Six Practices That Draw the Best Out of Your People

How to Draw the Best Out of Your People

Think of two or three people that work with you that have the potential to do better than they are doing right now:

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What difference would it make, to you or your organization, if the people in your area gave their best to their work?

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Management Practice 1: Lead Yourself

The first and paramount responsibility of anyone who purports to manage is to manage self: one’s own integrity, character, ethics, knowledge, wisdom, temperament, words and acts. It is a complex, unending, incredibly difficult, often-shunned task. We spend little time and rarely excel at management of self precisely because it is so much more difficult than prescribing and controlling the behaviors of others.—Dee Hock,”The Art of Chaordic Leadership” Leader to Leader, No. 15, Winter 2000.

Looking back, my life seems to be one long obstacle course, with me as the chief obstacle.—Jack Paar, Comedian

In the movie, The Patriot, Mel Gibson plays a peaceful farmer, Benjamin Martin, who is driven to lead the Colonial Militia during the American Revolution, when a sadistic British officer murders his son. As you watch the video clip, what lessons on self leadership do you pick up from Benjamin Martin?

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Five things managers must know to manage themselves first.

1. Know your natural talents.

What are your first thoughts and ideas that come easily and naturally to you when given an assignment? What natural abilities do you lean on when solving a problem? What have you productively produced over and over again, seemingly without
much effort? How did you do that? What were you doing that brought the most joy, satisfaction and fulfillment to your work or life? ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

2. Know your limits.

What has given you the most trouble, time and time again? What is difficult for you
to understand and/or learn? What are the things, when asked to do, that make you cringe? Why? ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

3. Know where you are going.

What is the vision for your life? What is the number one thing you want to be known for with work, with your friends, in your family? What are the top three ways you will achieve your life vision? ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

4. Know what’s most important to you.

What do you value? What are the top three things that, if you spent more time doing them, would bring the greatest results and increase your effectiveness ten-fold? ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

5. Know what you need to stop doing.

What are you hating to do that drains you of emotional energy? What are you doing that produces mediocre results? What are you doing that could be done better by someone else? ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Managers who manage themselves first, who spend the time digging deep within their mind, heart and soul to discover and know themselves better, align themselves like a laser on the target of effectiveness and influence. Then, and only then, do managers become effective leaders of their people, a catalytic force that gets the best out of their people and propels their organizations to greatness.—Steven Liparoto

If you want to manage somebody, manage yourself. Do that well and you’ll be ready to stop managing and start leading.—John Maxwell, Developing the Leader Within

Management Practice 2: Know Your People

Anatomy of a Strength

Strengths consist of:

1. Talents: Natural recurring patterns of thought, feelings or behaviors.
2. Knowledge: Facts and lessons learned.
3. Skills: Steps of an activity.
4. Strength-based Performance Evaluation
   1. What is the person’s impact on the business?
   2. What is the person’s impact on your customers?
   3. What is the person’s impact on the employees around them?
      1. Strength Finders Survey: http://www.strengthsfinder.com
      2. Now Discover Your Strengths by Marcus Buckingham and Donald O. Clifton, Ph.D.

Management Practice 3: Build Trust With Your People

Technique and technology are important but adding trust is the issue of the decade.— Tom Peters, Business Author

There is one thing that is common to every individual, relationship, team, family, organization, nation, economy and civilization throughout the world–one thing, which if removed, will destroy the most powerful government, the most successful business, the most thriving economy, the most influential leadership, the greatest friendship, the strongest character, the deepest love. On the other hand, if developed and leveraged, that one thing has the potential to create unparalleled success and prosperity in every dimension of life. Yet, it is the least understood, most neglected and most underestimated possibility of our time. That one thing is trust.—Stephen R. Covey, The Speed of Trust

Trust as a verb is seen in what people say and do. Keep this in mind as you answer the following questions:

The Truth About Building Trust With Your People

1. Building trust is foundational to the success of you and your team.
   1. The Five Dysfunctions of a Team—Patrick Lencioni
      1. Inattention to Results
      2. Avoidance of Accountability
      3. Lack of Commitment
      4. Fear of Conflict
      5. Absence of Trust
2. Building trust with your team is a key function of leadership.
   1. Character—Who you are
   2. Competency—What you can do
   3. Cooperation—How you relate to others
   4. Communication—What you say
3. Building trust among your team members requires mutual accountability.
   1. Alignment towards a shared vision
   2. Working towards shared objectives
   3. Working together with a synergistic, interdependent attitude

Five Management Practices that Enhance Trust

• Create and maintain a self-development plan.
• Deliver on the promises you make.
• Don’t skirt tough issues.
• Expect the best from others.
• Become a good listener.
• Practice the art of team building.

Organizations are no longer built on force, but on trust.—Peter Drucker

Management Practice 4: Coach Your People

Coaching increases performance, productivity and job satisfaction at all levels.—Larry Yu, MIT Sloan Management Review, Vol. 48.

The person who figures out how to harness the collective genius of the people in his or her organization is going to blow the competition away!—Walter Wriston, Banker, Harvard Business Review

Coaching in today’s information/knowledge/worker age must address the whole person.

Management Practice 5: Release Your People

Releasing your people requires empowering leadership behavior.

1. Leaders behave like people who genuinely seek the best interest of others.
2. Leaders act more like coaches than militant authority figures out on patrol.
3. Leaders readily recognize and reward positive contributions.
4. Leaders clearly establish cascading goals throughout their organization.
5. Leaders define results-oriented expectations that are crystal clear.
6. Leaders align goals and systems for results.
7. Leaders do the work of establishing a trusting, open work environment.
8. Leaders are approachable and willing to help their people succeed.
9. Leaders provide timely feedback with the intent of helping their people improve.
10. Leaders help their people work from their unique voice.
11. Leaders assist their people in discovering their main work contribution.

This positive focus on behavior and performance, linked to goals and values:

• Significantly improves morale as it moves the company toward higher levels of performance.
• Is more likely to help people succeed.
• Is more likely to let people know when problems arise.
• Is more likely to help people try new things and take initiative.

Management Practice 6: Have Fun With Your People

A joy-filled workplace gives people the freedom to use their talents and skills for the benefit of society without being crushed or controlled by autocratic supervisors.-–Dennis W. Bakke, Joy at Work

There is no fun like work.—Dr. Charles Mayo, Founder of the Mayo Clinic

The most important factors that make a workplace rewarding and satisfying:

1. Good friends
2. Good environment
3. Challenging work
4. Utilizing personal and professional strengths
5. Fair play
6. Learning opportunities
7. Doing something worthwhile
8. The individual is needed

Organizational Characteristics

1. Keep the number of layers to a minimum.
2. Leadership/Management focuses on results.
3. People are given freedom to focus control on their work.
4. Individuals are respected at all levels.

Joy at work starts when leaders and managers take the responsibility for making fun a part of their teams’ work experience.

What creative ways can you come up with to infuse your workplace with fun?

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