Staffing for Managerial Skills that Matter Most

Staffing for Managerial Skills that Matter Most Staffing for Managerial Skills that Matter Most Staffing for Managerial Skills that Matter Most Muzio If youve recently been hired as a manager, you know the dirty secret:Management positions come with surprisingly little guidance. Whether you were promoted internally or brought in from outside, you were probably expected to hit the ground running, toward only the vaguest of goals. Many of the problems new managers experience stem from that secret. They are faced with an ill-defined job and equally intense pressure from above and below. Plus, as the pivot points in the information revolution, they are barraged with queries about the work of their groups. Its easy to see why capable, well-meaning managers resort to micromanagement, detachment, grandstanding, or sheer block-headedness in an effort to find some sort of stability for themselves and their employees. How can you avoid these pitfalls? The following six steps will help you define your purpose as manager: 1. Define your own job clearly. If youre a new manager, this is your first and most important step. You need a memorable, meaningful definition, something that you can figuratively (or literally) write across your bathroom mirror so that you see it every morning. I suggest engender useful output. Your primary responsibility as a manager is to maximize the likelihood that your employees will be productive; your task is to create an environment in which employee output is clearly defined and realistically achievable. If youre not doing that, then it doesnt matter what data youre gathering, which employees youre monitoring, or whose ear youre bending.You may be busy, you may be stressed, and you may look managerial, but youre not doing your job. 2. Define your groups output. To engender output you must first define it. This task is easier said than done.Todays workplace changes quickly, and managers at all levels are expected to turn the work of their groups on a dime. Your own manager may not be terribly clear on long range company plans, so neither of you may fully understand how the work of your group will change in the next quarter, month, or even week. Uncertainty about the future is not an excuse for lack of productivity in the present.If your plan is to wait around until everything is known before doing anything, you might as well lock the doors and go home for good!Things will change again and again, and only by delivering on current plans will you and your company learn what works, and what changes to make next.Besides, the definition of your groups required output is the definition of YOUR required output as manager.Defining it is one part good management practice and one part career survival. 3. Seek momentary clarity rather than permanent answers. Speak with your leaders about what your group can reasonably produce right now and then agree to task your group with producing it right now.Make it clear that unless you hear otherwise, until the next scheduled check-in you will follow the current plan. Then, verbally summarize the output you are committing to engender in about 90 seconds.During follow-on discussions with your management, use that mini-commercial as a way to gently remind them what you are working on, so that they can edit your understanding if needed. When changes, do come, dont fight them.Welcome the new information, openly revise your understanding of what you need to produce, and clearly explain the time and resources you need to accomplish the change. If you cant turn the boat in an hour, say so.Its far better to be up front when something isnt possible than to agree to it under duress but fail to deliver. 4. Become an expert in defining and communicating expectations. Of course, your definition is only half the story.To engender output from your group, you need to convert from the commitment you made as manager into what each of your employees must do individually. Contrary to popular opinion, this doesnt mean telling your employees what to do.It means teaching them to discuss what they are doing themselves to create their own 90 second mini-commercials and then working with them on a shared understanding of whats needed.You havent successfully taught an employee his or her expected output until you hear that person say it to you spontaneously, in a way that matches your own understanding.Then you know its happening. This also means your employees must be in the habit of speaking openly about what they are doing.To get honesty, avoid using discussions about current objectives as pop quizzes!When you need to adjust an employees understanding of his or her work, frame your conversation as being about expectations for the future and defining how to succeed.Dont let it degrade into how the employee should already know these things.Remember:When your employees dont know what theyre supposed to be doing, its at least as likely to be your fault as theirs. 5. Keep talking about output. AVSO, or verbalized summary objective statement,is a kind of mini-commercial in which you state the output youre trying to deliver at the moment.It should take about 90 seconds, and should list about 5-7 output goals that together cover about 80% of what you are working on.Its yours to change, adjust, and modify whenever you see fit. Its also yours to use as your introduction whenever youre talking to people in or about your workplace. Use VSOs with your management and teach your employees to use them with you. Why?Your VSO trains people as to what to expect and not expect from you.It provides an avenue for a manager to edit an employees understanding of the job, and a basis for you to accept or decline requests for additional work.As time goes by, and you deliver on your VSO, you also increase your credibility within the organization as people see that you are following through on your commitments. 6. Keep at it. Management is like exercise: its often difficult, youre never done and it requires self-discipline. Get in the habit of having conversations with superiors about the output needed from your group and discussions with your employees about their individual contributions to that output.Then remind yourself that your job is to maximize the chances that your employees will produce.This wont make management easy, but its the first step in making you better at it. Author Bio Edward G. Muzio, CEO of Group Harmonics, is the author of the award winning books Make Work Great: Supercharge Your Team, Reinvent the Culture, and Gain Influence One Person at a Time and Four Secrets to Liking Your Work: You May Not Need to Quit to Get the Job You Want. An expert in workplace improvement and its relationship to individual enjoyment, Muzio has been featured on Fox Business Network, CBS, and other national media. For more information visit Make Work Great and follow the author on Facebook. Staffing for Managerial Skills that Matter Most Staffing for Managerial Skills that Matter Most April 11, 2012 Muzio If youre a staffing professional whos looking to fill management positions, there are common managerial skills that will be crucial to find in the qualified candidate whether youre hiring a regional sales manager, a retail store manager, or anyone who oversees the work of others. Why do you need to know them? Simple: Your client might not. Managerial Skills When it comes to hiring a manager, its easy for even the savviest clients to lose their way. Some may get so caught up in philosophical conversations about good management skills that they fail to list the manager skills they actually seek. Others might focus so narrowly on writing a manager job description what they need THIS manager to do in THIS position that they fail to consider the more general question of what ALL their managers do well. Either way, such an omission is a major one. To fill any type of manager job description, you need someone with real management skills including those that go beyond any one specific role. Your knowledge of managerial skills is a core part of your own value as a staffing consultant. You might elect to teach it to your customers, or you may just decide to quietly use it in your recruitment strategies. Either way, it will help you to provide a better fit than your competitors, because youll know what your customers truly require. Here are some managerial skills worth exploring with any management candidate. Communicating Goals The core function of management is to get other people doing things. Managers must be able to clearly verbalize tasks and follow up as needed. Whether its a production supervisor explaining output requirements to a line worker, or a program manager speaking conceptually about product offerings and market demand, a manager must be able to make his or her team understand their work. At first glance this sounds so obvious! Yet, anyone who has managed people can tell you that setting and articulating goals is tremendously challenging. When it comes to goals, effective communication skills require a host of abilities including: Structured thinking (to define the goal) Clear communication (to relay it) Patience (to facilitate understanding of it) Empathic listening (to gauge acceptance of it) Thats just the start. When goals are complex or dynamic, this process becomes even more challenging. Make sure your screening process includes investigation of your candidates to articulate goals and assignments.Ask candidates about challenges in setting goals for previous groups, then gauge both their skill in goal setting and how much focus they place on it. Or, ask prospective managers to share some of the goals of their last group, as if you were a new employee there. This will give you insight into their style of communication provided you understand their last position well enough to gauge their responses. Planning and Execution If youve ever worked for a micromanager or an absentee boss you know that good management is a balancing act between involvement and freedom. A manager must strike a balance between supporting and interacting with employees whilestaying out of their way as they work. This is easy to say, but difficult to do talented managers know that its more dynamic art than static science.Employee skill and commitment levels, project complexity, task urgency, performance history and a variety of other factors inform these decisions. Where novice managers either fail to realize a balance, or blindly use the same approach every time, more sophisticated managers monitor and adjust constantly. Managers who struggle here may well struggle to get output from their teams over time. As you screen candidates, explore their approaches to this balance.When conductingthe interview, ask interviewees to share experiences that illustrate how they decide when to intervene with employees, and when to trust them to make and execute plans themselves. Or, ask whether prospective managers consider themselves to be hands-on or hands-off, and then probe for their willingness to allow exceptions to the rule. Embracing the Bad News Its inevitable: Every team hits bumps in the road.Equipment fails, projects fall behind, customers complain and employees call in sick. While managers should certainly work to forestall preventable problems, hiring a manager with the notion that he or she will prevent any trouble is like trying to hire someone to guarantee good weather. Instead, your candidate should have enough managerial skills to flex when problems arise, adjust plans as needed, and deliver the best possible results given the challenges faced. To do this, managers must get and act upon good information. Unfortunately, good information is often the opposite of good news.Managers who avoid bad news, and those who consciously or unconsciously punish messengers, are at a distinct disadvantage. Whether its an early warning from a factory worker that a piece of equipment is performing just below par, or a heads-up from a project lead about a key milestone falling behind, managers who dont want to hear it are left in the dark. When screening managerial candidates, find out how they handle bad news.Ask about the worst piece of news they ever got from an employee, and how they responded. Or, ask about situations in which their reports were running behind schedule and probe for how soon they discovered the problems. Its one thing to say only bring me solutions as a way of encouraging independent thinking. But managers who avoid problems altogether forego the opportunity to work around them. Finding the Fit Of course, every managerial position has its own job requirements. As staffing consultant, your job is to deliver candidates who meet client needs. You no doubt rely heavily on those client-dictated criteria. As you search for the perfect candidate, never forget the one common truth to all staffing consultants: We owe our clients what serves them best, whether or not they can fully define it for us. Author Bio Edward G. Muzio, CEO of Group Harmonics, is the author of the award-winning books Make Work Great: Supercharge Your Team, Reinvent the Culture, and Gain Influence One Person at a Time and Four Secrets to Liking Your Work: You May Not Need to Quit to Get the Job You Want. An expert in workplace improvement and its relationship to individual enjoyment, Muzio has been featured on Fox Business Network, CBS, and other national media. For more information visit Make Work Great and follow the author on Facebook.