Getting Results Through Other People
The job of a manager is to get results through the employees who report to that manager. It is not the job of the manager to get results by doing the work that his employees should be doing. Nevertheless, that is often what happens in the workplace, leaving the manager to do their own work at night or on the weekends. So what should a manager be doing?
- Establish guidelines for how you will support your employees from Day 1 of their employment, including how you will work together, when support will be available, your expectations for their performance on the job and any possible career path that is available to the employee.
- Meet regularly with each direct report to discuss what is going well and provide support for the employee's areas of challenge.
- Provide clarity regarding the result, work and standards that are the employee's accountability. This is best done in the form of a "Position Agreement" which offers more clarity than a job description and includes standards that create shared expectations.
- Build and implement the systems that clarify how the work will be done to create shared expectations.
- Introduce your direct reports to these systems by holding training session that ensure understanding and offer an opportunity for practice and challenges that arise.
- When something goes wrong, offer a safe and private conversation about what went wrong and ask more than tell.
