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Bruce Tulgan was named by Management Today as one of the few “management gurus” and was on the Thinkers 50 Rising Star list--the definitive global ranking of the world’s top 50 business thinkers. He has been quoted in literally thousands of articles, including the New York Times, USA Today, and the Harvard Business Review. He writes a regular column on management in the Huffington Post and is the author of 18 books, including, published just this week, The 27 Challenges Managers Face: Step-by-Step Solutions to (Nearly) All of Your Management Problems. I interviewed him today.
Marty Nemko: You stress the importance of regular check-ins even with your good employees. Why is that so key?
Bruce Tulgan: Two reasons. Ongoing feedback avoids bad habits ossifying and perhaps spreading to other employees, even infecting the entire workgroup. As important, if you let things slide, the problems mount and then the feedback meeting is usually shocking and overwhelming, leading to great defensiveness. The employee might say, for example, “if it was such a big problem, why didn’t you tell me before?!” In contrast, if you have regular check-ins, you encourage slow steady progress. “Revise and adjust. Practice and fine-tune.”
MN: What should those regular meetings typically look like?
BT: First, let me say what they shouldn’t look like. Many managers claim to provide ongoing feedback simply by regularly asking employees, “how are things going?” Anything you’re working on improving?” Those tend to be unproductive. Here are three better launchpads for those meetings:
1. Ask, “what did you do?” “How did you do it?” and “what are you going to do next?”
2. Both manager and employee keep a running list of questions and concerns. The manager can also list content s/he’d like to share.
3. Ask, “here’s what I need from you.” “What do you need from me?”
Those, of course, are just starting places. After all, we’re talking about human beings here. Over weeks and months of such meetings, the dialogues will reshape to suit the protagonists.
MN: What are some other questions you might want to ask in those meetings?
BT: Has anything happened since we last talked that I should know about? Are there any instructions or goals that aren’t clear? I can’t guarantee I can get them for you but do you need additional resources and for what?
MN: You believe that setting up standard processes for most activities can avoid a lot of management problems.
BT: Rigorous use of standard operating procedures and checklists always reduces error rates while improving quality and efficiency. And most employees really appreciate both that efficiency and that they have clear, well-developed procedures to follow.
MN: Do managers generally have to develop those processes themselves?
BT: No. Often, individuals have developed a great way to do something. Encourage their sharing them with you. Run the idea by the team--perhaps it could be enhanced further or it has a fatal flaw. If the resulting process looks clearly superior to the status quo, the good manager orders that to be standard operating procedure unless someone has a darn good reason to use another process.
MN: Let’s say an employee has a bad attitude: works as little as possible, calls employees on not following the letter of the law to deflect attention from his or her own failings, passive-aggressively resists change, complains about heavy workload. Your garden-variety nightmare. What’s a realistic way of working with such an employee?
BT: First, don’t tell someone with a bad attitude that s/he has a bad attitude. It makes it worse. Instead, make the intangible tangible—describe the behavior. For example, yesterday, I noticed you walked in and kind of slammed the door, scrunched up your eyes as you walked past people, and plopped down at your desk. A couple days ago, I heard you sigh and tell someone, “this place is terrible.” Displaying that kind of attitude infects the place. If you have constructive, realistic suggestions for improving our workplace, I’m all ears, or share it with someone else who can do something about it. But publicly displaying a negative attitude just isn’t acceptable.
Notice how I didn’t try to infer the employee’s internal psychological motives. That’s a Pandora’s Box, one that a manager isn’t qualified to open. Stay focused on the employee’s external behaviors and why they’re inappropriate, but allow the employee to save face by giving them an acceptable outlet for complaint.
MN: Sometimes a manager knows what s/he should do but the cumulative effect of a weak employee makes you not motivated to once again start with specific targeted feedback, measurable goals, etc. And as is sometimes the case, you just can’t fire or transfer the employee. What would you do in that situation?
BT: I would continue with the clear, unemotionally dispensed feedback on their behavior, making clear it’s unacceptable and asking them to develop a set of objectives for improvement by the next meeting. Most people find ongoing negative meetings embarrassing and they improve. If necessary, I’d change their responsibilities to something they are more likely to succeed at.
MN: Let’s end on a positive note. Let’s say you have a great employee and want to make the most of him or her and certainly don’t want that employee to leave. What’s some not-obvious but important advice to managers?
BT: Explain that you value the person enormously and ask how you could make this his or her dream job: more or different responsibilities? Input into top-level policy? More resources to implement their favorite ideas? Freedom from the standard short-term reporting requirements? Flexible hours? Telecommuting? Special training/learning opportunities? Our star employees are a great treasure. We must treat them as such.
Marty Nemko's bio is in Wikipedia.
