You are viewing an old version of this page. View the current version.

Compare with Current View Page History

Version 1 Next »

This is a list of skills, habits, practices, and, to some extent, the worldviews, orientations, and perspectives that my students consider key to effective action.

Ideas are from class discussions in 2006 and 2007 on readings and an in-class exercise. We considered the skills of effective managers in particular.

Collaborating
Communicates

  • listens well
  • asks lots of questions
  • facilitates conversations, interactions
  • offers 100% focused attention
  • makes others feel like they can ask questions
  • open to other people's viewpoints
  • clear and focused in speaking, writing
  • effectively frames problems and issues
  • takes time to explain what and why; transparency
  • empathetic (can walk in another's shoes)
  • avoids manipulative, indirect interactions, maintains task focus (Zaleznik)

Motivates
cheerleads, encourages team or employee
links
tough but fair
rolls up their sleeves along with you
gives credit where credit is due
stands up for employees / team

Cares
 Creates personal connections with employees
 genuine interest in others, you as a person
 makes people feel valued
 Accessibile; door is always open
 inclusive

Develops/enables others
 recognizes others' differing needs; tailors assignments to individual needs
 Gives honest, timely feedback
 Gives constructive criticism
 sets stretch goals for teams
 invests time in individual, team development
 empowers via sense of ownership, coaching and hands on experience
 prioritizes development of team members over short term tactical goals
 high E.Q.
 trusts team

Works with stakeholders
 builds buy-in for objectives
 Takes responsibility for communicating (Drucker)

Taking action
Uses time and resources effectively
 sets clear expectations
 avoids micromanagement
 provides resources necessary to achieve goals
 is organized; follows up
 avoids useless effort by knowing objectives and goals for every task asked
 forward thinking about how things should be done
 controls agendas
 manages both personal and team time
 focus on completion
 creates a culture of feedback
 gives life to ideas
 Is solution-oriented
 leaves schedule open to handle emergent needs
 Is flexibile
 Develops action plans (Drucker)
 Runs productive meetings (Drucker)

Iterates, learns
 builds in team and interpersonal reflection
 provides structure to measure success without being overbearing

Knowing and managing oneself
Integrity
 Takes responsibility for mistakes
 Takes responsibility for decisions (Drucker)
 honest, even when news was bad
 secure in own status
 acts with consistency
 never holds an employee back for personal gain
 never talks poorly about another person
 leads by example

Personal focus
 exercises will power and discipline
 refuses to take on too many projects
 schedules own time effectively
 Reflects to draw on experiences—digests "happenings" into "experience" (Gosling & Mintzberg)
 cool under pressure; even-keeled
 uses humor in times of stress, to defuse problems
 keeps perspective

Gathering and using information, defining problems, and analysing skillfully
 Balances task/technical/susbtantive focus with "psychosocial" work (Zaleznik)
 Asks "What needs to be done?" (Drucker)
 Asks "What is right for the enterprise?" (Drucker)
 Actively cultivates a "worldly" mindset—e.g., spends time where products are produced (Gosling & Mintzberg)
 Focuses on opportunities rather than problems (Drucker)
 interests of the company take priority over personal interests; Thinks, says "we" rather than "I" (Drucker)
 Is open-minded
 Draws on soft data, sustains complexity within hard-nosed analysis (Gosling & Mintzberg)

Many of our ideas are still very general. In order to focus on specific skills that you are cultivating via your project work, you will need to translate from the general idea ("gives honest, timely feedback") to even more specific practices—e.g., "Sets up regular meetings with teammates to seek informal feedback"; "develops and uses a simple feedback framework at various points throughout a team project"; "backs up feedback points with specific examples to keep it honest." Another example: if we think that effective managers "build buy-in for objectives"—how does this translate into practices you need to use now? Whose buy-in do you need for this class project? How do you know if you have it? Perhaps your team will plan to revisit objectives every other week; perhaps after every meeting with your hosts, if an objective of any sort is discussed, you follow up with an email to confirm. Remember you also need to get faculty buy-in for your objectives; how do you do that? Together, this set of practices provides the means for you to translate the important idea of buy-in to action.

What else?
Interestingly, in looking over the list I notice we focus a lot on the "nice" things bosses do. Class comments tend to have shied away from some key areas:
 Saying "no"; telling someone they're wrong, off course, or simply not working out
 negotiating and renegotiating (including engaging and disengaging partners)
 technical expertise and skills in analysis, synthesis, criticism, testing
 building and using deep knowledge about the organization, the customers, suppliers, etc
 designing work and projects
 seeking feedback from others, learning from others, asking for input, managing expectations

  • No labels