There's a major difference between Leadership and Management. These posts will keep you up-to-date on leadership developments. For more essential foundational information, read our special report on Leadership.
Disclaimer: The author cannot be held responsible for any unwanted consequences, direct or indirect, of your breaking the rules.
That said, there are quite a few well-established workplace rules and customs that every manager should try to break – at least once.
Here are my 12.
Boom!
That’s the sound of performance appraisal processes being blown up across the country. There’s been a collective lightening flash of realization that the old way of doing it just isn’t doing it. For anyone. It’s largely a waste of time, money and mojo.
What replaces it is still not clear. There are all sorts of nascent tech solutions, and various forms of Performance Appraisal Lite. But if there’s one thing that seems to be consistent, it’s the belief that all managers and leaders need to coach their people more consistently, more successfully and more often.
I can’t draw.
And it bums me out. My son’s an artist, so there must be something in my genes, right? But even my stick figures are dreadful.
So I did the adult thing. I signed up for a beginning drawing class.
We spent most of the first night drawing cubes to learn perspective. I really began to get the hang of it. They weren’t pretty, but they were cubes.
Then the instructor pulled out a toy-sized model of a house and told us, “Now draw that!”
The legendary humorist and author Mark Twain (Samuel L. Clemens) was a master of “exploring the American soul with wit, buoyancy and a sharp eye for the truth.”
His works are a mother lode of quotable wisdom. He pulled heavily from real life, from his childhood experiences in Hannibal, Mo., to piloting riverboats to working as a miner.
What follows are 20 gems on leadership that every person can put to good use.
As I get older, it’s easier to forget things.
Turns out that’s a good thing.
Leadership guru Dan Rockwell made a fascinating point a few weeks back: A good leader knows how to forget. They don’t dwell on past mistakes.
That creates negative thinking. And negative thinking doesn’t move you forward.
If I only knew then what I know now …
How many times have you said that?
Hindsight is worth its weight in gold and keeps us from repeating our mistakes.
Tale a moment and think about it.
If you could go back in time to your first management position, what single piece of knowledge would you take with you to make managing easier or better?
To get some answers, I went straight to people on the front lines – executives and supervisors I respect – and here’s what they said:
Why do so many good managers struggle to delegate?
Here are two of the biggest reasons:
Fear of losing control
Your parents might have drummed into your head, “The best way to get something done right is to do it yourself!” Solid advice, but if you’re too enamored with your own way of doing things, you’ll never learn to delegate well.
Fear of dropping the ball
What happens when you pass a project to one of your lieutenants? He or she might take the ball and run a different route than you would. One that might not work. Scary? Yes, but at some point, you’ve got to trust your people.
Good people are ready to take on more responsibility. So be brave and try them out!
You won’t be the first.
When you’re in business, the most important person is the customer. It’s easy to become shortsighted and think of only yourself and your employees. But every manager and employee needs to be making sure that customers – and prospects – have an amazing experience interacting with you every day. You have to WOW them. You […]
Are you a workaholic?
You know, someone who’s so dependent on his or her work that it becomes the central part of life?
Not sure? Ask yourself:
Well, I’m back from vacation, and I’ve spent the whole week digging out.
Which means I’ve had to do a lot of catch-up reading. And that means I’ve got some great stuff to share with you.
So let’s get right to it.
