Manager by Design 2011 Year in Review: Top Article Series (part 2)
As we close out the year, here are the top series of articles published by Manager by Design in 2011. See part 1 here.
Team Strategy Documents
Think of managing a team as a set of deliverables
Teams should have a team strategy document. Here’s an example.
How to create a team strategy document—use the team
How to use your team strategy document externally
How to use the team strategy document to help you manage your team
Creating a system that encourages good management
An obsession with talent could be a sign of a lack of obsession with the system
Tenets of Management Design: Managers are created not found
Tenet of management design: If you don’t have a system, it’s probably being done over email
All-team meetings (and why they’re hard to do well)
Do your all-team meetings make your team cringe?
Reasons many employees dread all-team meetings
Quick tips for making all-hands meetings tolerable and useful
The annual review reveals more about the manager’s performance than the employee’s performance
Let’s look at what a well-conducted annual review looks like
Five more markers and examples of what a good annual review looks like
Annual reviews are awesome artifacts that can be used to improve management skills
“You don’t take feedback well” – and its ramifications
Telling someone they “don’t take feedback well” doesn’t count as performance feedback
Three more reasons “You don’t take feedback well” is risky performance feedback
A Performance Feedback/Performance Management Flowchart
Becoming a manager – and the havoc it wreaks on one’s identity in the workplace
Becoming a manager is a subversion of self-identity
Without management design, the new manager relies on base instincts
The new manager is an amateur at doing managerial tasks
Giving performance feedback is breaks the illusion of greatness of a manager
Why managers don’t give performance feedback – it hurts the ego
Manager by Design 2011 Year in Review: Top Article Series (part 1)
As we close out the year, here are the top series of articles published by Manager by Design in 2011. Enjoy and thanks to all who support the Manager by Design blog!
Areas where providing feedback is most useful
What inputs should a manager provide performance feedback on?
When to provide performance feedback using direct observation: Practice sessions
When to provide performance feedback using direct observation: On the job
Areas of focus in providing performance feedback based on direct observation: Tangible artifacts
What managers can do about “intangible human-based artifacts”
Giving feedback based on indirect sources (and how difficult this really is)
Three reasons why giving performance feedback based on indirect information doesn’t work
Bonus! Six more reasons why giving performance feedback based on indirect information is risky
Tips for how managers should use indirect sources of information about employees
What to do when you receive a customer complaint about your employee’s performance
Using strategy sessions with employees (as opposed to just “feedback”)
Manager of Manager providing feedback to and about employees (and the difficulty it brings)
What a manager can do if the big boss puts a tag on an employee
More reasons the big boss’s feedback on an employee is useless
On the inherent absurdity of stack ranking and the angst it produces in employees
An obsession with talent could be a sign of a lack of obsession with the system
How to maximize the value of peer feedback
Why peer feedback from surveys doesn’t qualify as feedback
Examples of how peer feedback from surveys is misused by managers
How to use peer feedback from surveys for good (it’s not easy) Part 1
How to use peer feedback from surveys for good (it’s not easy) – Part 2
Some pros and cons of peer feedback directly given by peers
An opportunity to increase the amount of performance feedback on your team
Tips for how a manager can improve direct peer feedback
Bonus! Three more tips for how manager can improve direct peer feedback
How managers receive (or don’t receive) feedback on managing
Managers giving managers feedback on managing: How well is this done?
Management Design: How managers receive performance feedback compared to other jobs
Entry level jobs receive a lot of performance feedback: What about managers?
How about managers ask for feedback from their employees?
Specific phrases and examples for how to ask for feedback from your employees
One more option for providing feedback to manager: 3rd Party Assessment and Coaching
How do employees give feedback to their manager?
How to give feedback to your manager: Some possible openings
Top 10 Manager by Design Articles of 2011
The Manager by Design Blog celebrates its 2-year anniversary today!
Let’s count down the top 10 most popular articles of 2011!
10. Quick tips for making all-hands meetings tolerable and useful
7. Tips for how a manager can improve direct peer feedback
6. More reasons the big boss’s feedback on an employee is useless
4. How to create a team strategy document—use the team
3. Why peer feedback from surveys doesn’t qualify as feedback
2. Some pros and cons of peer feedback directly given by peers
1. Examples of how peer feedback from surveys is misused by managers
Thanks to all who have supported the Manager by Design blog. Keep reading the Manager by Design blog for great tips on people and team management, as well as deep thinking and analysis on how organizations can structurally improve how managers perform!
Related articles:
Manager by Design celebrates its one-year anniversary! Here are our top 10 articles so far!
Manager by Design 2010 Year in Review: Top Article Series (part 1)
Manager by Design Year in Review: Top Article Series (part 2)
Manager by Design Year in Review: Top Article Series (part 2)
As we close out the year, here are the top series of articles published by Manager by Design in 2010. Check out part one here.
Providing Expectations:
Providing expectations sets the bar for what you and your team need to do, and how to get it done. Yet it is an ignored art. Here are some articles on the art of providing expectations:
The art of providing expectations: Get input and the earlier the better
The art of providing expectations: Tie the expectations to the larger strategy
Examples of providing expectations to your team
Examples of using expectations to improve your performance feedback
The Value of Providing Expectations: Positive reinforcement proliferates
Performance feedback is a means to improve your expectation-providing skills
Behavior-based language:
Managers need to check their usage of language to focus on behaviors. This doesn’t necessarily come naturally. Here is primer on using behavior-based language.
Behavior-based language primer for managers: How to tell if you are using behavior-based language
Behavior-based language primer for managers: Avoid using value judgments
Behavior-based language primer for managers: Stop using generalizations
How to use behavior-based language to lead to evaluation and feedback
Behavior-based language primer: Steps and Examples of replacing using adverbs
Managing from a deficit:
When one is an individual contributor, it’s generally easy to figure out when you are falling behind. But it isn’t so easy when you’re a manager. These articles focus on the moments that might reveal you’re managing from a deficit, and could benefit from changing your management practices.
The manager who yells is managing from a deficit
Check your usage of the word “just.” It could mean you’re managing from a deficit
What it really means when a manager swings by and asks, “You doing OK?”
Five tips for reducing drama on your team
If you’re the manager, it’s your job not to act surprised
Managers behaving badly: Training the team not to report bad news
What to do when you see a status or metric as “Red”
Keep reading the Manager by Design blog for tips on people management and team management. Happy new year and see you in 2011!
Manager by Design Year in Review: Top Article Series (part 1)
As we close out the year, here are the top series of articles published by Manager by Design in 2010.
Providing Positive Reinforcement:
A manager needs to provide positive reinforcement to encourage that employees keep doing the things that are going well, and perhaps do more of the things that work, and less the things that don’t. Here are the Manager by Design articles related to Positive Reinforcement:
Examples of when to offer thanks and when to offer praise
“Thanks for your Hard Work” vs. “Thanks for your Good Work”
The Value of Providing Expectations: Positive reinforcement proliferates
Managers should provide focus on what’s going right and reward those behaviors
An example of tracking positive performance and praise of an employee in an employee performance log
Getting started on a performance log – stick with the praise
Using a Performance Log:
So many things happen when managing, it’s easy to forget what happened. Or worse, it’s easy to remember the things that don’t matter as much. What does matter is the performance of the employees. Here are tips on keeping a performance log. Remember — it should include the good stuff your employees are doing!
Helpful tip for managers: Keep a performance log
Important fields that an employee performance log should contain – Beginner Level
Important fields that an employee performance log should contain – Intermediate Level
Important fields that an employee performance log should contain – Advanced Level
Keeping a performance log – why not?
An example of tracking positive performance and praise of an employee in an employee performance log
Getting started on a performance log – stick with the praise
An example of how to use a log to track performance of an employee
Meetings:
Managers get invited to meetings all the time. They also invite a lot of people to meetings too. This means that meetings are important. So what makes a good meeting? Here are some articles by Manager by Design on the topic:
Criteria to generate a virtuous cycle for meetings
A leading indicator for team performance: Chart your meeting quality
Nine simple tips to make meetings more compelling
Making it a mandatory meeting sabotages the meeting
More reasons mandatory meetings are bad for you and bad for your team
How to get out of what seem to be useless meetings
How to get out of really useless meetings
Happy New Year from Manager by Design!
Manager by Design celebrates its one-year anniversary! Here are our top 10 articles so far!
The Manager by Design blog is celebrating its one-year anniversary this week!
We’ve published over 100 articles on People and Team Management, and started the discussion on how we can create better managers by design.
To celebrate, let’s count down the top 10 most popular articles of the year!
#10: When managers should praise and thank employees
#9: How to give positive feedback to your manager
#8: Examples of managers providing better performance feedback
#7: Reasons why discussing employee weaknesses is bad
#6: An example of praising an employee for doing a good job
#5: Example phrases for how to ask for feedback
#4: Let’s clarify what “dealing with ambiguity” means
#3: An example of giving specific and immediate performance feedback
#2: Examples of how to better discuss strengths and weaknesses
and the #1 most popular Manager by Design article in 2010 is. . .
#1: Good and Bad Examples of Performance Feedback
Thanks to all who follow and comment on the Manager by Design blog! We have lots of great articles coming out for next year.
Keep reading Manager by Design for great people management tips and awesome team management tips, and we’ll keep developing the emerging field of management design!
Manager by Design: Welcome
Welcome to the Manager by Design blog. This blog was created to help team managers improve in their ability to run teams. I’m talking about all sorts of managers, in any industry and at any level. This includes those just starting out as managers and those who have been doing it for years. I have seen too many managers struggle to run teams well. I have seen too many managers “freestyle” their way through the management tasks, and ignore others entirely.
Being a manager is tough, and managers develop their practices mostly through ad-hoc means. Management practices, whether good or bad, tend to be by accident rather than by design. It’s time this change and we develop a new field I’m pioneering, “Management Design.” The idea is that we can create and develop great managers by design rather than by accident.
If you are a manager of a team— subscribe to this blog to get regular tips and ideas for improving your management skills. These will be practical tips and concepts that you can apply when you’re ready.
For those of you in Human Resources, and are charged with Management Development (and even if you aren’t), read this blog for how you can – by design – improve how your managers are using the techniques and applying the skills necessary to be great managers.
