How to Manage Yourself (Part 4 of 4)

  

(Fourth of Four Parts)

by Thomas J. Lee

We come to the end of the our series of essays on how leaders should manage themselves.

Regular readers of Minding Gaps are familiar with our basic distinction between managing and leading, and with our argument that good managing is at the core of good leadership.

We define both managing and leading as a function not of position but of work. For both, their nature derives from their purpose. But that is where the similarity ends.

You can think of managing as the hard work of ensuring performance to the expectations of stakeholders. Typically it involves meeting deadlines, coming in under budget, complying with standards or procedures or requirements, or producing or selling a sufficient number and quality of something.

Leading is quite different. You can think of it as the hard work of bringing about big change or a breakthrough performance—first recognizing and identifying the need for it, then envisioning it, then championing it, then supporting it, and then driving it.

Now to lead successfully, you must first be able to manage, and no one is more important to manage than yourself. That's right: you.

Only by managing yourself can you lead others. That's because only those leaders who embody the change they advocate will be taken seriously by the people they wish to lead. Wannabe leaders who cannot or simply do not embody the change will be unable to lead. Their would-be leadership will be lifeless.

In this four-part series, which we began on July 11, we have broken down the day-to-day implications of managing yourself. The first installment was on managing your words: what you say, how and where and when you say it, and what you choose not to say. The second installment was on managing your thoughts. The third installment was on managing your attitude and energy. For the final piece, we turn to managing your own behaviors.

 

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Last week we asked you to imagine a big circle in the sky with three equidistant points at 2 o'clock, 6 o'clock, and 10 o'clock. You were to label the 2 o'clock point Attitude, the 6 o'clock point Behavior, and the 10 o'clock point Consequences. Along the rim of the circle, we asked you to draw curving arrows between the points clockwise, such that Attitude points to Behavior and so forth.

We initially used this model to highlight the importance of attitudes. Today we will use it to throw a spotlight on your own behavior. Everything you do sends a message of one sort or another to other people.

Here's an example from one company, certainly not atypical. Senior executives have gone hoarse talking about the importance of safety. They are genuinely concerned about the physical well-being of employees. But they have also maintained aggressive financial and operational targets. That sets up an inevitable conflict.

One senior manager told me how it plays out. Mid-level managers, knowing they will be held to account for their performance, tend to cut corners to save money and speed production. Those corners can impinge on safety. A common scenario in such circumstances is directing a worker to use broken equipment, perhaps having been set aside and waiting to be repaired, "just this once" in order to complete something on time and under budget. Workers have a right to refuse such assignments and to blow the whistle on the manager, but in practice few do so. They don't want a reputation for whining.

Similar conflicts can arise over all kinds of cultural and operational vectors: product quality, customer service, process improvements, innovation, design, and so much more.

Here are some strategies to use in managing your own behaviors on the job:

• Translate your business strategy to actionable behaviors that apply to everyone, and to behaviors that also apply only to managers, and to behaviors that also apply only to executives. Make certain you are visibly and consistently demonstrating those behaviors, especially when you are in a hurry and tempted to neglect them "just this once."
• Scrutinize your day-to-day behaviors for the implicit messages they send, especially messages that run counter to formal and verbal strategic messages that establish direction, norms, and priorities. Neglecting to do examine your routine behaviors is all but inviting to be perceived as a hypocrite, though that's the last thing you want to be or to think of yourself as.
• Pay particular attention to patterns of incidental behaviors, such as showing up late for meetings, frequently going to lunch with the same colleagues, rolling through stop signs, and so much more. These things can be grist for griping by the people on your team. Violating rules is never permissible simply because someone of high rank is doing the violating. Think goose and gander. 
• Adopt a new rule for yourself: no multitasking when it involves anyone else's time, voice, or dignity. That means not checking your email in anyone else's presence, and it means not searching for anything online while someone else is speaking. You must be careful about even taking notes on a computer, as it will appear to others as though you aren't paying attention.
• Consider challenging cultural conventions in your organization to send an implicit message that you appreciate doing things differently. For example, if you are a relatively senior manager, and subordinate managers always go to a senior manager's office for meetings, switch it around. Better yet, commit to spending most of your day out and about rather than closeted in your office.
• Make strategic communication a routine, day-to-day priority rather than a weekly, monthly, or quarterly event. After all, if the people throughout your team or operation don't know what you're thinking, how can you possibly expect them to act on it?
• Control your temper. Yes, work is stressful, but that is never an excuse to lose it. If you have frequent difficulty with this, get some help. If you don't, it can derail your career or worse. In the 21st century, even the frequent use of profanity is out of place.
• Be sure you are present and accessible physically (that's the easy part), intellectually (that's more difficult), socially (that make require a personality transplant for some of you), and emotionally (that's especially difficult for many of us). You must show up for work as a complete person, simply because it is easier for other people to relate to a whole person than to an empty suit.
• Remember that the single most powerful means of communication you have is the decision. Which decision, you ask? That one. And that one, and that one, too. Every decision you make defines your character in the eyes of other people.

Gandhi's essential message for posterity was: You must be the change you seek in the world. Any leader who wants to leave a legacy of change must take the first steps. That means managing himself.

 

Coming on Friday

Ralph Waldo Emerson on Hypocrisy

 

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