The Modern Manager

Almost everything you do as a manager can be influenced or framed by the mindset of serving your team: in the level of autonomy you provide, in how you invest in people’s growth, and in the culture of respect and gratitude that you build, and beyond. With the servant leadership approach, your job as a manager changes from that of conductor to that of coach and cheerleader. When you can make a few small adjustments in how you act towards and with your team, your people will have the space and confidence to do their best work.

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Read the article based on this episode:  Servant Leadership: Leading from Behind

Key Takeaways:

• Servant leadership means putting your team first in order to unleash the potential of your people.
• Try adapting your approach to what works best with each of your team members. 
• Prioritize the person and their ability over your own convenience. Coach them rather than 'doing it for them.'
• If you work in a large organization, the bureaucracy can be suffocating. You must clear the path, keep things moving up above, and prevent unnecessary stressors for your team.
• Trust your team. Accept that sometimes this means they will fail.
• Speak last in meetings. Make space for other people to share first so you don't shut down the conversation before it begins.
• Be willing to be wrong. Apologize when you make a mistake and admit when you don't know something.

Get it touch! Email me at [email protected]

This is the first bonus episode in the Parenting Your Business series. In these episodes, I talk about my experiences as a parent and manager or business leader, comparing situations and learnings.

In this episode, I talk about the things we do for our team members that they should really do for themselves.

I'd love to hear from you! Email me at [email protected]
Subscribe to my newsletter at www.mamieks.com
Join The Modern Manager Community at www.patreon.com/modernmanager

Is it possible for non-technical teams to benefit from practices like agile that were created by and for engineers? What if we’re not in a tech or software development space? How can non-techie managers take agile and use it for the growth of their teams? If you’ve heard about agile, but are still unsure what it is, you’re not alone. In this episode, I speak with Sinead A. Condon, Transformation Strategist for CA Technologies. We discuss agile priorities and ceremonies and agile for non-techies.

Key Takeaways:

• Agile is both a mindset and a series of processes, ceremonies and structures.
• An agile mindset is one which prioritizes delivering value, continuous improvement, speed and collaboration.
• The daily standup is one of the most common agile practices. Individuals share what they completed yesterday, what they're working on today, and what (if anything) is standing in the way of getting their work done.
• Practicing agile includes keeping a running to-do list (back-log) of tasks that need to be completed and then prioritizing on a regular basis.
• The 'retrospective' is a ceremony in which the team looks for ways to improve. After a cycle of work (either time or project based), people ask 'what can we do better?'
• Agile means working in shorter time periods (sprints) and in multiple iterations. 
• Most important to the agile mindset is curiosity. Keep asking what your stakeholders value and whether your actions are delivering adequate value given the efforts. 

Read the article based on this episode:  Agile for Non-Techies: What Every Manager Should Know

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KEEP UP WITH SINEAD

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sineadcondon2/

The decision to invest in your employees can be one of the smartest decisions you make as a manager. When you allocate money, time, or energy to an employee’s growth, the benefits for them, for you, and for your business can be profound. Learn ways to invest in people individually and as a team.

Get the free mini-guide to investing in your team.

Join the Modern Manager community to get the full guide to investing in your team and many more resources to support your learning journey.

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Read the article based on this episode:  Invest in Employees for Growth and Success

Key Takeaways:

• Investment means you deal with the cost now in order to reap the benefit later. 
• Everyone benefits when you invest in your team members. Employees feel more engaged and grow their capabilities. This, in turn, makes your job easier as a manager, freeing you to do other work.
• There are multiple ways to invest in people. Leadership consultants Mike Figliuolo and Victor Prince created a great framework.
• Talk with your employees about growth. There is greater buy-in when you decide together what to focus on and how.
• Consider the employee's learning preferences when deciding on investment approaches.
• Be sure to invest in your team as a whole and in yourself too!

Get it touch! Email me at [email protected]

Diversity in the workplace is getting a lot of attention these days. As we build awareness of and increase the range of diversity in its many forms, one we mustn’t overlook is personality. Our workplaces are already quite diverse in this respect and as managers, we must be capable of working with people who have different preferences than we do.

Todays guest, Rob Toomey is President at TypeCoach. TypeCoach helps companies improve communication and achieve goals through the application of personality type, specifically the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). To get free access to TypeCoach's tools, join the Modern Manager community on Patreon.

Key Takeaways:

• Most of the time, we function in our default mode which means we communicate and collaborate in ways that feel most natural to us. 
• Great communicators and collaborators are able to adjust to work in ways that are most effective for those they are engaging with. 
• Make space for introverts in meetings. Give them time to process the information prior to the meeting. Use a 'check-out' at the end of the meeting for final thoughts.
• If you're a big-picture manager but you have team members who need more details, spend extra time time clarifying the end goal, processes and any detailed information even if it feels tedious to you.
• Feedback will resonate more when it speaks to people's primary motivations. 
• Pause before you give feedback or respond. Ask yourself: What is the best approach to take in light of this particular person?
• Personality and preferences appears in teams and can cause conflict when not addressed.
• Some people prefer to think in light-bulb innovation (brand new ideas) and others pre to think of process innovation (improving on what exists). Neither is better or worse, but they can create conflict amongst the group when doing both at the same time.
• Set time in a brainstorm meeting for each type of thinking rather than combining them into one.

Read the article based on this episode:  How to Manage and Leverage Personality Types for Greater Success

Join the Modern Manager community to get free access to the Type-Coach Verifier and additional resources to support your learning journey.

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KEEP UP WITH ROB

Website: www.Typecoach.com
Twitter: @rvtoomey

As managers, we’re constantly communicating with others by email, chat, phone, and in meetings. We share instructions, feedback, praise, and gratitude. We provide information, ask questions, and offer suggestions. In this episode, we discuss the communication skills every manager (not leader) needs.

Get the free mini-guide to help you improve your communication.

Join the Modern Manager community to get the full guide to effective communication and many more resources to support your learning journey.

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Read the article based on this episode:  5 Communication Skills to Make You a Rockstar Manager

Key Takeaways:

• Share the right information at the right time. 
• Provide clarity and be direct. What actions should the person take? What should they do with this information?
• Provide context so the person understand 'why' not just 'what'.
• Check for understanding. Avoid asking 'yes or no' questions like 'does that make sense?' which can make someone feel embarrassed that they don't understand. 
• Listen actively, respond to cues from the other person.
• Match the medium to the content. Consider which mode of communication - email, chat, meetings, etc - will be the most efficient and effective at delivering the message.
• Say what needs to be said, even if it's hard. Give feedback, share unpopular opinions and speak up.

Get it touch! Email me at [email protected]

We have conversations every day. We have them with our family and friends, our colleagues at work, and strangers at the grocery store. We have them online. We have them in our heads. Most conversations happen organically, but what happens when you approach a conversation with the mindset that it is an experience which can be designed, and how does it transform the conversation and the outcomes? Daniel Stillman, conversation designer, and I discuss the ins and outs of designing a conversation in ways that build deeper human connections and achieve outcomes.

Key Takeaways:

• A conversation should begin before you get together. Find a way to entice people to join you so that they want to be in the conversation.
• Avoid being vague about the purpose of the conversation. Few people feel good about attending a meeting when they don't know what's going to be discussed.
• End a conversation with intention. Reiterate the positive outcomes to elevate the mood. 
• Engage participants in giving feedback using the Rose-Thorn-Bud technique in which people need to share 2 things they like (rose), two that could be improved (thorn) and 2 ideas they have (bud).
• Use drawing (instead of writing) to elicit new information and spark creativity. Drawing often relaxes people and lowers barriers.
• Cultivate and sustain your internal conversation through a practice such as mediation. 

Read the article based on this episode:  How to Use Conversation Design to Transform Your Team

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KEEP UP WITH DANIEL

Daniel's podcast: www.theconversationfactory.com

9 Conversations book: https://publishizer.com/nine-conversations/

Book giveaway: http://theconversationfactory.com/giveaway

Enjoyment may not be the first thing that comes to mind when thinking about work, but it’s a critical ingredient to building a thriving team. In order for each person to flourish, they need feel a bit of joy in the work they do, the team they do it with and the environment in which they do it.

Get the free mini-guide to increasing the enjoyment in your team.

Join the Modern Manager community to get the full guide to bring more joy into your workplace and many more resources to support your learning journey.

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Read the article based on this episode:  A New Recipe for Success: Enjoyment at Work

Key Takeaways:

• Help people find the right balance their skills with the amount of challenge in their work. 
• Kim Scott, in her book, Radical Candor, defines 'rockstars' and 'superstars' as two different mindsets on what a person wants out of their job and career growth. Matching the role's demands to the person's desires will increase their enjoyment.
• Help each person see the meaning and purpose of their work. Link the individual's work to the team's success and the organization's success and mission.
• Encourage more fun in the workplace. Having moments of fun can build bonds, lighten the mood, and reduce stress.
• Provide autonomy and generate buy-in. It's funny how we can enjoy or dread the same activity based on whether it feels like our choice to do it.

Get it touch! Email me at [email protected]

Meetings have a bad rap, but they're critical to how work gets done. Today's guest, Elise Keith is the co-Founder of Lucid Meetings, which helps organizations run day-to-day meetings to power their organizational success. Elise and I discuss the 'bad meeting doom loop', different types of meetings and how to string together a series to optimize how the team collaborates, and the most important thing to do when planning a meeting.

Key Takeaways:

• Stop the bad meetings doom loop in which we expect meetings to be a waste of time so we don't prepare for them properly which leads them to being unproductive which reinforces our belief that meetings are a waste of time.
• Try this mindset instead: Meetings are a place where people come together to get work done.
• The word meeting is loaded. Try reframing your meetings by calling them something else like a weekly huddle or team crush.
• Keith identifies 16 types of meetings which she discusses in depth in her book.
• Separate meetings by their work purpose. Rather than compound meeting types, create a sequence of meetings that work together.
• In general, the more frequently you meet, the shorter the meetings can be and they are likely to be more productive. In contrast, the less frequent you meet, the longer the meetings need to be, and the less productive they typically are. 

Read the article based on this episode:  Effective Meetings = Effective Business

Join the Modern Manager community for additional resources to support your learning journey.

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Get my book, Momentum: Creating Effective, Engaging, and Enjoyable Meetings at: www.meeteor.com/momentum

KEEP UP WITH ELISE

Where the Action Is: https://www.lucidmeetings.com/book

Website: www.lucidmeetings.com

Twitter: @lucidmeetings

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elisekeith/

Goodreads Booklist on Improving Meetings: https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/117713.Better_Meetings_Better_Business

Check out Episode 21 - Managing Meeting Follow-Through - for more on effective meetings.

Get the free mini-guide for episode 21 to help improve your meeting follow-through.

Expressing appreciation - a “thankful recognition” of the contribution of those around you - is part of the wave of positive psychology that has become mainstream in recent years. But how do we do this effectively in a work setting? Consider three facets of appreciation: gratitude, praise and recognition. Rockstar managers use all three and build appreciation into their daily or weekly routine.

Get the free mini-guide to help you show meaningful appreciation.

Join the Modern Manager community to get the full guide to meaningful appreciation and many more resources to support your learning journey.

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Read the article based on this episode:  How to Express Meaningful Appreciation at Work

Key Takeaways:

• Employees who feel appreciated are more productive and more successful in their roles. 
• Establish a regular practice of gratitude for yourself. It's easier to show appreciation when you have a habit of doing so.
• Appreciation can be shown as: 
  • Gratitude (saying thank you)
  • Praise (showing admiration)
  • Recognition (sharing in public)
• Make your gratitude and praise as specific as possible. A simple "thanks!" or "nice job" isn't meaningful. It feels automatic.
• Include how the person's actions positively impacted you.
• Both gratitude and praise should often be given in private, but on occasion, public recognition is welcomed.
• Use recognition as a way to encourage new norms and behaviors in meetings. Acknowledge the person who identified 'the most critical watch-out' as a way to encourage people to share their concerns.
• Set time on your calendar each week to 'express appreciation.' Reflect on what happened the past week and write a note, send an email, or speak directly to the person to show you care. 

Get it touch! Email me at [email protected]

For additional resources on appreciation in the workplace:
 http://blog.meeteor.com/blog/appreciation-in-virtual-teams/
http://www.appreciationatwork.com/learn/