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Managing People Is Like Herding Cats.
By Silicon India | Tuesday, 11 October, 2011
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Bangalore: The recipe for being a successful people manager is more catnip, less catnap!
'Managing People Is Like Herding Cats...' iss what the Leadership Guru, Warren Bennis said and wrote about! And he had compelling reasons for doing so. To quote him: âPeople may, however, be coaxed, cajoled, persuaded, adored, and gently led.â He continues further, â...any leader who dares to think of himself or herself as the âcatâs meowâ will likely be hissed and clawed. The recipe calls for more catnip, less catnap!â
Very successful people managers stand out for the following reasons:
l They understand that motivation is almost always intrinsic
2 Motivated people move faster, take ownership, solve problems and build and keep the team together
3 Encourage people to work hard and play even harder4 Help every one in the team to become career-resilient
And the way they go about accomplishing all this is amazingly different! They stop managing âpeopleâ. Instead, they manage the âcontextâ. Therefore, the secret to smart and successful people management lies not so much in managing people, but managing the context in which people function.
Let me explain what âmanaging the contextâ means.
Firstly, it means building trust and mutual respect within the team and between teams. This, of course, takes time. It involves reliability and constancy. Managers build trust when they articulate the values they stand for and when their people know where you are coming from. It is often emphasized that âtrust-worthinessâ precedes trust and the trusted leader behaves as trust worthy as a prelude to creating trust in workplace. Trust worthy leaders do not pretend to be what they are not and they acknowledge that every member in the team including themselves is unique in what they bring to the work in terms of their abilities and motivation.
Managers create a climate of trust by focusing on three things:
l Demonstrate Competence. Competent managers generate a lot of trust in the team
2 Demonstrate Congruity. This is about integrity, saying what you mean, meaning what you say and bridging the gap between what is being said and being done
3 Demonstrate Constancy: Clearly stating a purpose and sharing the same with the team engenders a lot of trust in the team
Secondly, managing context means empowering the team in every possible way. Empower-ment is usually experienced in four different themes:
l People feel significant and wanted
2 Learning & Competence matter
3 People are part of a community
4 Work is exciting and every thing possible is done to make the work exciting
Thirdly, it means explaining the big picture to team members. This is a key ritual that leaders across levels in organizations need to keep in mind and perform with religious fervour! The big picture should cover amongst other things how a team memberâs quality impacts over all quality, linkage between organizationâs vision and its meaning to individualâs goals and contribution and the like.
Fourthly, context management also means creating âgung hoâ spirit at workplace where people feel like coming to work every day, looking for challenges and stretching to better their own performance with each passing day. It also means making people perceive who needs what help and support and going the extra mile to extend this.
Fifthly, it also calls for a culture of catching people doing things right, rather than doing wrong things. If only managers pay attention to the âinvisible signâ around the necks of their team members, they will be able to read âmake me feel importantâ. So, catching people doing things right and celebrating success, no matter how small they are, will go a long way. Early in my career, I had a manager who took enormous pride in declaring his philosophy about people, which is: âwhen people do a great job, they do not need a praise since they are paid for it anywayâ¦. And when people do a bad job, they need to be fixed as I am paid to do that anyway!â
Understandably enough, his team had low motivation and began to look for opportunities elsewhere within and outside the organization.Sure enough there are many other routes to âmanaging the right contextâ for people to reach out to their potential within and deliver their very best. So, stop trying to manage people, but manage the context for best results.
Remember what Warren Bennis remarked: âWhen it comes to cats, it is milk before meat!â
Perspective is important in effective management of people. And it is common sense that dictates a manager's effectiveness
In this column, I propose to borrow extensively from Peter Druckerâs seminal work entitled âEffective Executiveâ and share some perspectives on effective management of people. Many of these thoughts and ideas are shared by other management thinkers and gurus like Marcus Buckingham of Gallup fame as well.
Staffing for success is a significant part of talent management responsibility of every people manager. Common sense dictates that managersâ effectiveness is, but a direct result and synergy of the effectiveness of people they bring on board.
Focus on Strengths:
Extraordinary people managers are those that get extra-ordinary results from ordinary people. And they do so by focusing on what strengths their people bring to work. When they proceed to build their teams, their focus is not on minimizing weaknesses but on maximizing strengths. It may sound strange, but smart managers always know that to place a person or staff a team to avoid weakness will end up at best in mediocrity!
In reality, there are no âwell-roundedâ people, those with just strengths and no weaknesses. Drucker provides a beautiful analogy when he says, âwhere there are peaks, there are valleys too.â After all, what a man cannot do is merely a limitation.
Focus on Contribution:
Effective people managers never ask: âHow does he get along with me?â Chemistry, of course, is important. But even more important is contribution. Contribution in an organization comes in three areas, viz.,
* Direct results;
* Commitment to Company Values & their constant affirmation; and
* Building & developing people for tomorrow
While every people manager is accountable for all the three, they should expect their individual contributor team members to contribute to the first two. Contribution flows from clearly defined goals and standards for measurement of the goal achievement. Making them clear to the team even before contribution is sought is very important. Equally important is continuous reinforcement of the same.
Focus on making each job big & demanding:
Good managers design or enrich jobs with a view to building sufficient challenge to bring out the best in their people. Particularly in big organizations, there is a tendency to make the jobs small. Drucker brings this out eloquently when he writes: âEvery survey of young knowledge workers â physicians in the Army Medical Corps, chemists in the research labs, accountants or engineers in the plant, nurses in the hospital- produces the same results. The ones who are enthusiastic and who, in turn, have results to show for their work, are the ones whose abilities are being challenged and used.â
Focus on moving people to the right jobs:
As opportunities present themselves, good people managers move their people to the right jobs that challenge and bring the best out of them. They do not believe in the â indispensable manâ philosophy. It is interesting to see Drucker offer three explanations why some managers may behave and believe in such a philosophy:
* The employee is actually incompetent and can only survive if carefully shielded from demands;
* The employeeâs strength is misused to bolster a weak manager who cannot stand on his own two feet; or
* His strength is misused to delay tackling a serious problem if not to conceal its existence.Focus on unleashing talent, and not on reforming people
Great people managers are also known for a distinct approach to managing people and their performance. They do not attempt reforming their team members! They just simply bring their best out. As the Bible tells in the Parable of Talents, the task of a people manager is to multiply performance capacity of the whole by putting to use whatever strength, whatever wealth, whatever aspiration there is in individual!
The author is Executive VP and Chief People officer, Symphony Services Corporation. He can be reached at mahalingam.c@symphonysv.com
'Managing People Is Like Herding Cats...' iss what the Leadership Guru, Warren Bennis said and wrote about! And he had compelling reasons for doing so. To quote him: âPeople may, however, be coaxed, cajoled, persuaded, adored, and gently led.â He continues further, â...any leader who dares to think of himself or herself as the âcatâs meowâ will likely be hissed and clawed. The recipe calls for more catnip, less catnap!â
Very successful people managers stand out for the following reasons:
l They understand that motivation is almost always intrinsic
2 Motivated people move faster, take ownership, solve problems and build and keep the team together
3 Encourage people to work hard and play even harder4 Help every one in the team to become career-resilient
And the way they go about accomplishing all this is amazingly different! They stop managing âpeopleâ. Instead, they manage the âcontextâ. Therefore, the secret to smart and successful people management lies not so much in managing people, but managing the context in which people function.
Let me explain what âmanaging the contextâ means.
Firstly, it means building trust and mutual respect within the team and between teams. This, of course, takes time. It involves reliability and constancy. Managers build trust when they articulate the values they stand for and when their people know where you are coming from. It is often emphasized that âtrust-worthinessâ precedes trust and the trusted leader behaves as trust worthy as a prelude to creating trust in workplace. Trust worthy leaders do not pretend to be what they are not and they acknowledge that every member in the team including themselves is unique in what they bring to the work in terms of their abilities and motivation.
Managers create a climate of trust by focusing on three things:
l Demonstrate Competence. Competent managers generate a lot of trust in the team
2 Demonstrate Congruity. This is about integrity, saying what you mean, meaning what you say and bridging the gap between what is being said and being done
3 Demonstrate Constancy: Clearly stating a purpose and sharing the same with the team engenders a lot of trust in the team
Secondly, managing context means empowering the team in every possible way. Empower-ment is usually experienced in four different themes:
l People feel significant and wanted
2 Learning & Competence matter
3 People are part of a community
4 Work is exciting and every thing possible is done to make the work exciting
Thirdly, it means explaining the big picture to team members. This is a key ritual that leaders across levels in organizations need to keep in mind and perform with religious fervour! The big picture should cover amongst other things how a team memberâs quality impacts over all quality, linkage between organizationâs vision and its meaning to individualâs goals and contribution and the like.
Fourthly, context management also means creating âgung hoâ spirit at workplace where people feel like coming to work every day, looking for challenges and stretching to better their own performance with each passing day. It also means making people perceive who needs what help and support and going the extra mile to extend this.
Fifthly, it also calls for a culture of catching people doing things right, rather than doing wrong things. If only managers pay attention to the âinvisible signâ around the necks of their team members, they will be able to read âmake me feel importantâ. So, catching people doing things right and celebrating success, no matter how small they are, will go a long way. Early in my career, I had a manager who took enormous pride in declaring his philosophy about people, which is: âwhen people do a great job, they do not need a praise since they are paid for it anywayâ¦. And when people do a bad job, they need to be fixed as I am paid to do that anyway!â
Understandably enough, his team had low motivation and began to look for opportunities elsewhere within and outside the organization.Sure enough there are many other routes to âmanaging the right contextâ for people to reach out to their potential within and deliver their very best. So, stop trying to manage people, but manage the context for best results.
Remember what Warren Bennis remarked: âWhen it comes to cats, it is milk before meat!â
Perspective is important in effective management of people. And it is common sense that dictates a manager's effectiveness
In this column, I propose to borrow extensively from Peter Druckerâs seminal work entitled âEffective Executiveâ and share some perspectives on effective management of people. Many of these thoughts and ideas are shared by other management thinkers and gurus like Marcus Buckingham of Gallup fame as well.
Staffing for success is a significant part of talent management responsibility of every people manager. Common sense dictates that managersâ effectiveness is, but a direct result and synergy of the effectiveness of people they bring on board.
Focus on Strengths:
Extraordinary people managers are those that get extra-ordinary results from ordinary people. And they do so by focusing on what strengths their people bring to work. When they proceed to build their teams, their focus is not on minimizing weaknesses but on maximizing strengths. It may sound strange, but smart managers always know that to place a person or staff a team to avoid weakness will end up at best in mediocrity!
In reality, there are no âwell-roundedâ people, those with just strengths and no weaknesses. Drucker provides a beautiful analogy when he says, âwhere there are peaks, there are valleys too.â After all, what a man cannot do is merely a limitation.
Focus on Contribution:
Effective people managers never ask: âHow does he get along with me?â Chemistry, of course, is important. But even more important is contribution. Contribution in an organization comes in three areas, viz.,
* Direct results;
* Commitment to Company Values & their constant affirmation; and
* Building & developing people for tomorrow
While every people manager is accountable for all the three, they should expect their individual contributor team members to contribute to the first two. Contribution flows from clearly defined goals and standards for measurement of the goal achievement. Making them clear to the team even before contribution is sought is very important. Equally important is continuous reinforcement of the same.
Focus on making each job big & demanding:
Good managers design or enrich jobs with a view to building sufficient challenge to bring out the best in their people. Particularly in big organizations, there is a tendency to make the jobs small. Drucker brings this out eloquently when he writes: âEvery survey of young knowledge workers â physicians in the Army Medical Corps, chemists in the research labs, accountants or engineers in the plant, nurses in the hospital- produces the same results. The ones who are enthusiastic and who, in turn, have results to show for their work, are the ones whose abilities are being challenged and used.â
Focus on moving people to the right jobs:
As opportunities present themselves, good people managers move their people to the right jobs that challenge and bring the best out of them. They do not believe in the â indispensable manâ philosophy. It is interesting to see Drucker offer three explanations why some managers may behave and believe in such a philosophy:
* The employee is actually incompetent and can only survive if carefully shielded from demands;
* The employeeâs strength is misused to bolster a weak manager who cannot stand on his own two feet; or
* His strength is misused to delay tackling a serious problem if not to conceal its existence.Focus on unleashing talent, and not on reforming people
Great people managers are also known for a distinct approach to managing people and their performance. They do not attempt reforming their team members! They just simply bring their best out. As the Bible tells in the Parable of Talents, the task of a people manager is to multiply performance capacity of the whole by putting to use whatever strength, whatever wealth, whatever aspiration there is in individual!
The author is Executive VP and Chief People officer, Symphony Services Corporation. He can be reached at mahalingam.c@symphonysv.com
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