A short presentation by Larry Weidel identifying four core elements that determine managerial effectiveness: time (setting and tracking deadlines/milestones), activity (driving the right volume and kind of work), environment (building team morale, recognition, and pride), and coaching (making people feel valued while challenging them to grow). The speaker argues mastering these four areas will make one a great manager.
Let's talk about management. DNA. There is such a thing. So many times you get in management for the first time and there you are, and you got promoted. It's kind of like the, you know, the old joke is, like, yesterday I couldn't even spell management, and now I am one. And so what is it? What am I supposed to do? You want to be. You want to be. You don't want to be bad. You don't want to be a joke. You want to be good, if possible, you want to do a great job. But the questions come in, what is it I'm supposed to be doing? You can't just go through the motions. You can't just accommodate people. There's things you, you're, you're expected to get done. There's things you've got to do with people. And maybe you had some role models, some bad ones and some good ones. That gives you an idea of style. But let's. How about, how about if we specifically look at those areas? Would it be helpful if we looked at the specific areas that go on up here? Actually, what it is, is there's 1, 2, 3, 3, 4 things that if you handle correctly, you're going to be known as a great, great manager. There's not a thousand of them, four things. So let's take a look at what these are because they do determine your effectiveness. Let's go in and look. The first one. First one, what do you think it is? First one is time. If you go out, you only have. First of all, you need to know what your time frames are, what's important to the company, any kind of. How are you judged? What are the time frames, the benchmarks, the milestones, the dates that things need to be done by. Because why that's important is because human nature is to go around, waste time until it comes deadline time. Now they go and they panic. What they do is they bungle the kickoff. They waste. They, you know, they, they work. They appear to work, but they don't really bust a gut like they do, as if they're a deadline. And now, no joking around, no jokes, let's get it done, because the deadline's coming. So how can you, how do you manage time, not just in the final hours? You, somebody, a poor manager will let people waste time, go through the motions, and then it's like go into panic mode because a deadline comes in. Well, it's like golf. A stroke you waste on the first hole is every bit as important as a stroke you waste on the 18th, where maybe in the 18th hole, you wind up losing your match. In all sports, if you throw the ball away, if you just waste your opportunities to score. So if they're wasting seconds, minutes, hours turning into days, wasted days on the front end can lead you to failure. So are you keeping your people tracking, using their time wisely with. And it will make everything a panic. But you want to keep people moving. You want to be. You're the timekeeper and you're going to be aware of it and you're going to know if you're on track or you're not on track. That's what the great managers do. They know what date they're working towards, what they've got to do, what their goals are, what the company expects to have done. And they're going to be know every second as they go through that month whether they're on track or they're not on track. All right, so let's go look at the second one. The second one. And we may do. I may go in and do a. Another video, you know, more videos later, elaborating on these. What's two? The second one is activity. How you manage activity as a leader. And this relates to time people. Only people will be as active as you stimulate them to be. How do you get them to do it? Are you someone because you don't have the style to where you're just harassing people. Do you create situations where people want to do the right things, have incentives for doing the right things, are recognized for doing the right things. They're trained to do the right things and they're monitored to do the right things so that when the end of the project is done, hey, they're going to find the team is going to win. See, it's up to the manager to make sure the team does enough activity during the time frames, enough of the right kind of activity so the team can win. Because when the team win, everybody celebrates, everybody's happy, makes everybody's job easier. But if the manager has let people get off track, waste time, do the wrong stuff, do it poorly, do it in the wrong market, and then as a result, when the deadlines hit and you've missed the market, you've gotten the mark, you've gotten beat. Well, it's the manager's fault. You can blame people, but it's the manager's fault. Great managers keep that activity moving, you know, keep people, you know, a good frame of mind. Which brings us up to the next element, and that is environment. Are people happy to come to work? The one mark of a, well, of a great manager in a great environment is people smile, lots of smiles, people laugh, people are having fun. They're working. You know, they're working hard. They've got lots of hard work, but they got pride. They got pride in that work. They get recognized for that. They've got a team spirit. But it's fun to come in there. It's fun and it's not a chore. They don't do it because they're forced to do it. Of course they get paid and they do it and they want to get promotions, but they get, they like to accomplish things. They know they play a big role in the whole, in reaching the target for the whole team. So when the team wins, they had a big part of that. Even if they only have a small undefined relationship to the final product, the right kind of manager will let them see how what they do was a big key to creating things. Maybe they're not on the front line of actually making the sales or doing the project, but there may be a key person in the support side of things which allows everybody to do what they're supposed to do. The people get more of the glory. But let people feel like, hey, that's my victory. That's, that's my team, that's my win. So the great leaders will create that kind of environment. Now let's get to the fourth thing. Coach. Your coaching and these are all related, but what is your coaching style? Do you make people feel important? You make them feel like they're, they're worth something, they have value. Also, do you challenge them? Coaching, the right kind of coaching is not just praising and patting them on the back, which, you know, looking for good things they do, but you're challenging them. You're challenging them to, let's say to stretch, see how good they could be. See how much more the payoff for that. Of course the company gets more benefit, the unit will do more. However that makes the person that prepares the person to be able to do more in their career keeps them from getting, keeps them from getting bored, keeps them improving and keeps them ready to move up, to get ready for promotions. See, the best way in a growing organization, which is, you know, if you have a well run organization, you're going to have people doing big things, numbers are going to grow and there's going to be expansion, there's going to be new positions open up and a great manager is going to be doing the coaching as he or she goes through their daily flow of activities that will not only be keeping everyone on their toes, keep the attitude, the environment positive, but individually be working to make people feel good about what they're doing, feel valued but also challenging them to stretch and improve, to get them to where they are able to do bigger things and so when the opportunity for promotion comes along they're ready to handle it. It can be a seamless expansion inside the company. So the four elements to repeat them one more time are how well the four elements of the DNA time, activity, environment and coaching. If you wonder what management is pretty much comes into this four little cluster of activities. You master these, you're going to be known as a great manager. Let me know if that lines up with your experience. Let me know if this clears up any mysteries for you or maybe you think I'm wrong, maybe I've missed something. Either way be great to hear from you any kind of positive or positive comments you have always like to hear. Thank you very much. See you in the comment section.
