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The 8 Tenets of Great Managers

Okay so here's eight tenets of great managers. And what you'll notice is number one is, "Be a good coach." I would say even be a great coach, okay? Being a coach is very important here. We have an entire course on coaching that's going to go super in depth, okay, but we will talk a little bit about this. Basically the point here is helping people get better. Helping them improve, pulling the best out of them. Okay? "Empowers-doesn't micromanage." Letting good people do good work. Getting the most out of them. "Expresses interest and concern." This is like a really corporate way of saying be a human being. Do you care about me, or do you just care about me hitting my goals? And my metrics? If I think you care about me, I'm going to let you push me more. I'm going to let you correct me. I'm gonna work harder for you too, and I'm going to be happier if I think that you care. And do I know what your intent is, right? Is it clear, have you told me or am I guessing where you're coming from? ...

Right? It's really hard even with people we're really similar to, to know what they're thinking or what's going on with them, right? Let alone someone that's even a little more different than you. So are you taking time to communicate your intent, and are you clear on your intent? "Productive and results-oriented." This is the big one. You probably wouldn't even be a manager if you weren't productive and results-oriented. However they do say people get promoted to their level of incompetence. Some will get promoted and they're not productive and results-oriented. That'll be a problem. Because people never want to feel like their manager is not working at least as hard as they are, right? Okay, cool, important. "Listens and shares information." Listens! And shares information. So listening, we're going to talk a lot about today. In sharing information, you have to find ways to be scaled. Where can you give information to a mass audience and when do you need to give it to individuals or small groups. Part of being a manager is repeating yourself. I worked with a lot of leaders that are like, "I feel like a repeat myself all day. I don't like to repeat myself." I'm like, "Tough luck!" I'm like, "You've got to, and you have to bring your realness in every meeting, your emotion, your energy to really connect to the people." Are you communicating, sharing information? Helps with career development. We're gonna talk about that today, so important. Because people wanna grow. We all wanna get to the next level, right? We all wanna go somewhere better. Now is good. Later should be better! Cool, that gives us hope. "Has a clear vision and strategy." It's down there but it's on there. Can they believe in it? Do they understand where we're going and what's important? And you can see the last one, and this is very interesting. The last one is, "Advises team assisted by key technical skills." It's the last one. So are you really good at the thing that you're leading? It's not even close to the most important. How much you know in your area matters but it's by far not the most important thing as a leader. And what people make jokes about is like, as you get into leadership you get like way more disconnected from the actual work and you're like, "I don't know what's going on anymore." Right? People that are on the ground are gonna know more than you. That's fine, that's not what your job is. Okay? So now, first exercise. Woooo, we made it! I want you to write, it's on the sheets, on the workbooks, if you're online and you have the workbook you've bought the class and have the workbook downloaded. There is a sheet. It should be, maybe its on page one or two. Four? Four, great. So in the workbook too is you'll see there'll be things that you can optionally take notes on as go through and then there's things I'm gonna make you do. This is the first that I'm making you do. So rate yourself from one to ten on how you're doing in these areas. Ten being the highest one being the lowest. And don't take much time. We're gonna be doing speed exercises in here, okay? So I'm gonna give you just another like ten seconds. And for people at home to kinda like get their files downloaded or make sure you put a little on a piece of paper next to your computer. Write it down. And it should just be that blank, gut reaction. Okay so anything that stood out like anywhere that we feel we're doing really well or kinda not doing so well that we need to focus on. This is gonna help us think about where we wanna pay attention the rest of the course. Yeah. [Man Wearing Glasses] Number four, "Productive and results-oriented." Yeah. Like when managing people when trying to do your own thing it's easy to get a bit lost there, so. Feeling like maybe a bit scattered sometimes? [Man Wearing Glasses] Absolutely. Yeah, that's really common so one thing we'll do there is think about, what are my one to three things that I have to do today and if I do them I'll be happy? And you should really just pick one big thing you need to do and let that be non-negotiable. All the other stuff will just kinda happen, but if you pick that one big thing in that day that you have to get done and you have to clear like a block of time for it. Talking like one to three hours of time and that can be so hard on our day. So is it early in the morning? Is it right before you leave? Where are you gonna anchor it where you can get that uninterrupted block of time to get the big things done. This is the major problem I see with leaders. Thank you. Anything else you noticed as you reflect on yourself? Yeah? Number seven with the clear vision, I feel like my corporate office has this vision but what's my vision and my own door. Yes. Yeah. Because what can happen then if you don't do that is then it feels a little flat for the people that are standing around you. Right. Then it sounds like its coming from a talking head on a screen. (comical unintelligible noises) And it's like it doesn't feel real. It's like of course they're gonna tell us to work hard, or we're gonna have these big goals, but if it comes from someone they trust and have a real connection and you have it through you, and comes through your realness, and you maybe even like bring it in you way of communicating, boom then it's like the spark is there. Beautiful! So for you it's like can you be courageous and step out that what it's really about. Find our voice. [Woman Wearing Black Blazer] For me, number three, "Expresses intent and concern" for the team, I think, kinda relates back to what I said earlier is just to make the team feel that I care for them and that, you know I'm with them. It's important. So one thing I find is that our hearts sometimes get shut off in the workplace because it's a little bit scary to put ourselves out there and be vulnerable. What's appropriate? What's not appropriate? Will people still respect me? What's the right level to share at the right time, you know? And I say that because I think it's really about bringing your heart to work and letting people connect with it. So there's two things, that's the first piece. So can you actually commit to that and bring that mindset. And the second is have you practiced integrating your intention into everything you do? So we're gonna talk about where can this intention show up. So what I like to do is whenever I'm communicating something, I try to give what it's about and also what my intention is. So for example for today my intention, what we're doing is we're learning about leadership skills, okay? My intention is to make this enjoyable for you so you can actually open yourself up and not be bored by some of these topics that would be really dry to engage with otherwise. So I want it to be playful and fun and for you to find the part in yourself that's inspired to make progress, okay? So that's my intention today. So it's like can you, whatever were talking about whether its a piece of feedback, whether we're talking about the goals for the year, can we put our intention everywhere we go? What else, in terms of the scores? Yeah? [Black-Haired Woman] I think number eight, and it's because you had said it's okay to not know everything the role that I'm at going from a store manager to above that, you come from mastering your store and knowing all the in's and out's and now you have, if you're new to a brand and you haven't mastered anything but you have to oversee wholesale and retail and you're not the expert, you don't feel as credible. Yeah. But you have to be okay with that because there are people that you can delegate that to but I still haven't become okay with it, quite yet. Yeah, the number eight one can sometimes be like armor we put on. [Black-Haired Woman] Yeah. I'm an expert, right? [Black-Haired Woman] Yeah. And so people they can't assail your credibility, they won't challenge you, and so when we step into areas where we're a little less certain or maybe we start getting into a level of responsibility where it's too complex to ever be able to be as good of an expert as we was at a lower level when there was less to focus on. How do we find that confidence in ourselves to not have to be the expert in every moment? We call that the expert trap where if you are in the expert trap then you look at it as I need to be the expert right now in everything I do. And then what happens is sometimes then you'll filter out people or opportunities or things where if you're not gonna be able to be the expert you don't wanna go engage there. Or you won't really put yourself out in those areas. So we end up like avoiding situations that would be beneficial to us. We protect ourselves or we're not as open and as especially as curious, right? So if we don't know, if we can be as a leader someone who is really curious and listens first, learn first before we act, not only will that help us if we're not the expert in everything anymore, it actually builds rapport. When people talk and people feel like they have value to give they feel better about themselves and they feel more connected to you. They actually associate that good feeling of sharing their expertise and their ideas with you being awesome. And you'd surprised competitively how few other leaders really listen. So that's really what I would point you towards in terms of number eight as your growth area, it's like really start super-charging curiosity and listening, and come from that place of a learner rather than an expert. It's very common, thank you for sharing that one. Anything else on areas of development or things that are going really well? Yeah? [Brown-Haired Woman] To add to that same topic, I think to turn the tables a little bit when you come from team player to the leader, I think folks kind of expect you to still retain that subject matter expert, so being able to actually set clear expectations, so they actually understand what your role is and their role. I think that's a hard one to balance too. Absolutely, and that only way we're gonna be able to set expectations properly is by spending time on expectations. And one thing to really do, we're gonna talk about this later there's a whole section on it, but making sure get them to say the expectation from their perspective so you can listen as to where their language is or their words are. The sophistication of their language represents the sophistication of their thinking. So if there's a mismatch in their words don't assume they get it but they're just saying it a different way. No, no, no. We really wanna be specific and clear about expectations. So important, and when someone comes into the room and lets you know, "Hey by the way, I really care about this stuff and I'm working hard on growing my skills but I'm new to this role and there's a lot of stuff I don't know. so I'm going to be relying on you all to give me your expertise from each of your pieces and so together we're gonna make the best choices." Well you're gonna let that person who comes in and says that, get away with a lot more in terms of not knowing something then someone who comes in and doesn't mention anything they just tried to like step in the leadership and they're like, "Well, this person doesn't really know what they're talking about." Right? So just that acknowledgement you kinda relax and you trust that person more, alright? That takes courage though. It takes vulnerability to say that. Like am I gonna survive expressing that gap, right?