What is “performance management”? Tracking how many hours people are at work? Or tracking the results they produce? Hmmm. It’s easier to watch the clock than do the real work of managing performance.
Evaluating leaders for their “people skills” is not the same as evaluating their effectiveness. Being effective is not a personality thing.
We often make leadership sound like a lofty and desirable role, while making management sound useless and misdirected. Maybe we should think again.
Sometimes we are so sure we know what other people need and want that we don’t talk with them about it. We just go ahead and give them our solution, then wonder why they don’t appreciate it.
We used to think people should “just do their jobs”. That day is pretty much gone. Now that we need to reinvent the job – often, and sometimes every day – we’d better get really good at productive communication.
The US president has reduced the White House press briefings to once a month, and those conversations could go to zero soon. An article about the Die-out of Press Briefings says Trump told his Press Secretary not to bother with briefings anymore. That’s a mistake. I remember when my boss, in a job I held […]
Sometimes people get resigned about where they find themselves in their work or their life. (Been there!) It’s good to find a way to have some new conversations with people who can offer a new perspective, or a new access to another approach, another path. Communication is the key.
Procrastinating on our unfinished chores and projects is natural. Maintaining an effective “Results Wanted” list – and doing the work to check things off that list – isn’t hard either. But we sometimes forget that’s what it takes to get some things done.
We specify our work goals, and our intended results, and (sometimes) remember to give solid deadlines. But we often forget an important piece of our work specifications: the collaborators, resource-providers, authorities, and beneficiaries of our productive work.
Specifying “by when” you’ll get back to someone is an easy way to give people confidence in you. You may have to check your calendar to do that, but it’s a small task that benefits you as well as the people around you.
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