One way to effectively manage a boss is to give her a deadline when she doesn’t give you one. One of the complaints I frequently get from managers in my MBA classes is that their bosses rarely say by when they want something done. Bosses say things like “when you get a chance”, “this week”, […]
One way to become more effective is to work on what is real, not on what you made up. I recently showed the daughter of a good friend around the Ohio State campus. She is interested in going to college, so I took her around OSU so she could get a feel for the. As […]
The June 12th Dilbert comic strip (below) gives a good example of the difference between an understanding conversation and a performance conversation. Dilbert, probably like many of us, assumes that explaining what is needed to someone who’s job it is to do it should be sufficient to get it accomplished. He is wrong. If you […]
Having authority can contribute to the very problems managers believe are solved by that authority. Why, because when managers have authority they don’t think they need to communicate as much. This is particularly true when managers confront threats to the successful completion of projects they are managing. Years of research indicates that managers who have […]
How often have you heard (or made) one of the following complaints (or some variation thereof): We have a real communication problem here. They don’t tell us anything, and when they do tell us, it’s not much. They never give us enough information. The absence or inadequacy of communication is one of the most frequently […]
Effective performance conversations depend on people keeping their agreements and doing what they said they would do. Encourage people to respect the idea that keeping agreements matters. Keeping agreements is the foundation for effective performance conversations. Every time we say Yes to a request, we have created an agreement with someone. It might be as […]
Don’t risk being held to account for things you don’t know about. Take the time to find out what people really expect you to do, and what they expect you to deliver. If they don’t tell you, ask. It’s part of getting and giving a good promise and is key to effective performance conversations. I […]
Laurie and I recently conducted a training program on The Four Conversations for a group of project managers. Since most of the managers were from the same organization, they all encountered the same problem when given an assignment. Rather than being told a due date or deadline by when the assignment was to be completed, […]
When given a deadline you know you really cannot meet, propose an alternative you can meet – that’s called making a counteroffer. If you don’t counteroffer when you know something cannot be done, you’re setting up yourself and others for failure. What do you do when someone asks you to do something you know you […]
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