Company Blog

There’s an excellent book for managers called: “First Among Equals – How to Manage a Group of Professionals.”, by Patrick McKenna and David Maister. It’s applicable to both new and experienced managers and gives good practical advice on how to manage a range of workplace situations.

The book is divided into 4 sections: 1. Getting Ready; 2, Coaching the Individual; 3. Coaching the Team; and 4. Building for the Future.

In this blog I’ll provide summary notes from Section 1: Getting Ready.

Chapter 1 Clarify your role:

How, exactly, do you add value as a group leader?

A leader has to bring a certain energy and optimism to the business. Part of your job is to build energy and enthusiasm.

Most often you will be working with highly talented people who do know what to do and how to do it, but just aren’t doing it. The causes may be numerous (fear, suspicion, lack of drive, attitudes, problems at home or structural organisational impediments) and you will find that most of the barriers have to do with feelings, attitudes and emotions. Your role, therefore, and your essential skills, will be to help people fulfil their potential by influencing these feelings, attitudes and emotions.

Among the contributions you can make are the following:

a.       Create energy and excitement.
b.       Be a source of creative ideas and stimulate creativity in others.
c.       Forge teamwork
d.       Help develop a common purpose that everyone can buy into.
e.       Help to solve problems and break down barriers for team members. Make it easier for them to succeed.
f.        Act as a sounding board – help people think through their issues.
g.       Enforce standards (deal gently, promptly, but firmly with noncompliance).
h.       Be a conscience (“gentle pressure”) when self-discipline fails.
i.        Be a constant source of encouragement to improve effectiveness, quality and efficiency.

Chapter 2: Confirm your mandate

Is there an explicit agreement about your rights and responsibilities?

Before you can effectively manage a team, you must ensure that you have reached agreement on what is called your “terms of engagement” or your mandate. You may think everyone around you already shares the same view of your mandate, but it’s worth checking ie what is expected of you.

A major part of a team manager’s real value comes from discussing individual performance and engaging in effective follow-up with individual members of the group…without follow-up little is implemented.

The value that the manager brings to each team member of the group is to act as a conscience mechanism. The leader serves to remind them of projects that they undertook to complete, to offer genuine hands-on assistance, and to help implement other projects.

Chapter 3: Build relationships – One at a time.

What are the key skills you must have?

The overwhelming determinant of whether or not you will be effective as a team manager has to do with your people skills – interpersonal, social and emotional.

Your success as a leader will depend on whether or not you are received by your people as a trusted advisor.

Common traits of trusted advisors;

Trusted advisors:

1.        Seem to understand us, effortlessly, and like us.
2.        Are consistent: we can depend on them.
3.        Always help us see things from fresh perspectives.
4.        Don’t try to force things on us.
5.        Help us to think things through (it’s our decision).
6.        Don’t substitute their judgement for ours.
7.        Don’t panic or get overemotional; they stay calm.
8.        Help us think and separate our logic from our emotion.
9.        Criticize and correct us gently, lovingly.
10.      Don’t pull their punches: we can rely on them to tell us the truth.
11.      Are in it for the long haul: the relationship is more important than the current issue.
12.      Give us reasoning (to help us think), not just their conclusions.
13.      Give us options, increase our understanding of those options, give us their recommendations and let us choose.
14.       Challenge our assumptions: help us uncover the false assumptions we’ve been working under.
15.       Make us feel comfortable and casual personally, but they take the issues seriously.
16.       Act like a person, not someone in a role.
17.       Are reliably on our side and always seem to have our best interests at heart.
18.       Remember everything we ever said (without notes).
19.       Are always honourable: they don’t gossip about others (we trust their values).
20.       Help us put our issues in context, often through the use of metaphors, stories and anecdotes (few problems are completely unique).
21.       Have a sense of humour to diffuse our tension in tough situations
22.       Are smart in ways we’re not.

Would you agree that this is what your team members would appreciate in a trusted advisor?

Would you agree that, if you acted in this way, they would be more likely to accept your influence?

How well does this list describe how you currently act in guiding, counselling, encouraging and supervising others?

While a coach needs many attributes and skills, one attribute dominates the list: whether or not those you are trying to influence trust your motives. If people think you are truly trying to help them, they will listen to you; if they think you are nagging and exhorting them in order to make yourself look good, they will resist your influence.

Chapter 4: Dare to be inspiring

Do you know how to inspire people?

Your team will best achieve peak performance by unleashing the power of your people. This is not done by managing them, nor by leading them, but by inspiring them.

Here’s a few important questions to reflect upon:

1.        Do you show a genuine interest in what each of your team members want to achieve with their careers?
2.        Do you show an interest in the things that mean the most to your people in their personal lives?
3.        Are you there for your people in their times of personal and professional crisis?
4.        Do you informally ‘check-in’ with each of your people every so often?
5.        Do you offer to help when some member of your team clearly needs it?

The fundamental purpose of the team manager is to inspire others. Inspiration comes from within and the manager’s job is to create the environment which can invite it. Inspiration is not derived from selfish motives, but from caring about people, caring about the relationships with those people and caring enough to intercede so that people can perform better than they thought they ever could. To be an effective coach requires patience, persistence and permission.

The above is a brief summary of the first four chapters of “First Among Equals – How to Manage a Group of Professionals by Patrick McKenna and David Maister (The Free Press 2002).