Louise McGregor HR, Leadership

The Downside of Being a Manager

Resignations.

On my first day back at work this year my very bright, highly competent, smart, funny, great to work with, project manager resigned.

I guess there might be occasions when a resignation is welcome, so perhaps the fact that this one wasn’t is a “luxury problem”, we worked together for two and half years and it was good. Her role was internet manager and she ran ING.com in terms of operations and development. She’s moving on to a great role in a company with far more of a “cool factor”. I’m proud of her and pleased for her.

And now I have to find a new bright, highly competent, smart, funny, great to work with, project manager.

It turns out to be a difficult task, I am looking for a generalist; someone with a combination of project management, communications/marketing and technical knowledge. Someone with a bit of a design eye, analytical skills and an ability to think strategically. Someone who will fit into a small team of project managers and geeks.  I know – it’s a long list and the job vacancy included it all.

I got a range of CVs, and I didn’t really expect all applicants to have everything on the list. But I was a little shocked at one application that really didn’t have anything on the profile, but cheerfully stated that he’s hard working and client-friendly. In his role as a swimming trainer at the local public pool.

However there were at 8 strong applicants, 5 of whom came pretty close to ticking all the boxes. After an initial interview round I have 3 really great candidates any of whom I would be happy to have in my team. In fact it’s really tough decision to know who of the three would be the best choice.

It’s a luxury position to be in.

 

Louise McGregor Leadership

Who Am I? Myers Briggs


Myers Briggs is a common test used in leadership training courses and it divides all people into one of sixteen groups based on their scores on 4 dimensions. There’s some controversy around it because it’s relatively easy to skew the results deliberately and the test doesn’t stand up to scientific examination. However, answered honestly, it seems to be fairly accurate.

Picture 13The dimensions are;

  • Introvert – Extrovert
  • Sensing – iNtuition
  • Thinking – Feeling
  • Judging – Perceiving

The combination of these four dimensions gives a grid of 16 possible profiles.

what is it

  • Introvert – Extrovert
    Extroverts favour action and introverts favour reflection in how they approach the world.
  • Sensing – iNtuition
    This dimension refers to how people collect information, “sensing” is a preference for collecting tangible factual information, “intuition” is a preference for getting an overview or a big picture
  • Thinking – Feeling
    If you make decisions based on assembling rational facts, you’ll score higher on thinking, if you use the impact on people as your decision making tool you’ll score higher on thinking.
  • Judging – Perceiving
    This dimension looks at how structured and defined you like your life, those wanting structure score higher on the ‘J’ scale, those who seek more flexibility and are more adaptable will score higher on Perceiving.

I’ve had some interesting discussions with people over the years who see this as unscientific and have a problem with putting people into boxes. There’s a lot of room within each box, and if you do the in depth analysis the test gets even more revealing. I’ve found it a useful tool for understanding myself, my strengths and my limitations.

For example; I score high on extroversion, if we’re in a group discussion I’ll throw in ideas right away. My introverted classmates on one leadership course explained to me that introverts can find this intimidating; they’re still reflecting on the question and they feel that my early suggestions might be more information to reflect on so they never get to their own ideas. I did explain that to me those ideas are an “opening bid” and I’m perfectly happy for them to be improved, dismissed, destroyed.

The invaluable mantra a classmate gave me was “save it to draft”, so now I note the idea down for myself and wait, encouraging the introverts to speak when they’re ready.

One other attitude that I’ve come across is the expectation that you will improve, but that implies that there is a ideal profile within Myers Briggs and the concept and tool do not contain such a judgement. There has been some research done looking at what profiles are common among successful people in certain roles, but it is not a prescriptive tool. It is more a tool for understanding how you work and how you might interact with others of different profiles.

As a personal learning tool Myers Briggs has been very useful and positive for me.

Louise McGregor Leadership

2010 Goals

I’ve met one deadline for 2010; I’ve set the goals for my team for the year. It had to be done by today.

We already had a team meeting to discuss the goals for the team in general, so next step was individual goals. We’ve agreed on performance goals and development goals for 2010.

I had a discussion with one member of the team, about how these goal setting and assessment systems are subjective and how frustrating it is.

How could I answer?

First of all it is true, the score he gets is based on one person’s assessment of his work, and as we’re not working in an environment with numerical targets there is a certain amount of . Secondly we set goals now as a best guess of what we’ll do in the year but, as happened last year, that can all change.

So I answered that there was always some element of subjectivity in any system and part of trying to make it fair was agreeing together on the goals. Then I explained my attitude to the goal setting process; set a range of goals, some which are regular business, some which are tougher, some which more of a best guess about what will happen in the second half of the year. I do this so that there is a full year of goals, some of which are sure to be achieved some of which will challenge the team member.

In terms of assessing the achievement I look at results. Yes, results-full-stop. Once I’ve done that I look back on the year and try to judge whether the goal was fair, or whether there were circumstances beyond our control that made it harder to achieve the goal. If it wasn’t I might have to adjust the assessment. In our system the goals are weighted so once that is taken into account a final score can be calculated. Then I think back on previous years and see if that score is a fair and consistent score. Of course each step involves a certain amount of subjectivity.

Then there’s a department-wide adjustment; based on the theory that we’re all on the same normal curve so you should have one team all scoring As and another all Cs. I find this a bit hard to take – it does mean that your best chance of getting a great score is to go and work in a rubbish team, but the idea behind it is around fairness and ironing out those super-generous or super-harsh managers.

Last year was a year of changing priorities, which meant that it was tough to meet existing goals in a changing environment. The thing that slipped was the development goals. I only spent a tiny part of my 2009 training budget, and there were/are some training needs. This year one of my performance goals is making sure my team get the training they need. If everyone follows through on the plans presented today that will be easy.

image goals

Louise McGregor Leadership

The unchanging nature of leadership

“A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves. ”
Lao Tzu

“Reason and judgement are the qualities of a leader” – Tacitus

Lao Tzu, a Chinese philosopher, lived in the sixth century BCE, and Tacitus was a member of the senate in Rome in the first century CE. But both quotes still reflect our understanding of leadership. A number of the historical ideas come through in the modern (well, 1970s) concept of servant leadership.

But all of that was pre-internet, surely it’s all changed with the new tools that we use now? Watch what Tom Peters has to say on the subject.

image from wikimedia commons

Louise McGregor Editorial, Leadership

New Year’s Resolutions

What do I want to be different in 2010? I don’t make big “resolutions”, my world view is that life is a journey so you can take a step forward, or backward or change direction on any day. But the new year is a great opportunity to reflect on whether  I’m still heading somewhere I want to go, and determine whether some adjustments are needed.

Work

  • More balance in which goals I focus on, in 2009 I was very absorbed with one big goal, in 2010 I need to spread my time across all the goals of my team more evenly.
  • Learn more about communications, online communications, managing technology, managing other people and managing “up”. The first four of these area a continuation of what I’ve been learning for years, I know I like these subjects. The last one is more difficult for me, I know I need to “work the politics” more, and make sure I have buy-in before acting. I’m getting better – but it’s still a learning point for me. Mind you, having a manager who knows the online world is helping me a lot!
  • Keep delivering, I want to deliver more smaller results this year. This means better planning and speeding up our development cycle. We’re in a good position to do this in 2010.
  • More fun with my team, we’ve had a tough year, and 2010 will also be extremely busy as our company goes through a lot of change. I’m lucky to have a great team to work with, but I need to find some more ways to pull us together throughout the year.

Personal

  • More Writing, I started working on this blog seriously at the beginning of 2009, that’s going to continue, but I want to try more fiction writing. So short stories for a creative writing course, and another attempt at NaNoWriMo.
  • Learn to rollerblade, I’ve had such fun trying to ice-skate I’ve decided that the fun should continue in summer.
  • Travel somewhere I’ve never been before, I have two cities on my must see list; Istanbul and St Petersburg. But I’m also thinking about India, an online friend lives there and the superb photos she posts have got me inspired. She posted about the festival of Ganesh Chaturthi, which led me to look up Ganesh (pictured above). He’s worshipped as the god of education, knowledge and wisdom. He’s also the destroyer of obstacles, sounds like a handy guy to know.

image Ganesh 2009 /Pranav Yaddanapudi/ CC BY 2.0

Louise McGregor HR, Leadership

Career Advice

Erica wrote recently at Erica.biz challenging the idea that entrepreneurs need to go to college/university, it brought back memories of my interview with a careers advisor many years ago.

I was a good student, I was good at and interested in sciences and languages and really didn’t know what I wanted to do, although I knew there were somethings I did NOT want to do. So they careers advisor took me through an aptitude test and a personality test. The result of which was, as he informed me, I was bright enough to do whatever I chose. He said this as if it was good news, but I wanted help and this was one seriously unhelpful answer.

Now I work at the cross roads of technology, business and communication and I love the combination of working with people, analysing technology, problem solving, design and creativity.  It took a long time to get here, with some big career detours along the way (to see just how circuitous my career has been you can check my linkedin profile). I’m now managing a small team and talking to people about their career path and it seems that the classic career advice serves a few people, and fails many.

Where it succeeds

Decideds

People who know what they want to do, those who say something like “I’ve always wanted to be a lawyer”, or “I’ve always wanted to design dresses”, or “I like computers, I don’t like meetings, tell me what to build and I’ll make it”.

There’s usually a fairly clear connection between the career they want to follow and the training they’ll need. It’s therefore rather easy to to point these people in the right direction, advise them on courses, help them apply.

Jobists

People who don’t really want the effort of a career, they’ll work hard, but the job is one part of their life and they’ll do what they’ve contracted to do.

Usually you can combine the persons interests and skills to find several acceptable options, occasionally later in life this group get a whack of inspiration and take off in a different direction. But most often this group will be happy with regular work, a reasonable pay, and maintaining a life balance.

Where it does not succeed

Entrepreneurs (particularly young entrepreneurs)

This group have an idea that they can develop into a business, they’ll probably be very enthusiastic about their idea even if you ask practical questions indicating how half-baked their idea is. There’s a good chance they already have a hobby that they’re selling to their friends.

It’s hard to advise this group, there isn’t a course that is automatically going to fit all entrepreneurs. I think they need to create their own “apprenticeship”, meaning they might follow a small business course, they might do a semester of marketing courses, they might work with someone great in their field. This is basically what Erica did, as outlined in her post, although she may not have thought of it in those terms.

I think this group get bad advice from career advisors because career advisors are typically not entrepreneurs, and what this group need is very far from the traditional logical career path and career ladder they’re used to discussing.

Slow starters

This group have no idea what they want to do, they’re likely to have seemingly unrelated interests, they may have a couple of things they know they don’t want to do (for me that was teaching). Like Anna, who had a string of low paid jobs, a failed university degree in Art, travelled in Europe for a bit, did some work for a photographer, she went on to be a not great photographer herself and her family worried. She now works in publishing; specifically publishing high quality books about Art. It’s a dream job, but she could never have articulated that dream at 17.

It’s actually easy to advise this group. “What is the thing that most appeals to you right now? Do that.” Because in a sense it doesn’t really matter where we begin, we’ll move around and it may take a decade or more to connect all the dots and then launch ourselves into a niche career that was not thought of before.

On second thoughts “What is the thing that appeals to you right now? Do that” could apply to all groups and all stages of your career. I think I’ve just done the career advisers out of a job!

image Advice

Louise McGregor Leadership

Shining Eyes

How do you know if you’re engaging and inspiring your team? According to Benjamin Zander you know when their eyes are shining.

I reviewed “The Art of Possibility” written by Benjamin Zander and his wife Rosamund Stone Zander earlier this year, since then I’ve given copies to colleagues and friends. I mentioned it to a friend who lives in the US, she replied that her husband and seen him speak and recommended this talk from TED. It’s funny and inspiring – not just my word it’s according to almost 5000 ratings.

 

Louise McGregor Leadership

7 Signs You’re in the Wrong Job (Version 1)

1 You don’t ever read anything in your field outside work
If you’re a professional in a career you love you will, without really trying, pick up books, magazines, or follow blogs in your field.

If you’re say, a project manager in a software company and you find yourself reading about alternative energy solutions and green economies all the time you’re in the wrong job. True story – a friend was managing a group of techies and not liking it much, after much soul searching he figured out he was more interested in the environment.

He’s off to Africa next month to manage a project that will bring sustainable energy solution to a village. It’s a huge change, but the right one.

2 You really don’t like the environment
Animals and plants specialise to suit particular environments, transplanted they don’t do so well unless you can recreate something of the environment they are used to. People are the same, we function best in particular environments. Some like natural light, some like chaos, some like the certainty of the same desk every day.

Many years ago I was writing a thesis project in a tiny office on the top floor of a 17 century canal house in Amsterdam. I got a kick out of the location, but the building was a little wonky, and there was a very gentle slope from the door to the window. I had a chair with wheels on it, so I either had to keep my feet on the floor, or roll slowly down to the view. Quirky. A friend visited me and experienced the roll, and told me he could never work there. He shouldn’t. The sloping floor was just one sign of the service level in the building, one sign of how things worked. I took it in my stride because I had what I needed to work. He would have been frustrated at so much of what the place offered. He belongs in a different environment.

3 You don’t like how people dress, your personal style is very different
The way people dress is part of the company culture, I work in the corporate office – most of the people around me are in suits, if you’re a jeans and whacky t-shirt kinda guy this won’t be the right environment for you.

It’s not that clothes themselves are so important, but the clothes say something about your personal brand, it’s the visual expression of your values.

If your personal style of clothing is very different from the company clothing standards, then your personal values might also be very different from the company values.

4 You find ways to avoid doing what you were hired to do
Avoidance can take many forms;

  • you’re late arriving and early leaving, or stretching your lunch hour
  • you’ll take sick leave for more minor complaints than usual
  • you find yourself taking on more and more projects in other departments, partly to do something different, but also with a long shot  – just to get out of the door
  • you’re happy to schedule dentist appointments in the middle of the day, just to get you out of the office

Sometimes it’s temporary but a long term pattern of avoidance is a sign that you’re just not that into your job. I’ve seen it in a member of my old team, he’d arrive late and later – but rationalise it by “work home”. Work that did not seem to get done. There was a lot more going on but it was a clear sign that things were not going well for him in that role. He’s now started working for himself, I hope that’s a better option for him.

5  you loathe questions on your job in social situations
If a stranger asks what you do, at a party or event, do you mumble and answer and shift the conversation back to them?

As a professional you should be able to speak with pride about what you do, you should be able to say something interesting about it. If you shy away from these questions ask yourself why.

And if all you do at parties is talk about work you need to find some better parties to attend.

6 You’re doing the same work you were doing when you were hired, 6 years ago

In most professional careers there’s an expectation that you’ll move up on a regular basis, if there’s been no change in your job in terms of the content of the job or the level or responsibility you need to look at why. Maybe you’re not ready for the next step – in which case look at coaching or training. Perhaps there just aren’t further opportunities at your company – in which case are you prepared to change company? Or maybe you’re just never going to make the grade for further promotion and you really need to rethink your career plans.

Of course in some jobs, such as artisans or highly specialised roles where depth of knowledge is hard to acquire, this is not an indicator that you’re in the wrong job, you’re deepening your expertise and loving what you do.

7 You feel like a different person at work

I think we all adapt ourselves a little for work; but if you’re really not yourself at work, if you are acting or putting on a persona all the time, then there’s something wrong.

This is perhaps the hardest sign to read. We’ve got vested interests in staying where we are including money invested in education, time spent acquiring knowledge, a network and a reputation.

Not seeing this sign, and not acting on it, costs a lot of energy. It means, sadly, that we won’t be able to reach our full potential.

Yet, this might be the clearest sign of all.

Images
books Book collection/Louise McGregor/ CC BY-NC 3.0
office chair Office chair, office chairrrr. /Ollie Crafoord/ CC BY 2.0
backwards suit ?
avoid train IMG_1656 /Sir Mildred Pierce/ CC BY 2.0
pool party Third Annual Pool Party /Peter Dutton/ CC BY 2.0
hour glass Falling time /Samuel John/ CC BY-SA 2.0
Venetian maskVenice-mask-2 /Simone/ CC BY-ND 2.0

Louise McGregor Leadership

Be Happy at Work

Some days it seems like a tall order; with competing priorities, looming deadlines and demanding emails.

How can we be happy at work? And how can we help those we work with be happier?
Apparently it’s easy – in six easy steps according to a new book “Happy Hour is 9 to 5” by Alexander Kjerulf.

  1. Be positive
  2. Learn
  3. Be open
  4. Participate
  5. Find meaning
  6. Love

He goes into some detail explaining the behaviours that match each.

He points out that these six things come from us, not from the company or the boss, and that we can all use them to change our own workplaces. There is a caveat with that, the company needs to allow this – if not we might have to change where we work.

It sounds deceptively simple, but it matches research by Harvard who came up with 7 ways to be happy at work, first on their list is “smile”. Their second is “stop worrying which maps to “be positive”, and their list ends with “have fun”.

Kjerulf’s book finishes with advice to make an action plan, but as you might expect this isn’t a standard action plan. He’s noted the same difficulties with ambitious goals that I have and his action plan is a list of 5 actions you can accomplish in the coming week. Each action must be fast, easy and fun.

So next in the coming week I will

  • Go somewhere cool with one of the project managers in my team for our “future” brainstorming.
  • Take in home-made biscuits or muffins to the office
  • Praise someone outside my team
  • Sit with a different team for half a day (we have flexible work spots so this is possible)
  • Say “yes” to a crazy idea that takes me out of my comfort zone

I’m already more interested in that than my regular “to do” list!

NOTE: You can buy a physical copy, purchase a pdf version or read “Happy Hour is 9 to 5” for free online.

image happy via pixabay

Louise McGregor Leadership

Creativity and Play

I’m working on a brainstorm relating to video content. We’re going to pretend that all the technical issues are solved, and focus on the content and the process. I’ve been looking for some ways to increase our creativity for the workshop – and I came across this video, suggesting that more play at work would lead to more creativity.

He’s specific and points to three ways that play can be part of the creative process;

  • playful exploration; trying things, being unashamed of your efforts
  • playful building; building, children build towers designers build prototypes
  • roleplay; being someone else, children use a costume to try a new identity, designers can put themselves in the place of the customer

But he emphasises play is not anarchy – there are rules – and children will quickly point out and breech of the rules. Without the rules it can be more difficult to establish the necessary framework, and the necessary trust to have effective play. Without the play you won’t get the creativity.

The result is that I’ve added the 30 circles trick into the workshop – I think it’s a really fast way to get people involved and being crazy. Each participant is given a page with 30 circles of the same size arranged evenly, in one minute they have to adapt the circles, turning them into tennis balls, faces, globes, wheels. The emphasis is on quantity – not quality – and the task is designed to get you playing.

I’ve also been off to Think Geek, looking for those finger rockets.

 

image child via pixabay