Finding and Supporting Employees with Ownership

Ownership vs. Rentership

Ownership is something that is easily recognized, but not easily defined. An obvious illustration of ownership can be found in real estate. Generally when you own a property, you treat it with respect, keep it in good repair, and make improvements to protect your investment and increase its value. When you’re just the renter in a property, you don’t have much motivation to care about the spills, the holes, the burns, or how your daily activities affect anything beyond your security deposit.

A sense of ownership is activated naturally in people when they have a financial or emotional stake in something. When something can be described as “mine,” it triggers feelings of possessiveness and accountability that are not present from a position of “yours.”

Ownership in the Retail Industry

Ownership in the retail industry is not much different from the real estate industry in that there are those with an “owner” mentality and those with a “renter” mentality in each. In any retail business you can usually identify the owner or manager just by observation. It’s not just that they’re wearing better clothes or walking around with an air of authority. You can point out the head honchos because you can see that they are operating from that position of “mine-ness.” They notice more, engage more, and care more because they have a greater financial and emotional stake in what they’re doing every day.

Occasionally you will encounter a non-managerial employee who possesses that elusive quality of ownership. This is the employee who treats the company they work for and the customers they serve as their own. To the employee with ownership, every success, big or small, is something to celebrate. Every failure, big or small, is something to worry about. This rare and wonderful employee takes every aspect of their job personally and is internally driven towards excellence because that’s the way they like to show up in the world.

Finding Employees with Ownership

Many managers don’t know there is such a thing as ownership until they accidentally hire someone with it. Suddenly the sharp contrast between the employees with the owner mentality and the employees with the renter mentality becomes apparent. The newly awakened manager can now see that the quality of ownership brings with it the kind of proactive and productive behaviors that get things done and get them done well. Since employees with ownership are usually self-directed and low maintenance, managers find that they have few time-consuming supervisory hassles with them. Liking what they see, managers instantly want more of this ownership stuff, but since they’re not sure how they got it in the first place, they’re not sure how to go about getting more employees with it for the future.

It’s not as mysterious as it may seem. Understanding what ownership is, deciding that you want it, and recognizing it when you see it brings it closer. A manager who wants to establish a strong sense of ownership as the standard operating attitude with an employee team just needs to ask for it, support it, and positively reinforce it in order to get it and keep it alive.

Hire for Ownership

Perhaps a candidate seems qualified in every way but seems to lack that elusive quality of ownership. Should you hire that person anyway? It’s important to consider the value of ownership in this job position for the organization. Ask yourself these questions:

·    Will the employee be working without supervision?

·    Is there a large amount of direct customer contact that the employee will have as a regular part of their job?

·    Is this a unique position with unique responsibilities as opposed to a duplicate position on a large team?

If you answered “yes” to any or all of these questions, then it would serve you and your organization best for you to hold out for ownership. In an unsupervised position, a person with ownership will be productive and motivated without any external source of inspiration or direction. In a customer contact position, a person with ownership will take charge of the interactions and ensure that they are led to their best possible conclusions. In a position that is not duplicated anywhere else, a person with ownership will know that others are depending on their contribution, and will thrive in that position of key responsibility.

There are some job positions in which ownership would be nice, but it’s not necessary. But if you’re hiring for a position in which ownership is key factor for success, then it is a quality worth waiting for.

If you think that anyone can be taught ownership behaviors, then you might want to think again. You can encourage an ownership tendency and watch it grow, but if the seed isn’t there, you can dig all you want and you’ll never find that proactive, responsible employee that you really desire. Skills can be taught. Personality and internal qualities cannot. In the hiring process, it’s important to get clear about the intangible qualities that the candidate is bringing to your party before you decide to invite them in.

Train for Ownership

If you can’t teach the quality of ownership to someone who doesn’t inherently possess it, is there any point in thinking about how ownership fits into the training process? The short answer is “Absolutely!” Training will not magically insert the quality of ownership into every employee who walks in the door. But any person who does walk in with an ownership attitude can easily have it sucked out of them quickly, starting with the training process.

When conducting employee training, it’s important to differentiate between teaching skills and conditioning behavior because each aspect demands a different strategy. Specific skills like running a cash register, using the computer, completing reports, etc. need to be taught with specific how-to steps. These are the robotic parts of the job in which creativity and deviation are not acceptable.

However, any other aspect of the job, like courtesy, efficiency, cleanliness, safety, etc. should not be taught in a robotic how-to way. These are the aspects of the job in which you want employees to be express their creativity, insert their personality, and make an emotional investment. You encourage ownership when you use an outcomes-based training strategy whenever possible. By clearly establishing a desired outcome, giving performance guidelines, and then allowing employees to put their personal spin on achieving the outcome, you will give the seed of ownership room to grow.

As an example, the employees at the Walt Disney theme parks are world-renown for their proactive courtesy. These employees are not taught a series of how-to behaviors that will produce courteous interactions. Instead, they are told that the desired outcome of every interaction is to delight the guest, and whenever possible, exceed the guest’s expectations. They are given guidelines about safety, efficiency, cultural diversity, and cost control, but they are never told exactly what to do or when to do it. They are allowed to devise their own creative solutions based on the unique situation that is in front of them.

As a result of this outcomes-based training, the Disney employees are encouraged to take ownership for each and every guest (customer) transaction, and they remain mentally and emotionally engaged in their work. This is how Disney employees are “trained” to make magic. Employees in any retail business can be encouraged to take ownership and add their own “magic” to their work during the training process. The operational support they receive on a daily basis will then determine if they actually do it.

Support Ownership

If you find yourself constantly having to stay on top of people in order to get things done, then one or more of these statements is probably true:

·    You’ve hired people with renter mentality

·    Your stifling management style has caused people’s ownership qualities to become dormant

·    The owner mentality people have left to work somewhere that supports and appreciates them more

Outcomes-based training can activate the quality of ownership, but only outcomes-based management can keep it alive. Instead of focusing on telling employees what to do and how to do it all day, managers who support ownership spend their day reminding employees about desired outcomes and offering support as the employees work their own strategies to achieve those outcomes.

This release of control is difficult for many managers because they think the reason they were chosen to be a manager is so that they could boss people around. Employees with ownership won’t work for bosses with a controlling style of leadership for very long. And those employees who are comfortable being told what to do will never have a sense of ownership.

In an environment of ownership, the expertise and authority of the manager is best used to eliminate the barriers that make taking ownership difficult or impossible for the employees. For instance, employees who don’t have the magical cash register code can’t take ownership for a return transaction. Employees who have never seen or don’t know how to read the plan-o-gram can’t take full ownership for their stocking responsibilities. Employees who don’t have the authority to make decisions to remedy a customer complaint will never take ownership for service recovery. By removing these barriers, the manager makes ownership possible and keeps the owner mentality alive.

Nobody can eliminate barriers to success more quickly or more easily than a supportive manager who understands the value of ownership. Using your time to eliminate the barriers to taking ownership is time well spent because at the end of the day you will be encouraging employees to rise to a new level of responsibility in their daily activities.

Reward Ownership

What you give your attention to is what your employees will give their attention to as well. When you “catch” employees demonstrating ownership, make sure they receive recognition in a way that is visible to their teammates. When employees observe their teammates being rewarded for certain behaviors, they are likely to adopt those behaviors as well.

When choosing the most appropriate reward for ownership behaviors, remember that people with ownership are emotionally invested in their work. The recognition that will have the most impact is the kind that is customized and personal because it will connect with the employee on an emotional level. Just like with any special occasion, the nice present is appreciated, but a sincere and genuine message in the card is treasured.

Leading for Ownership

Many managers say they want more ownership, but secretly fear the chaos that might come with the loss of control. The goal of ownership is not to have everybody running around “doing their own thing,” but rather to allow everybody to do their job and still be their own person. Control (or the illusion of it) can still be maintained with clearly established goals, performance levels, and accountabilities.

Those who exert their managerial powers by telling people what to do, what to think, and how to behave, have unconsciously confused managing with parenting. The kind of adults who will allow themselves to be treated like children are not the same people who will be the proactive, self-motivated employees with ownership that most managers desire. Managers can have total control or they can have ownership, but they can’t have both. The key is to choose consciously which you want, and then focus on your own behaviors so that you can get what you've chosen.

All the Success!

PM in the PM

Dealing with Personal Issues at Work

Dealing with personal issues at work is a balancing act and is the subject of this week’s -  

Leader’s Digest Mail Bag Q & A

Dear Leader’s Digest,

One of my employees is going through a very difficult divorce. I advised her to take time off to settle her affairs, but she said she enjoys her time at work because it takes her away from her home and gives her a break from family issues.

However, I have noticed that she receives an excessive amount of personal calls and spends a lot of time responding to her personal e-mail during work hours. I do not want to be insensitive to her situation. How can I show my sympathy as I talk to my employee about her excessive use of personal communication at work?

Sympathetic Manager


Dear Sympathetic Manager,

Your employee is lucky to have a supervisor who is concerned about her well-being and who is doing his or her best to balance individual needs with company demands. You're correct in concluding that tough problems at home can indeed carry over to the workplace and they need to be carefully and respectfully managed.

Unfortunately, not everybody wants this to be true. For example, years ago I watched video clips from a training video library a friend loaned to me. In one of the performance management clips, an employee who showed up late to work pointed to a problem at home as part of the reason he hadn't been on time. In response, the boss stated (and this was supposed to be a positive example) "At our company, we leave our personal problems at the door."

I understand why a boss might want this to be true—you know, separate home and work to avoid any nasty conflicts—but I couldn't help but chuckle as the video clip unfolded. Really? You think people can divorce themselves from their problems by simply willing themselves to do so? All they have to do is "leave their problems at the door"?

When this same video clip was shown during a training session I attended a few weeks later, the audience actually laughed at the line. People watching the video thought it was bizarre to even suggest that you could pause at the entrance to work, take a deep breath, and then completely separate yourself from whatever debacles, calamities, and misfortunes are taking place back at home (and they are taking place).

Make no mistake; when you hire someone, you hire the whole employee—including the life they live outside company walls.

And now for the other part of the problem you've identified. Those very same people who walk in the doors—complete with personal problems of all kinds and shapes—make promises to the company and that's where the second half of the problem comes into play. Employees need to be anxiously engaged in serving the company's needs—at reasonable speed and for a reasonable number of hours.

Here's where it gets tricky. What, for example, is the appropriate amount of time to spend answering personal phone calls and e-mail? Zero? You're suggesting that the employee in question is spending an "excessive" amount of time and I don't doubt that. I also believe that you aren't going to lay down a law that includes "never" in the guideline.

In fact, my bet is that you yourself take calls from home—I know I do. In fact, it's not uncommon to see people in our company stay on task and put off interruptions in meetings such as phone calls from vendors and the like—but when it's from home, they often take the call.

All of this, of course, leads us to the question of how many interruptions are too many? The answer lies in the nature of the job itself. Jobs on production lines, for example, afford little or no time for anything other than hooking on widgets as the parts flow by. Obviously, that doesn't fit your circumstances. Free-effort jobs like yours and your employee's do allow for the occasional side issue.

So, the question with your employee is, what are the consequences associated with her taking too many personal calls and messages? It bothers you and you think it's excessive. Why is that? If your employee is simply spending too much time on personal business, then you might want to ask her to work an additional 15 minutes each day, as a way of making up for the loss. She can talk, she just needs to add back the time.

If the interruptions are disturbing meetings with coworkers, this is another problem with a different solution. If coworkers see her off task and complain about it, that's still a different issue.

So, start by setting up a meeting with your employee. Think of the consequences that currently have you concerned and enter the conversation with these in mind. Explain to that you want to be sensitive to her changing needs while also balancing the needs of the company.

In the spirit of being supportive, share what you're currently doing to be helpful. For example, you advised her to take time off, you've agreed to build in flexible time to allow her to talk with lawyers, and so forth. Ask what else you can do to be of help during this stressful time.
Next, explain the challenges currently resulting from your employee's frequent use of personal calls and e-mail. Don't make this heavy-handed or punitive, simply state the facts. Once again, make it clear that your goal is to balance her needs with the job requirements. Openly discuss both the challenges and possible solutions.

Here is where you'll need to focus on the specific consequences you want to mitigate. Are you dealing with number of minutes, unfinished tasks, interruptions, unhappy coworkers, etc.? Identify the issues that are relevant. Ask the employee for steps she can take to either make up for or resolve the negative consequences you've outlined. Jointly come up with a solution that meets everyone's needs. Set clear standards for future behavior and thank her for her willingness to sit down and work through the challenge.

Kudos to you for wanting to do what's right for everyone concerned.

All the success!

PM in the PM

Probe performance issues with these questions

You’ll diagnose and resolve performance problems more quickly by talking directly—and candidly—with your employees.

Get to the bottom of the situation by asking questions on these important topics:

·    Job satisfaction. How satisfied is the employee with his or her job and role in your organization?

·    Purpose. Does the worker feel a sense of purpose in the job and role?

·    Confidence. Does the employee believe in his or her skills and ability?

·    Personal life. Is he or she having any personal problems that may be hurting performance? Probe carefully—you don’t want to invade your employee’s privacy.

·    Commitment. How committed does the employee feel to your organization? What might change that?

·    Training. Does the employee feel he or she has adequate training for the job?

·    Guidance. Does the employee know what to do—what rules and procedures to follow on the job? Does he or she know whom to ask or where to find answers?

·     Goals. Are goals realistic and challenging enough? Does the employee want more responsibility (or less)?

·     Recognition. Is the employee receiving the right amount of recognition and acknowledgement for achievement?

All the success,

PM in the PM

15 essential people-skills for leadership

Strong interpersonal skills are at the core of leadership success.

Non-intuitives and many technical professionals tell us that mastering the not-so-obvious aspects of interpersonal skills is a real head scratcher. Where are the people-skills rules?

Scratch your head no more.

If you have the desire to connect well with others, you can master and use these 15 not-so-obvious people-skills so that everything stacks up. If you’re not sure why it matters, consider that these soft skills impact comprehension, influence, and trust. All of this shapes the results you can achieve with others.

Consider these 15 communication skills:

1. People cannot observe your intentions. Therefore, they infer them from your words and tone of voice. State your intention to minimize confusion.

2. Everything you say impacts others emotionally. Even if you stick to the facts, your message leaves a human mark. Consider a doctor telling a patient, “You have cancer” and then leaving the room. The lack of empathy inflicts added pain.

3. Basic etiquette is a starting point for connection with others. Rules of etiquette are more relaxed today than years ago, yet they are still a powerful base to rely on when meeting new people.

4. Ask people how they feel and/or what they think. Don’t tell them, “I’m sure you feel…” It seems presumptuous and shuts down dialogue.

5. Addressing someone by name (or at least surname or title) eases tension and helps communication. In the South, start with sir/ma’am.

6. A handshake is your silent résumé. Make it great. If someone extends their hand to you, give them more than your finger tips. A “finger tip” shake tells the other person no, I don’t like you, I don’t trust you. Shake the hand all the way to the thumb joint, up and down, with eye contact.

7. Words can woo or wound. It’s important to create bonds with your words and tone of voice. Too many people misspeak and create scars instead of rapport. Speak the truth with tact and caring.

8. Sarcasm is often misunderstood. With those you don’t know well, skip the sarcasm. Leave it to the late night comics. With people you know well, don’t direct it at them. It’s often seen as an attack.

9. Good questions unearth possibilities for connection, results, and success. Ask open-ended questions to learn; closed-ended to confirm. People who do well with others  ask more open-ended questions and are seen as open and friendly.

10. Use focused words instead of minimizing words. For example, primarily is a focused word whereas just and only are minimizing words. “Are you just concerned about the deadline?” is a question that can minimize someone’s perspective and sound dismissive. “Are you primarily concerned about the deadline?” can fuel a valuable discussion. “What are your primary concerns?” is even better because it is open-ended and allows for true dialogue.

11.Great listening is about balance. Too much silence or too much talking can be annoying. The former is also seen as manipulative; the latter as self-absorbed.

12. Ask permission to give help before offering advice. Unsolicited advice can come across as intrusive and patronizing.

13. If someone thinks you have flattered them with your words or actions, don’t tell them you didn’t mean to! This is not the time to give literal details. It’s the time to simply say you’re welcome.

14. One “I told you so” sticks forever. Even if you don’t use those words, the message becomes your blatant blemish. People will avoid interacting with you to spare themselves the emotional scourge. Celebrate your foresight silently.

15. Authenticity and adaptation are not contradictory behaviors. Today’s trend is to be your authentic self. Sure — as long as you adapt to others when interacting. Being yourself without adapting paints you as a boorish nit and earns you the label of selfish and/or self-absorbed.

What will keep you motivated to use these 15 skills? It’s all about desire and results. Lack of desire will inhibit your progress.

As I was facilitating a workshop one day, a very bright technical professional in the room showed resistance. At the break, I asked him privately if he wanted me to explain anything again or differently. He said no, that he understood. He said it’s too much trouble to use the people-skills and suggested people adapt to him! Quite a decision. It will hold him back.

All the success!

PM in the AM

Everyone Wins When You Help Employees Provide Value

  

One of the things I love about being in leadership development is that everyone always bring you these rich stories that sometimes causes you to have an “a-ha” moment.

A major retail chain recently did something that, for a retail company, needs to be lauded. In retail, you have a workforce that is largely made up of hourly employees. They are the people that face the customers each and every day. Good mood or bad mood, they must keep the stiff upper lip and remember that the “customer is always right.”

One of the challenges all retail companies face is the weekly schedule. Trying to place people in slots, or work around challenges in their lives, is an enormous uphill battle both for the manager as well as the employee.

Facing a challenge and everyone wins

This company addressed that challenge head on and empowered their hourly workers to take charge of their schedule. In a nutshell, the employee makes their own schedule. They now have ownership and flexibility, and the theme of this program is that it allows associates to accommodate events that come into their life.

Imagine for moment that you are one of those workers, whether you are a single parent, college student, taking care of an elderly parent, or whatever. You are now empowered to set your own schedule. Outside of the weekend and certain key days, you are in charge. If you need to swap a day with someone, you are empowered to just do it as opposed to bowing to some manager and waiting for their verdict.

The response from their workforce, as it was told to me, was huge win. The workers thought they would never live to see the day that this would happen.

I am always encouraged when I see companies step up to the plate and look at situations and decide that yes, we can do this.

Empowerment going forward is the key

I was traveling a few weeks back, and when I came back to my hotel room, for some reason the key would not work. I tried reinserting it numerous times but I kept getting a flashing light. A member of the housekeeping staff saw my problem and came over and tried her key. She apologized and called the front desk, and they in-turn called the maintenance supervisor, who came up to my room with a crew of people.

Being a leadership development person, I watched the workplace dynamics of this play out — four people standing around my room trying to get me in. When I was finally let in, the supervisor came over and apologized profusely.

“Mr. Mclees, why not have dinner on us tonight?” he said. Knowing that I had dinner plans, I thanked him and politely declined. But he did not give up. “Why not have dessert on us then?” That suggestion I agreed to.

The residual impact of empowerment

My question to him was how, and why, did you do that? He said that each employee is empowered to grant these types of offerings when a customer is inconvenienced.

I thought of that story as I flew home. As I prepared for my next business trip, I noticed that my work location was centered around a few hotels. When I saw that the hotel that I had recently stayed was among them, my choice was easy. From this point on I will try and give them as much of my travel business as possible for the way they treated me as a customer — and all because of one interaction.

One of most interesting books that I have read over the past few years is Employee First, Customer Second by Vineet Nayer, CEO of HCL Technologies. HCL is a leading global IT services company. This is the firsthand account from a CEO about how he transformed his organization, taking it from decline into an engine of vitality and growth.

This book gives you a ringside seat to his transformational journey in turning conventional management of people upside down.

In a nutshell, he empowered his employees and they engaged his customers and turned around a company that was in a downward spiral.

Where is the value zone?

Vineet Nayer coined the phrase “value zone. This zone is the interface between employees and customers. Every employee that works within this zone is capable of creating more, or less, value. The mission was to do everything to enable those employees to create the most value possible.

Nayer wanted management to be as accountable to the people in the value zone as the people in the value zone are to management.

What they found was that this approach produced far more passion, because it proved that management understood the importance of employees in this “value zone.” They trusted them to do what was needed to be done in a way that they believed it should be done.

The small things win

Sometimes we look for the big initiatives to get back on track, but more often than not, it’s a small amount of respect and trust that causes the groundswell.

Empower employees, and both the employee and the organization wins. Treat them with mistrust and a lack of respect, and no one wins. It is as simple as that.

Oh, and by the way, when I returned from dinner back at the hotel, that slice of pound cake with raspberry topping capped off a powerful day for the “value zone.”

Peter Mclees, Principal

P. S. Smart Development Inc. has an exceptional track record helping restaurants, stores and other businesses create a strong culture, leadership bench strength and the teamwork necessary for growth. Having worked with several companies throughout their growth cycle, we have valuable insights and strategies that would help any late stage startup, small or medium sized company achieve sustained growth and prosperity.

http://smartdevelopmentinc.com/

A Five-Step Plan to Turn Around Underachievers

Enough about toxic bosses. What about sorry workers? Yes, that’s right, sorry. Some people need training, some need coaching. But some are just plain sorry—the proverbial bad apple that spoils the barrel. And when you find bad apples, the best thing to do is throw them out, right? Well, no. Even sorry workers can be saved. Follow these steps:

1.  Get wise. Good workers are often frustrated because their bosses seem oblivious to the underachievers in their midst. Satisfaction surveys and exit interviews should include questions to gauge employee perceptions of how management handles poor performers.

2.   Get help. You may be a great manager in every other respect, but let’s face it: Exercising discipline means engaging in confrontation—something most people find difficult. If you’re uncomfortable tackling performance issues, ask your HR department for assistance, or seek training to develop the skills necessary to make the task less daunting.

3.  Get going. Don’t let problems fester until dismissal seems the only option. As soon as you notice employees veering off course, take steps to steer them back. There’s truth in the saying that if you give people an inch, they’ll take a mile. Stop them at the inch, and you may never have to go down the longer road.

4.  Get inquisitive. When counseling poor performers, don’t just tell employees what they’re doing wrong and what they should be doing instead. Ask them what’s going on. It may be easier to approach an employee if you view the situation as a mystery that needs to be solved. Perhaps the employee is undertrained. Perhaps family or health issues are taking a toll. Or perhaps the employee just needs to understand that you expect a higher level of participation

5.  Get ready. Never assume that a single conversation will resolve a serious problem. No matter how productive the chat or how sure you are that the matter has been handled, take time to document the discussion. Should you decide to terminate, you’ll need to demonstrate the steps you’ve taken to resolve the problem—beginning with your first effort.

All the success!

PM in the AM

10 Common Leadership and Management Mistakes

Avoiding Universal Pitfalls

Avoid common leadership and management mistakes.

Experience is the name every one gives to their mistakes. – Oscar Wilde

It's often said that mistakes provide great learning opportunities. However, it's much better not to make mistakes in the first place!

In this post, we're looking at 10 of the most common leadership and management errors, and highlighting what you can do to avoid them. If you can learn about these here, rather than through experience, you'll save yourself a lot of trouble!

1.   Lack of Feedback

Sarah is a talented sales representative, but she has a habit of answering the phone in an unprofessional manner. Her boss is aware of this, but he's waiting for her performance review to tell her where she's going wrong. Unfortunately, until she's been alerted to the problem, she'll continue putting off potential customers.

According to 1,400 executives polled by The Ken Blanchard Companies, failing to provide feedback is the most common mistake that leaders make. When you don't provide prompt feedback to your people, you're depriving them of the opportunity to improve their performance.

To avoid this mistake, learn how to provide regular feedback to your team.

2.    Not  Making Time for Your Team

When you're a manager or leader, it's easy to get so wrapped up in your own workload that you don't make yourself available to your team.

Yes, you have projects that you need to deliver. But your people must come first – without you being available when they need you, your people won't know what to do, and they won't have the support and guidance that they need to meet their objectives.

Avoid this mistake by blocking out time in your schedule specifically for your people, and by learning how to listen actively to your team. Develop your emotional intelligence so that you can be more aware of your team and their needs, and have a regular time when "your door is always open", so that your people know when they can get your help. You can also use Management By Walking Around, which is an effective way to stay in touch with your team.

Once you're in a leadership or management role, your team should always come first - this is, at heart, what good leadership is all about!

3.     Being Too "Hands-Off"

One of your team has just completed an important project. The problem is that he misunderstood the project's specification, and you didn't stay in touch with him as he was working on it. Now, he's completed the project in the wrong way, and you're faced with explaining this to an angry client.

Many leaders want to avoid micromanagement. But going to the opposite extreme (with a hand-offs management style) isn't a good idea either – you need to get the balance right.

4.     Being Too Friendly

Most of us want to be seen as friendly and approachable to people in our team. After all, people are happier working for a manager that they get on with. However, you'll sometimes have to make tough decisions regarding people in your team, and some people will be tempted to take advantage of your relationship if you're too friendly with them.

This doesn't mean that you can't socialize with your people. But, you do need to get the balance right between being a friend and being the boss.

Learn how to do avoid this mistake with our article, Now You're the Boss. Also, make sure that you set clear boundaries, so that team members aren't tempted to take advantage of you.

5.     Failing to Define Goals

When your people don't have clear goals, they muddle through their day. They can't be productive if they have no idea what they're working for, or what their work means. They also can't prioritize their workload effectively, meaning that projects and tasks get completed in the wrong order.

Avoid this mistake by learning how to set SMART goals for your team. Use a Team Charter to specify where your team is going, and detail the resources it can draw upon. Also, use principles from Management by Objectives to align your team's goals to the mission of the organization.

6.     Misunderstanding Motivation

Do you know what truly motivates your team? Here's a hint: chances are, it's not just money!

Many leaders make the mistake of assuming that their team is only working for monetary reward. However, it's unlikely that this will be the only thing that motivates them.

For example, people seeking a greater work/life balance might be motivated by telecommuting days or flexible working. Others will be motivated by factors such as achievement, extra responsibility, praise, or a sense of camaraderie.

7.     Hurrying Recruitment

When your team has a large workload, it's important to have a full team. But filling a vacant role too quickly can be a disastrous mistake.

Hurrying recruitment can lead to recruiting the wrong people for your team: people who are uncooperative, ineffective or unproductive. They might also require additional training, and slow down others on your team. With the wrong person, you'll have wasted valuable time and resources if things don't work out and they leave. What's worse, other team members will be stressed and frustrated by having to "carry" the under-performer.

You can avoid this mistake by learning how to recruit effectively, and by being particularly picky about the people you bring into your team.

8.     Not "Walking the Walk"

If you make personal telephone calls during work time, or speak negatively about your CEO, can you expect people on your team not to do this too? Probably not!

As a leader, you need to be a role model for your team. This means that if they need to stay late, you should also stay late to help them. Or, if your organization has a rule that no one eats at their desk, then set the example and head to the break room every day for lunch. The same goes for your attitude – if you're negative some of the time, you can't expect your people not to be negative.

So remember, your team is watching you all the time. If you want to shape their behavior, start with your own. They'll follow suit.

9.     Not Delegating

Some managers don't delegate, because they feel that no-one apart from themselves can do key jobs properly. This can cause huge problems as work bottlenecks around them, and as they become stressed and burned out.

Delegation does take a lot of effort up-front, and it can be hard to trust your team to do the work correctly. But unless you delegate tasks, you're never going to have time to focus on the "broader-view" that most leaders and managers are responsible for. What's more, you'll fail to develop your people so that they can take the pressure off you.

10.   Misunderstanding Your Role

Once you become a leader or manager, your responsibilities are very different from those you had before.

However, it's easy to forget that your job has changed, and that you now have to use a different set of skills to be effective. This leads to you not doing what you've been hired to do – leading and managing.

Key Points

We all make mistakes, and there are some mistakes that leaders and managers make in particular. These include, not giving good feedback, being too "hands-off," not delegating effectively, and misunderstanding your role.

It's true that making a mistake can be a learning opportunity. But, taking the time to learn how to recognize and avoid common mistakes can help you become productive and successful, and highly respected by your team.

All the success,

PM in the AM