations.

4. Projects.

The initial conversation will take very little time and can take place in a One on One (O3) or at another convenient time. It has four simple steps, with some additional details that occur after the delegation is accepted.

State your desire for help.

Notice, we don’t ask “Sarah, can you do me a favor?” This isn’t a personal thing. It’s a work thing. We’re asking nicely, but we’re not getting personal. (And we tried this construction, and it didn’t work when we tested it.)

Tell them why you’re asking THEM.

Ask for specific acceptance.

“Would you please take over delivering my monthly briefing to the executive team?”

But typically what role power engenders is what is called “compliance energy.” That is, our direct knows he or she must comply.

When we use our relationship power with our directs, we get what is known as “commitment energy,” which has been shown to be more valuable in task accomplishment than compliance energy (as you might imagine).

the risk of being told no is far outweighed by the value of engaging our direct’s commitment energy.

Our data show, over 9 years and close to 3,400 delegation requests we measured, 81% of directs say yes to their Manager Tools manager’s request to accept a delegation.

Even though we managers worry that we have to tell our directs everything before they’ll be able to say yes, more than four out of five of them say yes without knowing the details.

If you wait to ask your directs only after walking them through the details, they will have been listening to the details thinking of the problems and issues associated with all you’re telling them. But if you ask first, and they say yes, they will be listening while trying to figure out how to work through and solve for the details you’re sharing with them.

Now describe the task/project in detail.

Go over deadline and quality standards.

Nail down reporting standards.

Ask for skill/resource needs.

What if a direct repeatedly says no to delegation requests?

When they say no, honor it, initially.

If you start overruling answers to some of the questions you pose, you’re going to cause directs to tell you what you want to hear even when it’s false, wrong, or unethical. The overruling of honest answers leads to dishonesty. Full stop.

After two rejections, examine your assumptions.

Additional work, new work, or different work are all signs, assuming the choice is made ethically, of an organization growing or changing. No sustainable organization does not do those things.

Here’s how it might sound. I’m worried you’re in danger of affecting your performance review. Accepting delegations is part of the development and growth process we all have to go through here. I’m also worried that you’re gaining a reputation as someone who isn’t a team player. Others are accepting much more often than you. And finally, I’m worried that I won’t be able to give you the kind of ranking on your performance review you might like. The fact is, we’re always going to be dealing with more work, and saying no means you’re not keeping up with the company, with me, and with your teammates. Let’s talk about what’s going on…

Delegation is the easiest part of the Trinity to roll out because you can (almost) start delegating right away. That said, we would still recommend you do Manager Tools One on Ones (O3s) for 12 weeks before you start delegating willy‐nilly. Trust is your best friend as a manager. Even if you think you have great relationships with your directs, 12 more weeks of waiting to delegate isn’t going to be a problem.

So yes, you could slide delegation forward a little in the timeline for your top performers. (Don’t do that with coaching.) The only thing you might regret is that when they do well (or not), you may not have the feedback model to give them feedback with.

The Manager Tools manager is an ethical professional. She puts her family first. Professionally she is dedicated to her organization’s success. She chooses the harder right instead of the easier wrong. She knows that results matter above all else, but the best roads to results are built by well‐managed professionals. She knows, in the end, that it’s all about people, and more communication is better.

If you want to be a great manager, implement our recommendations with love. What we mean is professional love: the willingness to risk yourself for the benefit of another. It means doing something that may be a little more difficult for you as a way of showing respect for your colleagues and your organization.

You can give negative feedback with love in your heart. You can deliver tough messages with kindness. You don’t have to be mean, short, or disrespectful to challenge people. You don’t have to be brusque or rude. You don’t have to “act like the boss.” Nor do you have to skip, or sugarcoat, hard messages. Be direct, and be kind doing it. That takes love. And it’s a good thing. If you’re going to get in trouble, wouldn’t you rather it be for doing the right thing, for the right reason, with the best of intentions? Don’t give in to the common wisdom; wisdom isn’t common.

And the First Step to Being a Good Manager Is to Be a Good Person