Four Keys to Great Management: A Meta-Framework

Like so many experiences in life, becoming a great manager is a journey more than a destination.

The four management basics below ensure that anyone who works for you will understand their roles and responsibilities, get feedback on their performance, and get coaching for professional growth in both their current role and future career goals. And all of this needs to build on a relationship of trust.

Key 1: Create Trust through Regular Check-Ins

Regular one-on-one check-ins are a key tool for you and your direct reports to develop a relationship of trust. They should be calendared well in advance and not shifted around unless absolutely necessary, held weekly or bi-weekly, and the length may vary from 30–60 minutes.

The staffer owns the agenda and knows they have your full attention on issues important to them. Updates are delivered and challenges brainstormed, but sometimes personal issues like eldercare challenges or stress about a child’s college application may also be discussed. Don’t underestimate your employees’ desire to share personal issues that could affect their work life. You can only provide support, and potential assistance, when you know what they are struggling with.

Key 2: Delegate So Everyone Can Grow

Many of my clients complain they have no time to think strategically because they are too busy. Yet they often are so busy because they are not effective delegators. Reasons range from a lack of trust to guilt about overloading their already very busy team members. Nonetheless, if a boss doesn’t develop strong delegation skills, they will be consistently in the weeds and denying their direct reports the opportunity to develop their skills and get their accomplishments noticed.

Effective delegation is specific; it has a beginning, middle, and end, and the level of delegation is clearly understood by both parties.

Key 3: Give Frequent Feedback 

Feedback is part of a boss’s job. Your style of feedback comes from knowing your tendencies and practice, practice, practice…

Feedback Is an Act of Love

This is worth repeating. Try to de-emphasize the negative associations of feedback in your mind. If you deliver it neutrally— not with hostility, not apologetically—you help the other person see this as a natural process. Additionally, feedback is an act of love because you are helping someone understand how their actions impact others, something we often are unaware of.

Awareness of Your Soft or Tough Tendency

It’s important to develop awareness of whether you tend to enter into crucial conversations with a tough or soft stance. Can you also bring that awareness to how you deliver feedback? Try leaning into whichever stance you don’t automatically favor. 

Practice

Feedback is like a muscle that needs to be developed. If you practice giving feedback, you will improve. And one day, it may even become a habit. Challenge yourself to move out of your comfort zone and take some risks. You may not get it right on your first attempts, but you will improve.

Feedback on Your Feedback

Critically important, find a way to evaluate how your feedback is landing. I suggest letting your team know you are prioritizing feedback—both delivering it and receiving it. This sets the context for when they see you behave differently. Your one-on- ones are a good opportunity to probe for feedback. This is a safe place for learning. Asking specific questions is important too because vague answers won’t help you to improve. “You know I’ve been trying to deliver more consistent, timely feedback. . . .

• “Have you noticed a difference?”
• “What is working and what needs more improvement?”
• “What feedback and advice do you have for me?”

And don’t forget to thank the person for their feedback, no matter how it is delivered.

Key 4: Develop Staff Potential through Performance and Career Coaching

Bosses should aim to coach their direct reports both on how they perform their job and what career development looks like for them. Yes, stakes have been raised. The expectation now is that a boss takes an interest in her direct report’s career progression and it’s an ongoing process, not just a conversation once a year.

Performance Coaching

A boss acts like a coach when they listen actively and provide regular feedback to their direct reports. To take performance coaching a step further, a boss helps their direct reports develop their own problem-solving skills. I recommend David Rock’s book Quiet Leadership: Six Steps to Transforming Performance at Work to everyone I coach. In essence, adults learn best when they discover their own solutions rather than being told what to do. The boss needs to invest time in this coaching process and the payoff is a more motivated employee, and deeper learning that they own and draw upon in future situations.

Performance coaching rests on the boss helping the staff person to develop different perspectives about a challenge. 

Career Coaching

Ten years ago, bosses didn’t have the same responsibility for coaching their staff about their careers. Some did; some didn’t, and it was more of a choice. Not so today. While not all bosses are naturals at having career development conversations, everyone can become proficient. In Radical Candor, Kim Scott describes a three-part conversation that all managers should have with direct reports focused on their career dreams and how to achieve them.

These conversations ideally occur within a six-week period. As a guideline, schedule 45 minutes for each of them. The outcomes of these three conversations naturally integrate into regular one- on-one check-ins, and the person’s annual development plan, which is required by most employers in some format or another.

Excerpted with permission from the publisher, Wiley, from Coach Yourself!: Increase Awareness, Change Behavior, and Thrive by Antonia Bowring.