Great Managers are involved! And if you think you are, think again.

One huge area where managers fail is being involved with their people. No, I don’t mean they go bowling or drinking with them. They are involved with them on a professional level at work. Now the real question is, what do I mean by ‘involved’?

Involved is a state of mind as well as a physical interaction with your entire organization. You have to make constant appearances, have constant open two-way communication. You have to listen to your people, hear their fears, ideas, thoughts, concerns. You have to stand in between them and …

Yes, I paused there. You have to stand between them and … the leadership of your company, the management that they get frustrated with, the coworkers that they get upset with, the rules that they disagree with, the things that make them unhappy at work. And you have to stand between them and those things without creating a barrier, a division or a wall the separates them from those things. You have to be the person they can go to with all of these concerns and you have to be able to calm them, salve their fears, communicate effectively with their concerns and help them see how what they do, want to do, don’t want to do can all be worked out by staying within the parameters of the norms associated with their job. And that sometimes, they will have to simply accept what they cannot change and you have to offer them the wisdom to know when that is.

You will become a great manager by communicating effectively on all of these fronts especially when they do not perceive you as having done any of those things. Then you will have become a great manager that they will support, stand by, and do things for because they will believe in you as much as you believe in them.

And all of that must be done without alienating them from any other person or part of your organization. Can you do that? Do you know how to do that? And if you don’t, then what you need to do to become that GREAT Manager is start learning how to do that by 1) Reading the right things 2) Listening to the right tapes/cd’s/programs 3) attending or associating with the right people or seminars that can help you learn and grow into the person you want to be.

And helping your people do the same things.

I am Steve Sapato and I train managers to become GREAT MANAGERS. You can learn more at my website mentalprosperityblog.com and write to me at steve@stevesapato.com for answers to yoru questions and help in becoming.

 

 

What can you learn from the GM Firings? The culture of mediocrity~

Have you been keeping up on the “firings” of certain ‘key” personel by GM over design flaws and the deaths that happened because of this ‘negligence’?

If you read the materials coming out and all of the peripheral documentation it appears that GM and loads of employees knew about the flaws and potential outcomes for as long as eleven years. Yes, I said, eleven years. That makes the fifteen people fired merely pawns in the game of profit vs safety. It makes those fifteen the sacrificial lambs that are supposed to appease the government investigation and the quench the publics desire for results.

But what has really happened at GM? Why, if it takes eleven years to come to light, are we supposed to believe in anything GM again? Is GM really concerned with our safety? Should I risk my family on anything GM?

But let’s get past the issues of safety and products. Let’s get beyond brand loyalty and history.

What I really want to know is, will next years cars be any safer? Will I listen to the rhetoric of Cogressional hearings and ‘finding’ the culprits who are responsible for these aggregious errors that were ignored for almost eleven years? Will I eever really feel like GM has understood not only what happened but why it happened?

If you listen to GM leadership, they have instituted new committes, appointed new heads of new departments meant to address the issues that led to these errors and printed new posters to post all over the place to show the employees that there is a new atmosphere for addressing issues without repercussions.

And now I ask, will this fix their problem? Will this really address the issues that have kept people silent, babbling in frustration but secretive about the failure and potential catastrophic results these issues had on the familes who were killed?

And the answer is probably not. For what is troubling GM troubles a lot of companies both big and small and that is the culture we create in our companies. The culture we have created in our society. The  culture of look the other way, don’t get involved, don’t make waves, because all it will bring you is trouble and grief.

Look at your own organization and ask yourself, can people come to me with major issues about attitudes? Yes, peoples attitudes. For it is within your employees that your company exists. It is within the minds of your employees where your company culture resides. It is within the hearts and spirits of your employees where we find whether we can communicate with safety or fear. Can we bring up new ideas? Can we show criticism of existing things without fear or repercussions? Can your employees openly affect areas that are important?

And the important question is…  how do you know what they are feeling? When was the last time you openly solicited input from all employees and truly addressed these issues with the employees? Discussed them openly and responded to them.

I recently was involved with an organization where the CEO had an open blog where anyone could post a question. Everyone saw the question and everyone saw the response ny the CEO to each and every question. It was a great concept and it worked amazingly well. He sometimes even responded to the stupidly absurd questions that some people asked. And the results were amazing. Because everyone felt safe because it was so public.

Now I ask again, what can you learn from the GM firings?

 

Steve Sapato is a management trainer and coach and travels the country training up and coming managers and staff on how to be more effective in their dealings with people and employees. You can reach Steve at QLman49@gmail.com where the Q stands for Question and the L stands for Listen. Question everyone and everything and listen to the answers. If the answers make a lot of sense with no serious flaws maybe you should consider changing your opinion instead of trying to change theirs.