The Modern Manager

Latest Episodes:

41: Redesign How Your Team Works Mar 05, 2019

Show notes

How many times have you thought, “I’m too busy to figure out a better way to do X” or “I’ll improve this process as soon as things settle down.” The reality is that things never really settle down and yet, if we don’t periodically pause to reflect and improve our processes, we’ll soon discover they’ve eroded into overly complicated, burdensome ways of working.

This week, I walk through a real-life example of a process redesign session I led with one of my team coaching clients. It was an incredibly enlightening session that had them questioning the root of their activities, pushing back on previous assumptions, and designing completely new ways of working.

Get the free mini-guide to help you lead a session to rethink your ways of working with your team members.

Get the full guide with 10 productivity hacks and ways to streamline work when you join the Modern Manager community. In addition, get access to prior episode guides, guest bonuses and 30% off personality based coaching to help you better understand your preferences and learn new strategies to help you be a rockstar manager.

Subscribe to my newsletter to get episodes, articles and mini-guides delivered to your inbox.

Read the related blog article: How to Hack Your Team’s Productivity

Key Takeaways:

You must “sharpen the saw” if you want to efficiently and effectively cut down the tree - one of Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.
If you don’t periodically pause and reflect on your processes, they will slowly begin to burden you.
In just a few hours, your team can identify critical pain points in their current ways of working and generate solutions to reduce or eliminate those pains.
Some solutions may have a high implementation cost such as a new technology platform while others may be low cost such as a shared template or checklist.
When looking for opportunities to save time, consider what areas of work take up the most time already. It’s typically easier to save an hour when it’s a 10-hour activity compared to a 2-hour activity.
Learn from others: how were these activities done at other places you worked? What practices or policies do other departments have that you could model off of?

Other Resources:

Episode 19: Time Management Methods, Mindsets and Approaches

I’d love to work with your team to reimagine your processes and ways of working! Get in touch with me at mamie@mamieks.com

40: The Power of Questions with Pete Mockaitis Feb 26, 2019

Show notes

Asking questions, and knowing when not to, can be a kind of ‘secret sauce’ that enables you and your team to be more efficient and effective. Questions can help you prioritize, clarify, and even make decisions, when you know how to use them.

This week, I speak with Pete Mockaitis, award-winning speaker and coach who helps professionals perform optimally at work, and host of How to be Awesome at your Job podcast.

Listen to Pete interview me about productive meetings in episode 321 of Awesome at Your Job.

Join the Modern Manager community to get Pete’s Business Promises Worksheet templates to help you manage your team’s projects and progress. Plus, access additional guest bonuses and other resources to support your learning journey when you join.

Subscribe to my newsletter to get episodes, articles and mini-guides delivered to your inbox.

Read the related blog article: When to Ask Questions...And When Not To

Key Takeaways:

We don’t always ask clarifying questions for fear of looking stupid in front of our colleagues, but by not asking, we risk misunderstanding and doing the wrong work.
There are six key things you want to clarify regarding deliverables: the timing, the process, the resources, the audience, and the motive.
To help you prioritize, ask questions first to align on the goal: what does success mean? What does victory look like? What is the result, the output that we're after? How do we define quality? Then ask the questions to determine what work to do: What actions will have the biggest impact on achieving the goal? (Typically 20% of our work makes for 80% of the impact.)
If you don’t know the answer to a question, just say so and commit to finding the answers. Managers aren’t expected to have all the answers, but we are expected to move the work forward which may mean helping to find the answers.
Avoid asking questions, especially in front of a group, when it’s clear the other person is not prepared to answer them. Take it off-line to avoid embarrassing them.
Pause before asking a question in a meeting and reflect on whether the answer will materially impact your perspective, position or decision. Imagine the whole range of potential answers to your question and if from one extreme to the other, the decision is not at all changed, then you know that's a question not worth asking.
When making a decision and organizing your analysis or research, ask ‘what must be true for this to be a wise move’, and ‘how do we test for that’?

KEEP UP WITH PETE

Website: www.Awesomeatyourjob.com

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

Twitter: https://twitter.com/PeteAwe

39: Motivating Your Team to Adopt New Behaviors Feb 20, 2019

Show notes

As a manager, you are responsible for your team members accomplishing their individual and collective goals, but you also need to motivate them to work in ways that will foster a culture that will ultimately serve the team best. This may include what seem like obvious behaviors such as owning your mistakes, or more complex ones such as giving real-time feedback to one another or asking for help.

It’s your job as the manager to find both the internal and external motivators that resonate with each person and help them adopt the desired behaviors.

Get the free mini-guide to help you get reflect on the different motivations of each of your team members. Get the full guide when you join the Modern Manager community. In addition, get access to prior episode guides, guest bonuses and 30% off personality based coaching to help you better understand your preferences and learn new strategies to help you be a rockstar manager.

Subscribe to my newsletter to get episodes, articles and mini-guides delivered to your inbox.

Read the related blog article: How To Motivate Your Team To Work in New Ways.

Key Takeaways:

People will change their behavior when (1) the expectation is clear, (2) they have the capability and opportunity to do the new behavior, (3) they understand why it’s important, (4) they are rewarded when they do it, and (5) feel consequences when they don’t.
Motivation is only one component of successful behavior change.
According to Daniel Pink, there are internal motivators, external motivators, positive rewards and negative consequences. Different motivators resonate with different people.
BJ Fogg explains 3 essential motivators, each with a positive and negative side: Sensation (pleasure and pain), Anticipation (hope and fear), Belonging (social acceptance and social rejection).
How we respond to expectations set by ourselves and others impacts our motivation. According to Gretchen Rubin, there are 4 tendencies which explain how we respond to expectations - those who meet all expectations, those who meet internal but struggle with external, those who meet external but struggle with internal, and those who push back against all expectations. There are various strategies that work to support each tendency to meet expectations.
It’s not always easy to follow-through on rewarding the desired behavior or “punishing” lack thereof. Many times managers unintentionally respond negatively to the exact behaviors they asked for, ensuring people don’t try them again.
Your job as the manager is to clarify expectations, ensure proper systems/processes/tools to support successful behavior change, help people understand why it matters, link the behavior to each person’s motivators, and finally reward positive behavior and reprimand failure to change.

Links to Additional Resources:

Gretchen Rubin’s 4 Tendencies Quiz: https://quiz.gretchenrubin.com/
BJ Fogg’s Motivation Model: https://www.behaviormodel.org/motivation.html
Daniel Pink’s book Drive: https://www.danpink.com/drive./
Episode 1: What it Means to be an (Un)Intentional Manager: www.mamieks.com/podcast-001
Episode 9: Show Meaningful and Authentic Appreciation: www.mamieks.com/podcast-009

Get it touch! Email me at mamie@mamieks.com

38: How to Unleash New Ideas Through Failure with Jesse Fowl Feb 12, 2019

Show notes

"It's OK to fail." Really? Does anyone actually believe that? No matter how genuine your intent, innovation will never flourish while your team remains constrained by systems designed to enforce and reward traditional metrics of success. So how can you truly invest in new ideas and recognize "failure" as a vital part of the idea development cycle?

This week, I speak with Jesse Fowl, managing director and lead strategist at Solomon where he coaches clients to help them create a safe space for innovations while keeping fiscal responsibility front and center.

Join the Modern Manager community to get 2 templates Jesse uses to manage innovation and the learning cycle. Plus, access additional guest bonuses and other resources to support your learning journey when you join.

Subscribe to my newsletter to get episodes, articles and mini-guides delivered to your inbox.

Read the related blog article: How to Fail More (Effectively)

Key Takeaways:

Failure is both a “dirty word” and something we’ve started to embrace through methods like lean startup, agile and “fail fast, fail cheap”.
Innovation typically looks like this: one person has an idea; they generate lots of buy in which takes a long time, slowing the cycle of innovation; but it spreads out the risk so if it fails, it wasn’t just one person’s bad idea - we all bought into it.
To create a culture in which innovation and creativity flourish, you need processes, tools, systems and a psychologically safe space which in combination foster innovation.
Hide failures and promote successes by turning failures in ‘frequency of learning.’ What are all the ideas to explore and how will we measure each? In this way, you are protected from failure because you’re focused on finding and promoting what works, knowing that some things won’t.
Design small learning experiments that have clear measures that will provide the essential information within a constrained time/budget. Without constraints, experimentation will be elongated and slow.
To do this you need clarity on the goal and what success looks like. You also need time for innovation and creativity, when we aren’t swept up in the daily activities.
Different people contribute to innovation in different ways so design multiple opportunities for engagement e.g. have a brainstorm session with sticky notes, have a verbal ideation session, collect ideas ongoing rather than just during an innovation session.
When an experiment get big, it becomes about getting it right rather than about learning. And when you need to get it right, it’s hard to let an unsuccessful idea go.

KEEP UP WITH JESSE AND SOLOMON

Website: http://gosolomon.com

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

37: Defining Your Management Style Feb 05, 2019

Show notes

I’ve found that most teams don’t often enough pause to reflect on or evaluate the success of the work itself. There is so much to do, that we just keep pushing forward without pausing to ask how we’re doing and if we should keep going. In this episode, I outline four approaches to evaluating your teams’ work.

Get the free mini-guide to help you get started with evaluating your team’s work.

Join the Modern Manager community to get 30% off personality based coaching to help you better understand your preferences as a manager.

Subscribe to my newsletter to get episodes, articles and mini-guides delivered to your inbox.

Read the related blog article: Finding Your Own Management Style

Key Takeaways:

Management style is how you approach your responsibilities as a manager - everything from how you make decisions to how you allocate resources and workload to how you communicate.
Management style is based on three primary factors: (1) your personality and preferences, (2) your values, and (3) what you've learned works well to achieve the outcomes you desire.
Understanding your personality and preferences will help you understand how they are expressed in your style.
Clarifying your values will help you be intentional about the behaviors you encourage in other and yourself.
Intentionally adopting tactics and approaches you've learned through external sources (books, podcasts, TED talks) and personal experience (prior managers, observing other managers) will also make you more effective.
No single management style is perfect because no one style works for every team member.

Get it touch! Email me at mamie@mamieks.com

PYB 4: This way! Feb 03, 2019

Show notes

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

In this episode, I reflect on moments when we communicate unclearly or don't say what we actually mean and how we make assumptions about what other's say or do.

Get in touch and join the conversation!

mamie@mamieks.com

mamieks.com/podcast

patreon.com/modernmanager

36: Speaking from Strength with Jackie Miller Jan 30, 2019

Show notes

We all have moments when we wish we were better communicators: less nervous, more confident, better able to connect with and inspire members of our team, and more likely to really be heard by those listening. According to this week’s guest, “Owning your voice means feeling confident in the moment of communication because you know how to move through nerves and anxiety to say what you need to say so that it will resonate with your audience."

This week, I speak with Jackie Miller, CEO and President of Bespoken, a communication coaching firm utilizing practical theatre techniques to help individuals and teams own their voice and speak with purpose.

Join the Modern Manager community to get 18% off when you purchase my and Jackie’s courses on GenConnectU together. Plus, access additional guest bonuses and other resources to support your learning journey when you join.

Learn more about Jackie’s course Own Your Voice and my course Leading Meetings for Results and Real Leadership

Subscribe to my newsletter to get episodes, articles and mini-guides delivered to your inbox.

Read the related blog post: Own Your Voice in the Workplace

Key Takeaways:

Communicating effectively is a learned skill and we need to train it like a muscle. First, reflect on what aspect(s) of speaking you struggle with: projecting loud enough, presenting from a pre-written script, sharing criticisms without apology, commanding a meeting, etc.
Techniques developed in theater were designed to help actors communicate given the extraordinary circumstances: People are staring at you in the dark and you're supposed to pretend they're not there. Pre-microphones, you had to project so people in the last row could hear you. You're saying words that someone else has written and you need them to sound as if it's the first time you're saying them and that they're your own words, even though you do it night after night.
Step one is to connect your diaphragm and voice, to your breath and intention of what you want to communicate. (For a beautiful experiential walk through, listen to the episode.)
When communicating in a stressful situation, think “outside-in” and ‘inside-out’.
- Outside-in: How is your body feeling? How are you physically sitting - with arms crossed, in a defensive stance, or more open? Are you fully facing the person so you’re giving them your full energy? What impression are you giving them?
- Inside-out: Think about the other person, their world, their situation. Imagine yourself in their shoes, how would you want to be spoken to in that moment? What tone feels right?
Women and men’s voices are perceived differently in the workplace. Studies have been done with people reading the same script and yet the male voices are perceived as exponentially more authoritative and persuasive than the woman's.
Women and men can reference what other women have said by name to lift up their voices. Women can also appear more confident by removing fillers, qualifiers and apologies from their remarks.

KEEP UP WITH JACKIE AND BESPOKEN

Website: www.bespokenpartners.com

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/bespoken-partners

Twitter: @bespokenNY

35: How to Evaluate Your Team’s Work Jan 22, 2019

Show notes

Get the free mini-guide to help you get started with evaluating your team’s work.

Join the Modern Manager community to get the full guide which includes questions to ask and more for all four approaches to evaluation.

Subscribe to my newsletter to get episodes, articles and mini-guides delivered to your inbox.

Key Takeaways:

Evaluating your team’s work is different from evaluating individual or team performance.
Evaluation meetings go by various names: retrospectives, post-mortums, after action reviews or plus/deltas.
There are for approaches to measuring your team’s work: (1) Accountability - Did we do what we said we would do? (2) Impact - Did the result of our work make a difference and did it matter? (3) Learning - What did we learn by doing this work? (4) Cost-Benefit - Is the investment we made worth the return?
Evaluating your teams work is critical to building trust, streamlining your processes, improving impact and allocating resources.
By evaluating your team’s work across all four dimensions, you will be able to accurately determine if the work was successful, how to improve it, and whether to do it again.
(1) Accountability. Ask questions like: Did we execute the project activities on time? If not, why?, Did we stay on budget? If not, why?, We we accomplish all the work? If not, why?
(2) Impact. Ask questions like: What is the result of the work we accomplished?, What impact did the work achieve?, Did we achieve the outcome we expected?
(3) Learning. Ask questions like: What might we do differently if we did a similar project again?, What surprised you - either in a good or disappointing way?, What worked really well ? Why?, What didn’t work so well? Why?
(4) Cost-Benefit. Ask questions like: What was the full total of resources invested in or deployed for this work? (people, time, energy, finances, social or relational capital, physical resources), What other ways might we accomplish the same impact?, What didn’t we do because of the resources spent on this work?

Get it touch! Email me at mamie@mamieks.com

34: How Stories Can Transform Relationships with Ann Smith Jan 15, 2019

Show notes

When was the last time your team had a conversation about a non-work topic? That might seem like an unusual question when in fact, it’s an important component to building a high performing team. When people connect on a human level, they develop and deepen trust and respect, enabling them to constructively engage in conflict, openly share ideas and much more.

This week, I speak with Ann Smith, Executive Director of the non-profit Books@Work. Books@Work partners with employers to break down barriers, build connections and foster openness, trust and respect. Using facilitated dialogue about a carefully-curated piece of narrative literature, the program invites colleagues to deepen the relationships that anchor healthy and inclusive organizations.

Join the Modern Manager community to get 3 stories from Books@Work to use with your team. Plus, access additional guest bonuses and other resources to support your learning journey when you join.

Subscribe to my newsletter to get episodes, articles and mini-guides delivered to your inbox.

Read the related blog post: How to use Stories to Transform Relationships

Key Takeaways:

Using narrative text as the basis for a discussion tees up conversations that don't normally happen, enabling the group to address topics as potentially challenging as race, and gender, and politics. The story creates an alternate reality to talk about, so people feel more open to share their view. When people engage in a narrative text, they each bring their own perspective, often seeing different things.
There's almost no organization or industry where the ability to connect more deeply with other people isn't relevant and profound. Books@Work has impact any place that the human relationship lies at the core of being successful.
The big difference between the Books@Work approach and other common forms of team bonding such as a happy hour, is that a happy hour is wonderful in the moment, but most people will gravitate to the people they already know.
To elevate the conversation, don't use business books or self-help books, and select stories that are on topics unrelated to your work. Use narratives because they bring up human stories which actually attract you to share your own. Once you've shared your own, others will share theirs as well.
Really bring everybody to the table for the conversation. Even beyond your direct team - bring people from different functions, different roles, different levels of the organization. People are always pleasantly surprised that the most insightful comments don't always come from the most senior person in the room or the most educated person in the room.
If possible, have somebody who's trained to facilitate the discussion through questions. This will help ensure the conversation is open and that the text becomes a starting point but not the only thing you talk about. The facilitator allows people to go deeper and deeper into the story and bridge to the implications for people in the workplace.
Different stories tee-up different conversations on big topics like creativity, accountability, free will, etc. Start by asking some of the fundamental human questions: What are the actions that this character took that really intrigued you? What are the actions that the character took that gave you pause? Is there somebody that you identify with? And then to move to more essential, topical questions e.g. What does it take for human nature to be innovative? Or, would you make the same choice as the character?
Don’t be afraid of silence. Give people space to reflect, gather their thoughts and speak up. Ask open-ended questions rather than yes-no. Don’t ask if people liked the story. This doesn’t lead to productive discussion.
Only at the end might you ask if there are any implications or connections to your work.

KEEP UP WITH ANN AND BOOKS@WORK

Website: www.booksatwork.org

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

Twitter: @anksmith1 and @books_at_work

Facebook: facebook.com/readbooksatwork

33: Do you really need that meeting? Jan 08, 2019

Show notes

Meetings are just one form of communicate. Chat, email, collaborative digital tools and meetings are all good for some things and not others. While it seems simple to say, “let’s have a meeting,” it is important to pause and consider if a meeting is really necessary.

Get the free mini-guide to help you write a desired outcome.

Join the Modern Manager community to get the full guide which includes suggestions for when to hold a meeting vs use an alternative, and more.

Subscribe to my newsletter to get episodes, articles and mini-guides delivered to your inbox.

Learn more about how to have productive meetings and build a healthy meeting culture in my book, Momentum: Creating Effective, Engaging, and Enjoyable Meetings.

Key Takeaways:

Meetings are quite costly when you factor in the time to plan, schedule, complete pre-work, meet and follow-up. Plus there are emotional costs to sitting in meetings that feel unproductive.
Meetings are only one form of communication. All forms of communication have their best uses.
Before scheduling a meeting, be clear about why you’re meeting and what you want to accomplish (the desired outcome).
Once you know what you need to accomplish, decide if a meeting is the right next step. Consider a meeting alternative such as sending an email or memo, chat (e.g. Slack or Microsoft Teams), or a collaborative document (Google Doc, InvisionApp, etc) might be better suited.
A meeting alternative can be used as a first step in which it helps you narrow the focus of your meeting based on the initial responses.
To know if a meeting is the right next step, look at your desired outcome and ask yourself the following questions: (1) Do I need the participants to listen to, respond to, or interact with one another? (2) Is there a lot of complexity in the content or situation that needs real-time discussion? (3) Do I need to generate buy-in with this group of people?
If the answers to all are No, then a meeting is likely not necessary.

Get it touch! Email me at mamie@mamieks.com

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