From Employee To Manager: Transitioning To A Management Role

foreign [Music] like I told a group this morning full disclaimer up front I'm from New Jersey so even though I live in Augusta Georgia you'll hear some yawls from me but I don't sugarcoat anything I just tell you how it is I'm very Brash to the point feel free to challenge me it doesn't offend me it doesn't intimidate me bring it on I occasionally curse so I apologize for that as well I know it's not professional I know it's not ladylike it's just my jersey okay I can't help it um so here's what I thought we would do today this is like one of my most favorite sessions because typically I'm working with the younger Generations who are trying to figure out how to work with the older ones but not always so I want to tailor this to you today so I want to start off by asking you what are your challenges because whatever you tell me is going to tailor what I'm going to tell you now I understand how some of you roll if you don't want to tell me anything I have content ready that I will share with you whether you want it or not but if you give me some feedback I can tailor it for you so let me ask a few yes or no questions to get us warmed up how many of you are new to a management role really do you like it do you want to be a manager okay yes so touche um anybody over here new to a management role okay um all right don't answer this question but those of you who are new or those any of you in a management role I want you to ask yourself is this what you wanted and more importantly is it what you thought it was going to be okay because many times when people are promoted to a management role they're either promoted to a management role simply based on seniority or they're promoted to a management role because it makes more money and that's the only way they can make more money and some of you genuinely want to be in a management role like you well let me back up on that you want to be in a management role because you like having the power and authority that comes with being a manager but then there's this other group of you uh this other Camp if you will who genuinely care and want to help invest in people and the people that work for you so I want you to just self-reflex for a minute of where do you fall in those boxes okay um all right let me ask you a few more yes or no questions to keep warming you up how many of you have been in a management role for more than let's say three years okay more than 10 years 15. okay you all need to come up here and like you need to do this because you're in this role uh if you weren't here this morning something a feedback that I gave this morning is I technically don't like the word manager and I don't genuinely believe in management training per se because technically you manage processes but you don't manage people and most people don't want to be managed and so this is just something to think about usually when I think about somebody who's serving in a leadership role I like to call them a team lead or a team captain I definitely do not like the word supervisor because who wants to be supervised right and so I just encourage you to kind of keep those thoughts in the back of your mind okay I gave you enough time now to warm up so tell me your challenges where what are your challenges right now as it relates to being in a management role foreign so giving positive feedback is that what you said how to give constructive feedback positive constructive feedback okay good okay he said um coming up with a plan and then figuring out how to communicate that plan to the crew okay good connect Distributing work delegating okay what else anyone else no was that just like swatting a fly or you're like sort of kinda we're good okay is it helpful if I'm up on the stage for you guys in the back are we okay okay all right so typically when I ask people what are their challenges as it relates to management if you look up on the screen these are the things that I hear I hear things like how do I manage people who are older than me how do I earn their respect right because you'll typically find in these roles the older people don't like when their managers are younger than them especially when they come in like all confident thinking they know what they're going to do I often hear I have a lot of challenges when suddenly I'm like thrown into this management position and I have to manage people who were previously my peers and or are still my friends and I'll share with you a lot of the coaching I've done over the years I've seen people lose friendships because they became a manager and in hindsight they say man I would give up my management role any given day to be able to go back to having my friendship the way that it was so it's kind of an interesting challenge I also hear people talk about managing their time and I'm a strong believer that time management actually doesn't exist when people come in and they say oh you know I'm having a hard time with time management what I really hear is I'm having a hard time managing my calendar and or I'm having a hard time prioritizing and so when I coach people on time management I coach them on how to prioritize gaining respect and this thing called imposter syndrome this happens more often with women but we do see it with some new managers and even in men where you're in this role as a manager but you doubt your abilities as a manager and you feel like you're kind of a fraud or an imposter and like you wake up some days and you're like am I really qualified to be a manager and is somebody going to find out that I'm not qualified so it's this thing called imposter syndrome some of you struggle with kind of rebranding yourself or having some form of a leadership presence leading up leading change and then some of you just simply don't want to be a manager and you're trying to figure out how to be that manager did I hit anybody else's concerns here show of hands if you had any of these concerns okay all right we're connecting we're on the same page I'll get with y'all I'm married to an engineer so I'm I'm used to lack of like engagement and feedback it's all right okay so first thing I want you to think about is I want you to think about what's the difference between a manager and a leader and I've already kind of alluded to it is that managers manage processes and leaders lead people but let's go one step further because you guys especially being in construction and the industry that you're in you walk this like fine line of okay sometimes I need to focus on my people and sometimes I need to focus on process and production right so how do you find that happy medium so as an academic I can't get away with one talk without dry drawing and XY axes like you see up here we love to do this but it's basically focus on people is on the whole vertical axis and focusing on process and production is on the horizontal access and basically you have to find like your data point and throughout your career as a manager you at sometimes may have to focus more on people and other times you have to focus more on process and procedure and projects there really is no secret sauce of like where you can find that happy medium you kind of have to be flexible and be astute to what the needs are of your organization and quickly flow back and forth between manager and leader manager and leader and kind of be one in the same all right and so here's my recommendations for you as you're transitioning if you didn't come this morning this will be your first time hearing this but if you came this morning this will be your second time I cannot reinforce this statement enough for you to be a successful professional whether you're a manager a leader or just an individual contributor it really starts with self-awareness you have to take the time to figure out who you are what makes you tick what do you like what do you not like what's your communication preference what's your ideal work environment what kind of people do you work well with and what kind of people do you not work well with because that's important to know um are you a morning person or a night person are you a visual learner are you more of an audio learner you need to know all of these things about you so you understand what your blind spots are and blind spots are basically weaknesses that you didn't know that you had because if you have to start with yourself and figure that out about yourself before you can start leading others okay and so this morning I went into a little more detail on this should I do the whole unconscious bias for the people who aren't here should I do it about the father-son let's see what they say all right I wasn't planning on doing this this afternoon but we're gonna do it again don't tell them the answer okay all right I'm gonna do a quick bias assessment on y'all here's a scenario Father and Son driving down the road get into a bad car accident they're both sent to the hospital via an ambulance they show up at the hospital the sun's injuries are so bad that he needs surgery right away so they go ahead and prep them and send them off to the operating room and the surgeon walks in and says oh my gosh I can't operate on this patient because he is my son I want you to think about this for a minute how is that possible father son same car accident same Hospital Sun need surgery surgeon says I can't operate because it's my son how's this possible he says it's his other dad I I appreciate your Progressive thinking that this child has two dads I appreciate that any other thoughts how many of you thought that the surgeon was the mom well some of you were here this morning you wasn't you still thought that that so I shared with this morning I do that uh example at huge conferences even with like 300 plus women and usually 10 less than 10 percent of the audience thinks the mom's a surgeon and that's just one example of this thing called unconscious bias we all have it as human beings we have it we have unintended people preferences and our preferences are based on things that we were exposed to as children in early adolescence so I want to ask you guys the ladies here in the back row did you guys think the mom but you heard it before the first time you heard it though did you think Mom because what's interesting is we found that women actually have a stronger unconscious bias against women than men have against women so for example women here be honest did you guys notice my my shoes I have sneakers on those of you who heard me speak this morning did you even notice that I didn't have sneakers on like the guys don't even care like they didn't even notice my feet did you notice what was your thought when you saw me in my sneakers did you think anything he thought oh my feet must hurt you felt that so you were feeling bad for me this morning yeah there's actually like legit research about the power of a high heel and they're serious buys but anyway we're going off tangent here sorry sorry um but we all have these unconscious biases and you having these unconscious biases they're unconscious you don't know you have them can seriously impact your success as a leader as a manager but more importantly it can a hundred percent impact the success of the people that you hire so let me give you a quick example 15 years ago I took an unconscious bias assessment and you're not going to believe what my number one unconscious bias was you ready my number one unconscious bias was against women in childbearing age well I'll share with you I'm 44. so for at least the 20 plus years of my life I have been a woman in child bearing age yet my strongest unconscious bias was against that group right and so I thought about it and I was like oh my gosh this is horrible and I thought about who have I hired in the last few years and you know what before I had this aha moment I never hired a woman in childbearing age because what do you think was subconsciously going through my brain not consciously subconsciously what was going through my brain when I was like thumbing through resumes yeah you I who knows I may have thought oh man she's going to go on maternity leave and then we're going to be short staffed what else oh she's going to follow her husband's career I may have thought oh we work a lot of nights and weekends and being a woman I don't know if she's gonna be able to work nights and weekend who knows I mean they were subconscious they were not conscious thoughts and I guarantee you subconsciously when I was looking at resumes I was finding reasons to hire these other people now let's just say I inherited a team of people of young women and childbearing age do you think that woman on my team who was young and in childbearing age was going to have the same Fair equal access to opportunities as let's say the men on my team heck no right so I have a huge stretch assignment that has a lot of visibility who do you think I'm giving it to subconsciously I probably give it to the person that I don't have a bias against okay now fast forward that is not an unconscious bias of mine anymore I'd be I made myself aware of it I've worked on it but this is important because I want you to think about this as managers do you have biases against short people drew a biases against people with beards do you have biases with people who wear glasses do you have biases with people who have long hair do you have a bias against people who are overweight do you have a bias against people of certain ethnicities genders I mean you don't know and so this is one big important part of self-awareness that you need to figure this out because it may impact your success as a manager okay so then once you learn about yourself you then need to make the effort to go learn about others which by the way remind me at the end if you do not have access to a tool within your organizations for a self-awareness tool let me know and I will email you one for free where you can take an assessment now this assessment won't tell you your biases but it will tell you your communication style your work style your workplace preferences if you don't have access to one of those tools let me know I'll send it to you for free and you can take it just get ready it's going to give you a 46 page report it's intense it's going to tell you everything you want to know and what I recommend is have your spouse take it because I had my spouse take it and it said all these ways not to communicate with them and I was like hey that's how I like communicate with you all the time and he's like yeah no I know and I hate it and I was like well why didn't you ever tell me and he says well would it have mattered and I was like okay touche but this is helpful when you're working in a team if you can learn about other people's Styles and preferences and your Styles and preferences that's going to make you be a more successful manager so if you take my free assessment you like it let me know I have a much shorter 12-page version that we can possibly send to your team just so all of your team gets on the same page and everybody learns about one another okay a little side note so you have to learn about others because so many of us manage people or lead people the way we want to be led and you really need to find out how other people want to be led so have any of you ever read the five love languages book awesome yeah you like it you recommend it if you didn't read it and you're in a relationship you absolutely need to read it okay what it does is it tells you you tend to love people give love the way that you want love received and if you're in a relationship with somebody whether it's a a personal relationship or whatever if you're not speaking the same love language you may have some conflict so we can translate that to a professional environment so the book says there's five ways you can show people you love them you can buy them gifts you can tell them through words of affirmation you can spend time with them you can do things for them like service and then you can touch them now in the workplace there's no touching do I need to make you repeat that so I know so nobody gets sued there's no touching in the workplace I replace touching with food and so you need to figure out what your communication language is or your love language or your appreciation language and know that but then you need to go find that of the people that you're managing so you're motivating them you're appreciating them you're respecting them the way that they want to be respected not the way that you want to be loved appreciate it and respected okay all right second thing if you are new to a management role it is super important that you acknowledge and respect the experience of the people on your team the biggest challenge I'm seeing right now is you have these new managers coming in who are managing these people who've been doing their job for 20 or 30 years and they're not respecting their experience so let me tell you an interaction I saw recently in a manufacturing firm I had this older gentleman who said to his younger manager you don't know what you're talking about I've been doing this for 30 years he was a machinist okay young manager over here says uh yeah you may have 30 years of experience but you have 30 years of experience of doing one thing the same way over and over again and it is not relevant today I was like standing between them like oh my gosh like do I need to call the cops like what's going to happen because I seriously thought they were gonna like knock each other out now the young manager there is some value to what he was saying he was basically saying this was a machinist I get it you've worked this one machine for 30 years and the Machine is kind of dated and are your skills really relevant I get that his approach was way off was totally wrong and then the older employee on this side I get it he's saying you need to respect and value the time I've committed to this organization and the Blood Sweat and Tears and and the success of this organization has been carried on my shoulders and blah blah blah but I see both sides so what you need to do as a new manager is you need to find ways to respect that experience and build a rapport with your employees the if you can come into a new management role and you can earn the respect and Trust of your employees regardless of what age they are they will walk through fire for you but if you don't have the respect and their trust you they're going to completely disregard you and they're going to sell you up the creek before you even know what to do so the number one way that you can develop that respect and trust is by talking to these older folks value their experience listen to their stories solicit their input before making decisions and building that relationship with them okay and it's super important that you ask them for their input ask for their experience and listen to what they have to say the biggest mistake you can make as a new manager is coming into this job thinking you know everything and thinking that you know the better way to do everything now my younger folks you guys are very Innovative you do think outside the box you come with new ideas that maybe they haven't thought about but you don't want to come out of the gate as a new manager thinking you know everything and telling everybody what to do you want to take some time meet with them listen to what they have to have to say build that Rapport build that trust build that respect and then when the time is right in the right setting you then sit down with them and say hey I have an idea I have an idea on how we can do this differently I have maybe maybe we can use these new metal Clips rather than using the screws what do you think about it I value your experience you think this would work if you don't have the respect and experience and you just come to them and you're like we're not using those screws anymore we're just going to start using these Fasteners these clips what do you think that older person is going to do look at me like no you don't know what you're talking about but if you have that conversation include them in the decision-making process and get their buy-in you're going to be more successful okay what I want you to do right now is each one of you in this room even my experienced managers I want you to think of three words that describe you as a leader okay I'm going to give you a second I want you to think of three words that describe you as a leader is anybody going to be willing to share should I make one of your guys here in the front row boss man big dog I won't Force anybody to do anything they don't want to do do you want to share honest empathetic and open which I will share with you empathy right now research is showing that is the number one skill for leadership success honest empathetic open okay good someone else I won't call on you if you don't want to if you're sitting here right now and you're having a hard time coming up with your three words that's your homework assignment from today is I want you to leave here and I want you to come up with your three words do any can I can I just ask any of the ladies in the room do you guys have your three words can you tell me your three words anybody anybody anybody if you all were my women's leadership program I would come down on you hard no I was just curious there's research out there of words that are typically used to describe women and there's words that are typically used to describe men and I was just curious I wanted to see if like your thoughts support my research but you all don't want to play so it's okay all right so if you're having a hard time thinking your three words that's your homework assignment come up with your three words if you have your three words I now want you to think about those three words and think about your brand statement oh did any were any of you in my personal branding webinar that I did just check if you were I was really because we talked about this once already all right so I want you to think about your brand statement now when I say brand statement what I'm referring to is what will people say about you when you leave the room so if you want just for shits and giggles right now you can take out your phone and like text direct reports or colleagues or family members and just ask them like what would be three words that you would use to describe me see what they say and see if those three words match the three words that you came up with because you want to know what or you can even turn to each other if some of you work together and ask what are the three words you would use because you want to know what people are saying about you when you leave the room and then you need to ask yourself is this what I want people to think of me as a manager because what I find when I work with new managers they'll say yeah I'm funny I'm reliable and um I have a good sense of humor which kind of goes with funny I say okay as a manager is that what you want your brand to be do you want your brand to be like yeah I work with that guy who's funny and he has a great sense of humor so you may need to think about rewriting your brand statement and coming up with how you want people to view you and start thinking about different things you can do to make sure that people think of you that way okay the biggest challenge I'm experiencing right now working with my Gen X managers which those of you who were not here this morning Gen X is folks between the ages of let's say 41 and 55. so show a hands how many of you in here are between 41 and 55. should I tell them what we told them this morning we're the problem research supports it y'all so I I was telling them that people like throw money at me to come in and fix these like damn Millennials which by the way the Millennials are the best generation in the workforce right now those are your like 25 to like 40ish folks just saying when they throw this money at me I spend all my time working with the Gen xers and spend my time helping them because they're not only the problem they're also the solution and when are any of you curious as to why I said you're the problem do you want to know are you here so Gen X is the hardest generation to work with and work for Gen X has a an extremely strong work ethic and they're Workaholics we included we will work until the job gets done we have an extreme sense of urgency to us so even though we say we want it Friday we really mean we want it now and if we don't get it now we say forget it we'll just go do it ourselves we're not great communicators we have really high expectation for others and we're typically we're motivated by efficiency how can we get the most stuff done in the shortest period of time and what's hilarious is the younger folks are sitting next to the Gen X managers like or they're like totally when I'm working with them the big thing that I'm working on them as managers is working on your leadership presence this brand what are your people saying about you are they saying you're a jerk are they saying you're hard to work for are they saying you're rigid are they saying you're possessive are they calling you a micromanager what are they saying number one and what's funny is the Gen X stands like this and they're like I don't care too bad if you don't like it there's the door well if that's your mindset you're probably not going to be a successful manager and your people are probably going to leave and then you're not going to have anybody working for you right but then here's the number two part when you're a manager or a leader people are watching you they're watching what you say they're watching how you behave they're constantly watching everything you do so I encourage you to think about what messages are you sending your people so if you're sending them emails at night or on weekends if you are expecting certain things of them now some of them are like oh but Melissa they don't need to like respond to my email this is just when I get emails done well then you know what you go into Microsoft Outlook and you schedule it so your email doesn't go out until business hours if you really don't want them to read it because what happens is we all have it on our phone we see it and even though you say don't respond until what business hours they're thinking about it all weekend something else you need to think about as a manager is there is research that shows for a new Young employee their first manager has a huge impact on the work habits that they develop huge do you want your young people to be picking up on both your good and your bad habits so typically when I work with somebody who has bad habits like micromanaging or being too directive it's typically because at some point they worked for a manager who was like that to them and they picked up their bad habits and they don't know any different so I want to put that pressure on you or challenge you to think about that as a manager that your people are watching you and are you being a productive positive role model for them because many times when you complain about some of their bad habits I talked to you and I say hmm did they learn that from you and then you say yeah but I tell them like do as I say not as I do like come on right so you may need um you may need to build your leadership presence when you transition from an individual contributor employee and you are now in a management role you may need to redefine some of your relationships so if you had friends that you would hang out with or you would go to happy hour or you would go do things with now that you're in this leadership role you may not be able to do that anymore because they are viewing you in a position of power and authority and you may need to redefine some of those relationships okay all right next thing you need to do is this morning I sent the message that leadership is a team sport you need to start building your team and your team needs to consist of the people that I have listed up here on the slide number one you need to have Role Models you need to have people that you look up to and you could say what would this person do in this situation okay so there was a woman that I worked with as a young professional and she was from Texas she was from Texas super polished super just diplomatic just had an amazing way of like challenging people in a professional way and so she's a role model for me and I will tell you throughout my career I'm in situations and I'm saying to myself what would Terry straw do in this situation what would they do because having Role Models will help you understand and mimic behavior that is positive behavior in your workplace okay number two you need to have mentors and advisors and this morning again I talked about do not allow somebody to just assign you a mentor you need to sit down and you need to say okay what do I need right now because the role of a mentor is somebody who can give you advice based on their experiences okay based on where you are in your career right now who do you need on your team who can give you advice based on their experiences so you need to assess what are your needs you need to be able to articulate your needs and then you need to go out and recruit people who can fill those needs and say hey you're really good at budgeting I'm not I would love to have you as my mentor so anytime I have questions and I need advice on how to do budgeting you're my man and I'm going to come talk to you or hey you're really good at like not getting angry at underperforming employees and I've seen you do that would you be willing to be my mentor as it relates to helping me be a better manager and how I treat my employees you have to be able to articulate it because so many times people are mentors but they don't know how to help their people they don't know how to help their mentee so you need to tell them how they can help you okay number three you need people who will endorse you and recommend you for opportunities and will have your back and say yeah he's really good so when behind closed doors when people maybe um talking about you or let's say you have your team of employees and they're all coming down hard on you you need that person in that team who's like guys I know he's being hard on you right now but he's coming from a good place because he cares about quality and quality represents our brand and without our brand we don't have a business so I understand he's being hard on you right now but he's coming from a good place you need to have these Champions amongst your team who will endorse you uh behind those closed doors okay you also need co-leaders you need people who will also manage with you because again leadership is a team sport and then you just need those supporters and cheerleaders so when you're like having those rough days and you're ready to quit your job and you're like why did I do this I'm going to go quit and start my own thing on the side you need the people on the sidelines who are like hey you got this you can do this don't quit it's just a bad day you'll come back tomorrow and things will be better okay so build your team all right let's talk about time management and prioritization so what I want you to do is I want you to look at the screen right here and you see this picture of water this is your energy okay it is a finite amount of energy no you cannot fill it more no we cannot get you a second pitcher the glasses you see on the screen are all of the different priorities or roles that you have in your life so you have your work some of you are a mom or a dad some of you are a son or a daughter some of you are a coach some of you volunteer at your religious organizations I want you right now to take inventory and think about all the roles that you play okay can you all do that in your head now I ask you what size is your glass for each of those roles so your work role how much of your energy or do your time does it demand is it a shot glass is it a wine glass is it an 18 ounce beer mug what's bigger than an 18 ounce beer mug what is it 20 ounce beer mug what is it okay then if some of you are married you're in a husband or wife role what size is your husband or wife glass if you're a parent what size is your parent glass if you're like a den leader Boy Scouts Girl Scouts whatever it is what size is that class so I want you to think about all your glasses then what we do is we take your pitcher of water and I say to you I want you to prioritize those glasses what's most important to you it's a hard question for some of you I've struggled it with myself as a workaholic gen xer don't feel guilty if you put your work glass in front of your marriage glass it's okay it's our generation I don't advise it you may need my counseling down the road if you do that but it is what it is then we take your picture of water and I make you pour start pouring in your glasses so that first glass let's let's let's say it's your marriage glass and let's say it's at least an 18 ounce beer mug if you want a healthy marriage you fill up that 18 ounce beer mug okay then your work glass is the 20 ounce beer mug you fill it then let's say we go to your parenting role and it's a wine glass we fill it what I find when I do this exercise with most people is they run out of water before they even get past their second glass and they're like well Dr Herman like I need to get more water like can I fill it up and I was like this is a finite amount of energy you're only human unless we can figure out how to clone you or you could become a Marvel superhero and that's your superpower I don't know that you're gonna have to figure it out and like what do I do so well maybe we need to move your glasses around and re-prioritize maybe we need to remove some of those glasses or maybe we need to take like that work glass and make it be an eight ounce water glass and not the 20 ounce beer mug some of you are like no way like that's not gonna happen well you need to figure it out because you only have a finite amount of energy so as a new manager very few people are just a manager right you're not only a manager you're still a worker you're still an engineer you're still a sales person you're still all of these roles and you need to figure out how to prioritize and manage your different responsibilities because if not what happens is you run out of water and you become burned out and when you become burned out it could take over nine months for us to be able to recharge your battery it's hard okay all right how many of you this is like you sitting with your employees when it comes to change you may have some of the older Generations or a leader who is really slow to embrace your innovative ideas and what I tell you is to just be patient but don't just be patient still be tenacious and persistent be respectful and this is some of you wanting to like bite your fist because you're so frustrated that the people around you are not either working as fast as you they're not working as hard as you and they're not as open to ideas as quickly as you are and what I'm going to tell you is you just have to be patient if there was a way if I could find a way to bottle patients and just like put an IV in you and Infuse it in you as a manager I would be a million I'd be a trillionaire by now because a lot of times the demise of a new Young manager is patience you come in there you're all excited you want to like change all these things you have all these ideas you could run the business better than everybody else and then all of a sudden like you hit a roadblock a wall of people who are like I don't think so so be be patient but also be persistent be tenacious don't let them discourage you you just have to find the right time and build the right relationships okay oh I'm going the wrong way and I talked about this this morning as well um this has kind of gotten lost I feel like in the last 15 years I encourage you as a new manager to really dig deep this goes back to the self-awareness and figure out what are your values and then every decision you make as a manager is values driven you always go back to your values and say does this align with my values is this the right thing so if you value fairness the decisions that you're making as a manager is it fair you value honesty the way that you're communicating with your people are you being honest are they being honest with you right everything you need to do needs to be value based uh decision making okay now let me just making sure what were the other concerns what was yours again do you remember okay so what do you he says putting together a plan and communicating your plan what what's the challenge with putting together a plan um okay so real so what he's saying is every day you guys need to come up with a plan a work plan for the day and somebody over here said you had challenges with delegating and being able to delegate it out and manage that plan so really what I hear you saying so correct me if I'm wrong are you having challenges with flexibility and how to quickly pivot or are you having challenges with at the beginning of the day coming up with that plan what's the keep peeling back the onion for me before group they've already known what yeah yeah so what he said is have a crew and the crew consists of people who've been doing it for a long time and they know what they're doing but then they've hired in some new people who may not be as familiar and as quick to to pick up what they're supposed to be doing and there's conflict so is that really you telling me that you're having a challenge with creating a plan what he's saying is I'm having a hard time getting people on a team who are different from one another to work together that solution is a lot different than someone who's having a hard time putting together a plan right and so based on what I said today this is the professor in me did you pick up a nugget of what you can do to to challenge that to solve that this is critical thinking so I'm going to spoon feed it to you you need to find out from your team you need to have all of your team members number one you have to build rapport amongst them right because the old guys aren't going to automatically accept the new guys is there an age difference between the older folks the experienced folk no so there's the same age should they have that in common do they have other things in common do they all like certain Sports food first thing I would recommend that you do is you need to get your teams together and you got to get them trusting and respecting one another so can you have like a mandatory fun activity where they all do something maybe even invite their families and get them to know one another number one number two you need to have your team members learn about one another and you as the team lead you need to learn about yourself as well because you may find you have folks on your team who are very detail oriented and they need to know all the details before they start the project but then you may have people like me who build the airplane while I'm flying it you're gonna bore me to death if you sit here and you lay out every single detail just let me run and then if I have questions I'll come ask you so if you can figure this out about your team members you can adapt and adopt your directions and your communication style based on the needs and preferences of the people on your team so you need to kind of take inventory and assess what are their communication Styles and how do they learn best and what you're going to find is you're probably going to have two camps you're gonna have this these folks over here who want to build the airplane while they're flying it these folks over here who have details so you may say okay we're gonna do a quick 15-minute huddle I'm going to communicate the plan out and then those of you who feel comfortable you go and then I'm going to take an extra 15 minutes to break down the details for those of you who need additional detail okay you also need to understand people receive information differently so you may have a team of people who want you to write the plan down if you're on a work site maybe you've got this piece of paper you could put up real quick or you could jot it down like hey guys this is what we're doing because they're more visual learners but then you may have people who are just open to hearing it or you may have people who want it like text to them so later on if they forget they can go back you need to find out how they want to hear your message because you can sit there all day and communicate your plan and message to them but if they're not hearing it you're wasting your time so you just got to do a quick inventory quick assessment to figure out what are their preferences and you want to know the easiest way to do that any guesses what's the easiest way ask a just ask them give them the direction say hey are we good does anybody have any questions and if you guys say any questions they're like no be like is this the BET did I communicate this information to you the best way for you to receive it and see what they say do you trust your guys would they say Nelson I have no idea what you just said would they say that to you or would they just ignore you so ask them so you don't have a problem with creating a plan you have a communication problem you have a trust team build problem and you need to help them learn how to work together does that make sense okay what was the pr your concern over here okay constructive criticism this is a great one because I think okay this ties into this do any of you have performance reviews by the way they're the biggest waste of your time sorry boss they're the biggest waste of your organization's time and money how often do you give your people feedback over there once a year yeah and and okay so you give them feedback once a year and you give them feedback based on what they did this past year and you really don't spend a whole lot of time giving them advice on what they need to do moving forward and really the purpose of performance reviews is really because HR wants you to have some kind of documentation in case you ever have to fire somebody that's really what the value is behind performance reviews what's your tell me more about your challenge with giving feedback he says he doesn't want to come off being rude he wants them to learn so you want to give him constructive feedback on how they can do something better okay first of all first is you need to give constant feedback all the time good and bad if you only give feedback when it's bad they're not you're and people aren't going to be receptive of that so every day you need to make a conscious effort even if you set a goal that every day I'm going to give three pieces of feedback to each one of my team members you do that and you find good and bad things to say and it has to be instant every day consistent okay but now back to your specific question about giving constructive feedback this is coaching versus management and let me give you a per let me break this down in a very simple time sensitive way can you give me an example so I can show you an example can you think of a recent time when somebody did something wrong and you want to give them better feedback so you wanted them to do something but that's not what they did okay so he said they didn't do it to his level or his expectations of what he wanted it done first of all I would ask you are your expectations realistic are you sure okay so you know they're sure second I would ask you did you communicate your expectations to this person up front he says he doesn't think he went enough details so many times when people don't perform this is why we spend more time with the managers and not with the employees I asked the manager did you communicate your expectations up front so I expected you to come to work on time and the older people are like really really I gotta tell them that don't people know that they're supposed to come on time no don't ever assume that your people know what you expect of them ever okay so here you had an expectation and was that that they didn't do it as quickly as you wanted to get done didn't get it done by the deadline or didn't do it with the same quality okay so as a new manager values base management your whole team anybody you manage or you lead you should explain to them and they should know that you care a whole lot about quality and you explain why you care about quality so your brand by the way when you leave the room they know that you're the manager that cares a whole lot about quality so anybody who works for you clearly knows you have high expectations on quality okay number one number two did you delegate this task out to this person so you're already self-diagnosing yourself do you catch this he didn't clear you it sounds like you didn't clearly communicate your expectations up front of exactly what you wanted when you wanted it and how you wanted it done right so as a new manager you should communicate what you want when you want it and how you want it done but if you don't want to make the young people mad at you you don't stop there your fourth one is and you ask them for their input so you say to them so what industry are you in let's see if I can make up a story you're all going to laugh what do you do are you like metal roofing or like metal buildings okay y'all bear with me I'm gonna see if I can come up with something so I want you to put a metal roof on this house and I want it done by tomorrow end of the day and it's important to me that it is done right which when I say right this is what it looks like there's no seams I'm making this up there all of the screws are drilled in all the way and it's sealed am I even close my clothes no but but you you follow me right and so what are your thoughts on that so you told them what you wanted when you wanted it done and what high quality means to you and say what are your thoughts on that does that sound realistic or what's your thoughts and they may say okay I got the no seams and I got the screw part of it but I really don't think I can have it sealed by the end of the day tomorrow and then you have a conversation with them and you say okay tell me more as a manager don't ever ask people why the minute you ask somebody why people get defensive so if you're like why can't you have that done people are like whoa whoa bro you know so you say okay tell me more tell me more well I don't think I can have it sealed by tomorrow afternoon because we're short to people on this team and we don't have the proper safety equipment to be able to get up there and you know when we seal stuff it gets slippery I don't know making it up right and then you say okay well if I can get you that safety equipment and if I can go pull two guys off of this team over here can we get it done what are your thoughts and then like Well yeah if you get me the right equipment you get people we can get it done see how it's a conversation rather than you just saying because like from what I'm hearing from you is you just said hey I want that I need that project done hey I need that project done you didn't tell them the how the what the why and the when does that make sense so really peeling back your onion it's not about giving people feedback because if you tell them you're and you communicate your expectations well on the front end your feedback at the end should be like hey man that's a really good job and I appreciate you having such great high quality standards in our business it makes our business look good and that's why we want to keep you here but let's say they don't do it your feedback can be hey help me help me understand how I can how I can how we can better work together to make sure we're both on the same page to make sure that we're providing high quality here at this business now some of you are sitting here going Melissa seriously like I don't have time I don't have time to do this this is a bunch of BS but I'm telling you if you're a strong communicator on the front end you will save the investment and the time on the back end okay but let's just say you let's just say you did say all that and you need to give them feedback here's how you did it you do you sandwich it a good a bad a good hey man I appreciate you working in the heat today I know it was hot so I appreciate you showing up and coming in the heat I'd like to give you some feedback of how you could have done the roof a little better and I'm giving you this feedback because I care about your success and I care about the success of of this business and so I want to give you some feedback so in the future it would be awesome if maybe you drilled in those screws a little bit tighter so the roof doesn't blow off in a hurricane in Indiana I don't know right you tell them the why and say but listen I'm confident in you I hired you for a reason because you're smart so I'm confident that after giving you this feedback moving forward you're going to be good and you're going to have the best metal roofs here good bad good does that help does that make sense but it sounds like you need to just do a better job of communicating your expectations on the front end okay and who was my third one brave soul who spoke up it was the delegation piece of it you already know you got it okay all right so I think we are at time and so here is my contact information please feel free to take a picture get my email you are welcome to text me call me LinkedIn me email me what else Instagram me Facebook me I'm not on Twitter but any of those other ones if you find yourself in a challenge as a new manager please do not hesitate to contact me because usually with a 15-minute conversation I can quickly coach you and help you and get you to where you need to be and if you don't have access to one of those assessments and you want it email me and I will email you an assessment and don't worry your name doesn't go on a list serve I'm not going to spam you I'm just going to send you the assessment and then probably forget your email okay all right that's all I have thanks for attending I'll hang out so if anybody has any questions you can talk to me okay thanks [Applause] [Music]

Channel: METALCON

Views: 45,641

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Id: seqkew9KIaw

Length: 58min 18sec (3498 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 15 2023