Category: Management

Ok Here’s the ugly truth: Managing People is probably one of the most challenging aspects of management you may ever encounter… For some reason, so many people think it’s an easy task ” to boss around “, but in fact it’s a very hard & demanding work, and requires so many skills that often take years to develop.

When I first became a General manager at 25 years old, I thought that dealing with employees should be something easy and fun. I was so wrong in the “easy” part. You see human behavior is unpredictable on daily basis; therefore it’s not a task to be taken lightly or even differed to later.

Here’s couple of advice that would help you out in your daily  routine as a manager:

1- Manage Agreements Not People: That rule is so widely applied that so many of us forgot it was even there;

• When you start a new job, you sign a contract with a job description and clear points to respect from both parties
• When you hire a contractor or even a carpenter to do your living room, you set clear expectations from time and cost etc..
• When you make a “Deal” with someone, give a promise, etc…

In Management, all you need to do sometimes, is to separate your emotions from the other person with a clear written agreement on a specific task (it can even be a simple email between the two of you) that states the expectations from each of you and the deadlines to finish the task and all the details.

This way, you will start managing the details of the agreement and not the person!

2- Focus on the Action not the Person: When a child break something in the living room, lots of the time the mother or the father become very angry and start yelling “at” the child and he / she replies back with stuff like “I didn’t do it… It was not me… It’s not my fault…”

In the office, when someone makes a mistake, he or she will only be “defensive” about it, when they feel they are under “ATTACK”, and that impression is very easy to happen when the manager or supervisor puts the blame on the Person and not the Action. So it’s “YOUR Fault” vs “What You DID!”

Going back to the child example; the right thing to be done in that case would be is to separate the Love of the parent from the disappointment of the act and a parent can say: “You’re my Son and I still love you very much, but what you just did made me disappointed from your action. I have higher expectations from you. ”

You can mix & match the 2 tips and do the adjustment on your management style and soon enough you will see the difference happening!

Have a great week!

SC

Samer Chidiac is a Sr. Strategist, Author & an International Innovation Expert.

The Monday Tip Weekly blog is part of the “Influencing the Life of Others” project

When was the last time you looked at yourself in the mirror and you were completely satisfied with what you saw? do you accept everything about yourself everyday?

The answer that comes from so many people who are filled with security and self-confidence is probably, “Yes, But…. ” and that narrows down the ratio to around 4% of the population living near you.

The reason I tried to highlight that example is not to try to bring you down, but to make you see how NOT easy acceptance can be!

In our professional life, in our personal life, in our social life, we face lots of situations where we need to simply & implicitly “accept” another person; but the small hidden question would be “Accepting him/her compared to what? to myself?”

Therefor, generally, accepting someone is always measured by a specific (and sometimes virtual) benchmark that WE set in our mind about what WE WANT THEM TO BE; And coming from the small question I asked in the beginning of this post…  I can tell you that it’s simply going to be HARD WORK.

Now Let’s examine the word Respect for a minute; probably the best (and simple) definition I found would be:

“To Respect someone is to see them the way THEY want you to see them”

So instead of just trying and even striving to accept others based on how YOU want them to be / look / sound / act… Respect them and start seeing them as THEY want you to see them.

Respecting is easy, all you need to do is practice… Can’t find a good example? let me take you back years and years back… When you were a baby, do you think you parents ACCEPTED that you used to wake up at 3 AM crying for attention? They didn’t, but they taught you a great lesson about Respect. They Respected you!

Have a nice Week!
SC

Samer Chidiac is a Sr. Strategist, Author & an International Innovation Expert.

The Monday Tip Weekly blog is part of the “Influencing the Life of Others” project