How best to use a management book

 

Question

Hi Elizabeth,

Thanks for your recommendation on books  to help with Change Management. I must say your own book Effective Management Skills – Doing the Right Things in The Right Way is just great and I would recommend that one too.

Have you any advice on how to use a management book? I have to say most of the management books I’ve read so far are long-winded and it’s hard to get to the heart of what they are trying to say. They’re not the best “bed time reading” either – too heavy, too dull and they send me to sleep.

G.

Answer

Hi there G,

How to use a management book. Hmmm…..

Great question! You obviously know that a management book should be used differently from other books. A management book isn’t a novel. It’s not meant to be read cover to cover in content-sequence-page-order. A management book is to be flicked though. Look at everything it contains right at the start, then go first to what interests you most right now.

Tony Buzan, pioneer of the mind-mapping technique, makes reference to a man who found the exact book he needed, full of great information and ideas. The guy was so pleased with the information and so impressed with all the book contained that he made extensive notes as he went along – probably prolonging his reading time by 50%.

38 pages from the end of the 350 page book ….he found that pages and pages of wonderful summary notes were included…as an appendix!

If only he’d flicked through the book before he began to read it.

We’ve recently added to the Team Effective material that is published as downloadable eBooks.

Check out Best Management Books Online.

Best Conflict Management Book

Question.

My boss has just declined my request to go on a conflict management course but says he will pay for a few books on the topic. Can you recommend any?

Are there any downloadable books? For me they’re better than hard copy.

Do you think management books are the best way for me to learn management? Are there any downsides to a management book?

Answer

One conflict management book we like is:

Tongue Fu! – By Sam Horn.

We’re not alone either. Jack Canfield who’s positive thinking methods we also like says that he thinks this is a "handbook for verbal self-defence that provides dozens of real-life, constructive alternatives to giving a tongue lashing or to being tongue-tied". (Jack Canfield is also author of the Chicken Soup books).

We like also like:

Getting to Resolution: Turning Conflict into Collaboration – By Stewart Levine

It’s a tool-set for resolving all conflicts – personal conflicts – marriage, neighbors etc -and also business conflicts including the pain and anger from layoffs. They are some of the conflicts he discusses.

I’m not sure if you can get them downloadable but an internet search would tell you.

I know how you feel. It’s great to just decide you need/want a book and be reading it less than 10 minutes later. It doesn’t get better than that.

Nothing beats practical experience in management. What books give you is the ideas and techniques but it takes an author who has done the job themselves to write great information which is practical, real, true to life and applicable to the work a manager does today.

What’s not good about books?

Well…not much except…you can’t ask a book a question!

You can’t say “Hey that’s great Mr Drucker/ Peters/Walsh. How would you apply that to my work situation where ……..?”

Have you checked out  Elizabeth’s  Best Management Books yet?

You get instantly downloadable eBooks – “real-life”, practical, focused and written in a “how to” style by a manager with excellent qualifications and 20 years practical experience – you read and feel experience in every word.

What do employees want to hear from their supervisors?

Employees want to hear from their supervisors and managers anything and everything to help with motivation. This is particularly true when change is happening within a company.

Change management and the process of change is high on the list of any manager involved in human resources.

- Employees want to know how they are getting on at work and also within the company
- Every employee wants to hear that they are appreciated.
- Employees want to be updated on any developments in the workplace and as human beings,
- Every employee wants to feel that they are a star in their own right and that they are part of a winning team.

Mary Kay Ash, founder of Mary Kay Cosmetics once said, “There are two things people want more than sex and money…..recognition and praise”.

HR managers are frequently told that the one motivating factor at the top of most employee lists is “appreciation for a job well done”. In performance reviews, management teams know it is the one thing requested more often than money.

A recent Gallup survey revealed:
- 61% of American workers received no praise at work last year and
- The #1 reason people leave their jobs is because they feel unappreciated

If you ask employees why they go to work, their first answer is usually “to get paid” but when you explore further, people will add that their main reason is “I feel I make a difference”. In most cases, that’s the reason why a contented employee decides to get out of bed each morning to go to their workplace.

What can managers do?
Watch out for something to praise – best practices – a task completed to a high standard, a task achieved faster than expected, meetings well run, someone looking particularly smart today or someone greeting a customer enthusiastically and personally, someone remembering a customer’s name.

Managers can also offer training to employees – training the manager undertakes to deliver – using business best practices and in-house resources.

Showing appreciation allows a supervisor or manager to invest in their team – without spending money. Appreciation doesn’t need to be financially costly. It could be a coffee and a cookie or it could be a quick hand-written note. It could be a simple “thank-you”.

The important thing for managers to realize is that employees need appreciation to give of their best, particularly if the supervisor or manager is managing change.

For more tips, articles and ideas take a look at:

- Giving Praise
- Motivate without spending a dime
- What motivates people

Effective Management Skills

Effective management skills are now the currency of success. Whether your organization is concerned with business, commerce or industry, it will need managers who have well developed leadership skills, are excellent communicators and are also effective strategic thinkers.

To manage at all levels, communication skills, leadership skills and time management skills are required. These skills are at the heart of all successful businesses and at the heart of the effective management of teams of people.

Managers are also expected to train their own team members and provide help with team member’s learning. This means that managers must also have coaching skills to support their staff. The skills of a trainer are specialized and will need to be developed. Once again, there will be demand for creativity to achieve this.

Management strategies for building and maintaining team moral, techniques and tips which help to motivate and support people are vital to business success, particularly in a time of economic uncertainty.

In achieving management objectives, of particular importance are interpersonal skills – the so call “soft skills”. The term “soft” can imply that they are skills which are of secondary importance. Secondary for instance to harder skills such to financial management and project management. Such an interpretation is wrong. Soft skills are the complex and demanding and ever-changing skills which effect individuals in organizations – communication, negotiation, conflict resolution, change mamangement, performance appraisal and performance management. Get these wrong and business suffers. Soft skills – interpersonal skills – are the “meat n’ potatoes” of the effective management of human resource; they are essential manager skills.

Human resources management is the key to effective management of any business’ finite financial resources

Effective management is about managing every project well which means managing effectively, efficiently, in a timely manner and with the full co-operation of everyone involved.

There are a huge number of requirements of a manager and yet resources for training are in short supply for most businesses operations these days. It’s likely to become the responsibility of managers to develop their own effective management skills.

In the past, managers could look forward to being sent on training courses to learn or develop a particular skill but now managers must be creative in building their own personal bank of resources to improve their effectiveness. In a climate of economic downturn and dramatically reduced budgets, managers must add innovation to the ever-growing list of requirements of their professional education.

Also, in the past, it was quite easy for a manager to find a class which suited the learning schedule of his professional development but increasingly, classes are run at times which conflict with normal business or personal life commitments of home and family.

Time management is usually a top priority for every manager. It’s the #1 continual gripe of most managers that meetings are not time efficient or well managed. Many managers struggle with acting as the chair-person in a meeting and also with writing the minutes of meetings. A short online management course dealing with a key skill such as “Running effective and efficient meetings” can be of considerable assistance.

Working on presentation skills doesn’t only involve getting to grips with Powerpoint. Presentation skills involves the fundamental skill for a manager of addressing an audience – how to stand, how much you can walk around without distracting your audience and what clothes to wear.

Customer service cannot be allowed to suffer during ecomomic downturn. Keeping every customer satisfied is the cornestone of good business management.

We are all in the business of marketing ourselves as managers. There is no better way to impress a future employer that to be able to demonstrate that you have taken on the task of your own professional and personal development.

Whether you’re in marketing management, regularly dealing with the media or you’re in financial management or project management, you’ll need effective management skills. You and the develpment of your effective management skills are your #1 project – Doing the right thing and doing it well.

The dreaded departmental monthly meeting

Hi Jack and Elizabeth,

I’ve just been given a permanent new role as chair of our departmental monthly meeting and it feels like a huge weight round my neck.

It’s the booby prize. It feels like someone is punishing me!! These meetings have been a nightmare and a joke for years. Nobody takes them seriously, nobody does any prep, people arrive late and everyone dreads them. Help ! My first is next week!

GT

 

Hi GT,

Ok, first, go and look at our 5 Minute Guides (in this order) on “Managing a Meeting”, “Preparing for a Meeting” and “Setting an Agenda”.

You will have to make some big changes to turn this situation around and you won’t succeed overnight but it can be done successfully. Absorb the information in those Need it Now Guides.

Your first job is to get out the agenda for the next meeting and you need to shake this bag and let people know there will be changes.

Actions which can herald change:

– If possible, delay the meeting by a week and just send a memo with the new date. That buys you a week to set the agenda for the next meeting and a further week to get yourself prepared. If possible, also change the regular day of the meeting and change it to a “good” time e.g. 11am. Early morning is a bad time and also immediately after lunch is a bad time.

If you can’t delay the meeting, let us know and we can plan some quick e-mail help for you.

Elizabeth

Follow up to the concerns about an older employee coping with new systems

Follow up
Hi Elizabeth. It wasn’t easy finding the right moment to ask a few casual questions but I have the information now ….It’s love of everything about the work and fear of retirement. PL

 

Hi PL,
I’m pleased you didn’t rush in to get the information you needed. The right moment usually presents itself if time constraints allow you to be patient. Managers don’t always have that degree of flexibility though in determining when they choose to act.

Here’s what I think:
You could give them a specific new role with a firm end date and they could retire at that end date. That would provide a
wind-down period and yet a feeling of having made a valuable contribution. You may even be surprised at how well the person adapts.

The person could work part time and a decreasing time over a year e.g. work full time for 3 months after the change, then 3 days per week for a month, then 2 days etc down to a few hours a week after a few months. A win/win situation for everyone. It’s often found that after such a wind-down, the person actually suggests termination themselves as they become comfortable with leisure time and also realize that the changes are profound and the company situation vastly changed.

Ask HR or someone in payroll have a look at the persons retirement situation. Sometimes people think they have to keep going till e.g 65 to get a certain pension. Maybe the difference in retiring in 6 months time as opposed to 3 years time is only a small monetary difference. Is it possible to convince the person the difference isn’t worth loss of 2 years of leisure? Could you give them a “Loyalty” bonus if they retire which would bridge the monetary difference.

Those are just a few ideas off the top of my head. If none of those work for you, give me more detail and I’ll think again.

Elizabeth

Planning and Assessing Staff Training

Hi everyone,
At the weekend we had a question about staff training. The question just said ” can you give some pointers about staff training please”. I’m not too sure what focus the questioner had in mind so today I wrote a 5 Minute Guide. I hope it helps the person who asked the question and maybe it will help the rest of you too. If the person who asked the question wants to give me some further detail, I’ll address the topic more specifically.

Elizabeth

Congratulations C !!

Drum roll …….
C has achieved her goal !!
One of our managers has started her own business. We’ve know C for 8 years and she’s already had a successful career in her chosen industry, rising from trainee manager to manager of a sales team of twelve. Eight months ago, C saw an opportunity to strike out on her own.
In the main, it was Jack who helped with advice on assessment of the market, practical suggestions and of course appropriate encouragement and cautions along the way.
C e-mailed us. She was thrilled to say that she is now earning as much as she was before she took the plunge into self employment AND all the profit from her hard work is hers to keep.

Case Studies – learn from other manager’s experiences

Hi everyone,

We’ve just launched a new section “Case Studies”.

Take a look when you have a moment.

The first study describes the problems encountered by a woman who was promoted from team worker to team manager.

Elizabeth

An older employee concerns

I have on my team a person who has been with the company 30 years. This person is still a great worker and the company has no criticisms to make of the person’s work or the way they relate to younger workers. In fact, I feel quite embarassed to say that we want the person to retire. The reason is, we are about to introduce a totally new system into the company and we feel this employee may not adapt well to the new system. Any ideas? PL

 

Hi PL,

The company certainly owes this person some consideration for the years of loyal service.

I’m having to make a few assumptions here – I’m going to assume that the employee is 50+, maybe nearer to 60.

Let me ask you a few questions…

Do you know what the employee enjoys about working for your company which has kept them there so long?

Is it the actual work? Is it social interaction with co-workers? Is it need for income? Is it lack of anything else in their lives? Is it fear of retirement.

Your answers to those questions would point the way for you.

Your worse situation is if the person is in financial need – you have a problem because they won’t voluntarily give up vital income. I’ll leave that scenario hanging.

Talk to your bosses and one or two people who have a long service with your company and try to get some background and get back to me.

Elizabeth

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