This is an old post of mine, but still a favorite:

In my first job out of grad school I was told, in a performance evaluation no less, to “do my hair and wear more lipstick.”

When it comes to management, that definitely goes in the “don’t” column.

Over the years, that lesson and a number of others have made their way into my consciousness as a (previously unwritten) set of “rules” I use to guide my behavior as a manager.

People are at the heart of any change. To make change happen, you have to have people who can make change happen.

So consider this a tribute to all of those people I’ve known—whether as manager or the one managed. This is what you’ve taught me:

1. Understand that your primary job is to remove obstacles from your staff’s path. That includes you. If you’re in the way, move.
2. Empower them. Give them authority, give them confidence, give them space to do their job.
3. Be their best advocate. Your staff always gets the credit for a job well done. You take the blame when things don’t go well. This is a conscious decision. Never throw your staff under the bus.
4. Be empathic. Empathy is required, and can’t be taught. Improved, yes. Taught, no.
5. Don’t give anyone a task you wouldn’t be willing to do yourself. And if it’s a real crap task, make sure you acknowledge that. Bonus points if you apologize for it, too.
6. A corollary: Don’t establish (or enforce) rules you don’t follow yourself. What’s good for you is good for them, and vice versa. Different sets of rules for management and staff breed discontent.
7. People will reach the bar wherever you set it. If you set the bar low, don’t be surprised when they don’t aim higher.
8. Set expectations, not executions. Your way is not the only way—and their way could be better.
9. If there’s a problem, address it. Right away. Privately. Problems don’t just go away. Respect your staff enough to give them a chance to correct what’s wrong. Shame doesn’t motivate.
10. Go for “no surprises.” Just like a performance review shouldn’t be the first time your staff hears about a problem, the day of a deadline should not be the first time you hear something’s not getting done. Don’t blindside them, and they won’t blindside you. But set this expectation up early.
11. When hiring, temperament is more important than experience. Typically, we hire for skills and fire for personality. But skills can be taught, fit can’t.
12. Your staff don’t belong to you. You have succeeded as a manager when you coach someone into a higher and better position—whether in your organization or out of it. Don’t be selfish.
13. 99% of the time people do the right thing without being told. Don’t manage to the 1%. Trust people to do the right thing. They will.
14. Tell them what you know. Tell them what you don’t know. And tell them what you know but can’t tell—and why. Overcommunicate. Lack of information causes many more problems than too much.
15. Praise in public. Critique in private.
16. Only critique the professional, not the personal. Yes, that’s hard to do when you’re addressing a personal behavior, but you have to do the work of figuring out how to relate that to the professional environment. Otherwise you’re in the realm of telling people to “wear more lipstick.” Not acceptable.
17. Respect their time. Especially when they’re meeting with you. Be punctual. Be relevant. Be useful. If you meet over lunch, feed them. If you ask them to work late, let them have that time somewhere else.
18. Let them vent.
    
19. You don’t have to know how to do what your staff does. But you do need to know what they need from you, what they care about, what gets in their way, and what their goals are. And you need to know why they consider what they do important.
20. Don’t micromanage. Goldfish will grow as big as their tank can accommodate. Give your staff an ocean, not a teacup.
21. They don’t have to like you, but they do have to respect you. But you have to earn respect. You can’t legislate it. Oppression breeds rebellion, especially if it seems arbitrary. You’ll get as much respect as you give.
22. Mistakes are fine. Just not the same mistake, and not more than once. The first mistake is usually your fault. The second is theirs. Or yours, if you didn’t address the first one.
23. When something goes wrong, blame is useless. Find out what happened only so you can help your staff figure out how to avoid repeating the mistake. If you use the discovery process to lay the basis for punishment, you’ll never, ever get the real story again.
24. Your staff will do what you do, not what you say. Your staff is a reflection of you. If you don’t like what you’re seeing, look to yourself.
25. You are nothing without them.

What’s on your list? What would you add?

A post from Brass Tack Thinking
“Don’t lipstick” and 25 Other Lessons from the Management Frontlines

So, this year, Jay Baer and I submitted a panel to cover and discuss the concepts in our upcoming book, The Now Revolution. And we believe the content is solid, but more importantly, we wanted to do something of value with the voting process. We’re hoping for the opportunity to deliver some really good information to you and the SXSW crowd, but we figure we might be able to make a small difference along the way.

So, if you vote for our panel and drop a Tweet with #TheNowRevolution hashtag and @makeawish, Jay and I will donate $1 per vote from our book proceeds to the Make-A-Wish Foundation® and help kids with life-threatening medical conditions get to experience something special.

Try something like: “I voted for #TheNowRevolution for SXSW, to support @makeawish: http://bit.ly/SXSWTNR”

If you’re not on Twitter, just drop me an email or leave a comment on this post and let us know you voted so we can count you in the tally.

The Make-A-Wish Foundation is actually a cause close to my heart, because worked with both Make-A-Wish® kids and other seriously ill children while I led fundraising for the Midwest chapter of the Starlight Foundation. The strength, resolve, and courage of these kids is utterly inspiring. And I’m a mom. So it hits home, and I’m glad to be able to help in some small way.

To vote, for the panel, head here: The Now Revolution Panel (You’ll have to register to be able to vote, but it really just takes a few seconds).

And don’t worry, Jay’s on the docket, his name will be added very soon!

Meanwhile, we’re very close to submitting the final manuscript for the book, which should be out in February with pre-sale information to come. We’re feeling good about it, and are hoping that it’s a super useful book on not how to “do” social media, but the impact and implications of the social web on our businesses and how we function. We can’t wait to share it with you.

Thanks to all who have offered ideas, support, input, encouragement, and the like. Jay and I will be on the road in the coming months to talk about the book, including BlogWorld Expo coming up in October. A glimpse at what we’ll talk about is below, as presented recently at Social Fresh Charlotte.

Want to talk about having us come and present The Now Revolution to your company or group? Drop a line.

And in the meantime, please give that SXSW panel a “thumbs up”, and help us not only contribute some good content at the conference, but help some very special kids experience some joy. Thanks, as always, for your support for us and The Make-A-Wish Foundation.

A post from Brass Tack Thinking
Help Me Support Make-A-Wish Foundation

They come in many forms. Our routes to work. Our patterns of speech. What we eat. Or drink. How we approach a challenge. How we spend our days.

There are times, of course, when we want to change a habit. But we can’t just stop them. Our brains can’t process “stop” without processing “go” first.

(Try NOT thinking of a pink elephant, and you’ll see what I mean.)

When we want to drop a habit, we need to drop something else in its place. We need to replace habits that complicate our goals with habits that contribute to them.

How?

1. Acknowledge

We have to admit we do something before we can change what we do, or how we do it. That may seem obvious, but our habits are often so ingrained in our unconscious that we tend to notice only their (often negative) effects.

So look at those effects. Reverse engineer to find the cause. Find, and own, the pink elephant sitting in the middle of your room.

What are you doing (or not) that’s interfering with your goals?

2. Accept

It’s counterintuitive, but we do even the worst things for a good reason: it makes us feel better. Maybe just for a moment, maybe for a while. Accepting that fact—that there’s positive intention behind even negative behaviors—puts us in a position of power. It lets us move past the questioning, the guilt, the blame and into action. Into change.

But we can’t let ourselves stop there. Why? Because our intentions don’t matter if the results don’t measure up. In addition to accepting why we do what we do, we also have to accept that it’s not working.

What are  you trying to do for yourself?
Why isn’t it working?

3. Act

Most of the time the reason our habits don’t work is that we’ve assigned the wrong solution to our problem. Whatever the habit is, it usually isn’t a habit that actually fixes the problem. The habit hides it. Denies it. Dulls it.

But the problem—the reason we’re indulging in destructive behavior in the first place—is still there. If we really want to change our habits (and that’s something we need to wrestle with, too), we need to work on two levels: we need to work on the underlying issue (resolve the work stress…build our self-esteem…whatever) AND figure out what we can do instead.

But the paradox of choice is real: we can’t just come up with one other thing we can do. The choice between what we’ve always done and some new alternative is no choice at all—our brains are too wired into the habit that’s served us (not so) well for so long. We have to come up with multiple other options that can accomplish the same goal.

So ask yourself, what else could you do to vent your anger? Make you feel relaxed? Give you a sense of control?

What are you willing to do instead?

•

Acknowledge. Accept. Act.

Can you do it? Will you?

image credit: SooperNoodles

A post from Brass Tack Thinking
Changing Your Habits in 3 Steps