I am an engineer and designer. This is how I like to introduce myself to people, especially in Europe. The word "engineer" there carries an interesting touch of mystery, intelligence and wealth. In general, it helps a lot to make new acquaintances.
If you dig, then the bottom line is no longer so mysterious. I just love programming and drawing interfaces. I really, really love. So much so that sometimes I get carried away and forget to bill clients for it.
I have also been running a small organization for almost 10 years. But at the same time, he always continued to program and design at least as a hobby.
A peculiarity was discovered: you cannot approach the work of a programmer / designer and the work of a manager in the same way, you have to, as it were, switch the toggle switch, readjust.
Once again planning a project, I caught myself thinking, “Well, I can do the REST API architecture myself. At the same time, I will write functional requirements and draw a design for MVP. There is not much at all. " And then a voice laughed in my head:
- You are a fabulous leader, since you yourself have to do everything.
In general, below is a checklist for myself from the future in order to quickly switch to boss mode. I hope some of the readers will find it useful too. There will be many references to literature.
1. Stupidity
It doesn't take a lot of brainpower to put clickbait headlines on trivial articles. But all the same, it is useful for a leader to become a little more stupid, to lose some of the skills, to forget some of the prof. information.
This will help avoid analytic paralysis (not to be confused with sleep paralysis). After all, the more a person is inclined to analyze information and the more data he has, the more difficult it is to make a decision. Have you ever had a leader who can't decide anything? How was your experience with him?
Here are three more studies in favor of avoiding over-thinking.
- The introduction of additional information can increase the likelihood of making a wrong decision.
- People use much less information to make decisions than they think.
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2.
Confidence should be over the edge. Confidence in success, in your team and, of course, in yourself. Human mood, like herpes, is contagious. The leader must have the confidence to infect all of his colleagues, as well as line managers, investors and clients, with it.
Moreover, it is not enough just to feel confident within yourself. We need to demonstrate it. And this is a separate skill. Someone has a talent for him, but someone needs to specially train.
Even such small moments as a straightened back, a clear voice, a smile, calm movements and a direct gaze allow you to influence people. Sounds like a quote from some NLP book. But sometimes it works even better than convincing arguments.
In one of the articles I met the definition of "de facto leader". This is when, in the presence of a formal boss, real decisions in the organization are made by one of his subordinates, who is simply listened to more because he acts more confidently.
3. Vigor
A very similar story with certainty. A bad project is one in the middle of which something unexpected does not happen. And the leader is bad if he doesn't have enough strength to cheer up the team and pull the project out of the hole.
But you can't be super energetic all the time. Emotional decline always follows the peaks. We have to somehow get out.
There is one simple rule: never, for anything and under any circumstances, communicate with the team if you are in a bad, sluggish mood.
Prospis, have coffee, take a walk, shake off stress, have coffee, look at the birds, listen to music, have coffee. If all else fails, it's best to reschedule the appointment.
4. Honestly about the bad
People prefer to receive bad news without preamble. Opening speeches do not compensate for negativity, but increase tension.
So that unpleasant conversations do not come as a surprise, it is better to prepare the ground for them in advance. Already at job interviews, I begin to negotiate with the person about the terms of his dismissal, discuss salary delays and overtime. You should have seen the face of an HR person in those moments.
In general, you need to be honest. Of course, there are closed topics and questions that cannot be answered. It's okay, this can also be said directly. Nobody cancels the concept of commercial and personal secrets.
Why is this needed? Many people respond with honesty to honesty. And if a valuable employee has doubts about working in your company, then before starting to search for something on the side, he will come to you with a conversation. And then there will be an opportunity either to change his opinion or to prepare in advance for a replacement. No one likes to suddenly lose useful team members.
5. Delegate, not command
Often the word "delegation" means sending tasks and monitoring their implementation. Therefore, it seems that this word has discredited itself and it sounds sly.
How do you define "full personal responsibility"? We do not just delegate vaguely and vaguely, we transfer tasks under full personal responsibility. After such a transfer, the manager gets:
- Complete freedom of action
- Unconditional authority before employees
- Sole control over your employees
If you delegate not to the manager, but directly to the performer, the phrase "Make it so that the result would not be ashamed to show off to friends" helps. At the same time, it is important that the person himself shows initiative and readiness to be solely responsible for the result.
There are things that cannot be delegated. Everyone has something different. I usually do not transfer full responsibility for everything related to money, decisions about hiring someone, control over important accounts (like a domain).
6. Don't work without a plan
Without a plan, people tend to take on understandable small tasks and go into details, forgetting the big picture. This creates the illusion of work, although globally the project is at a standstill. Employees waste energy without seeing the result - this ultimately leads the project to failure.
Planning starts with a goal. It is more convenient to put it according to the good old SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, meaningful, time-bound). In product teams, timing is the hardest part. Formally, it exists, but in fact, the deadlines can be constantly postponed, and everyone eventually understands that the deadline does not mean anything. The challenge for the future is to figure out how to deal with this as effectively as possible.
Planning can be time consuming. So that the company's resources do not stand idle, it is worth discussing with people in advance what they should do when there is no production. This could be:
- Close 10 tickets from the backlog of internal projects
- Go to a conference and make a report on what you have learned
- The coolest guys themselves are happy to come up with tasks and saw them for the good of the company
- By agreement, you can give a person an additional day off due to the fact that he will work it out during the active phase of the project
7. Do not take someone else's work
Anyone who has not read the famous article "The Manager and His Time, or Who Will Get the Monkey" - rather read it . Since 1974, it has been the Harvard Business Review's most popular publication. Managers are still stepping on the old rake by allowing subordinates to set tasks for themselves.
Think about it. Every time you listen to an employee's problem in the hallway (by mail, phone, etc.) and promise to help, it becomes your problem. Figuratively speaking, you are taking care of someone else's monkey. The subordinate will easily part with her, and then will ask you when you will finally solve his problem. And if you don’t make up your mind, you’ll also turn out to be a bad leader.
Such situations should not be allowed in principle. You didn't hire a professional to work for him. And therefore, it is critically important to invite initiative people to the team.
In relations with bosses, 5 levels of initiative can be distinguished:
- The employee waits for a direct instruction
- The employee asks what to do
- The employee proposes his plan, which then implements
- The employee acts independently, asking for advice along the way
- The employee acts completely independently and at the end submits a report on the work done
I must admit that I have not met any IT executives who would like to see at least one person in the team, acting according to the principle of number 1. I would say that at least the 3rd level of initiative is needed.
8. Do not criticize for the initiative
This is taboo. Even if the person messed up. You can discuss how he is going to correct the situation, how to avoid such difficulties in the future, but never punish or suppress the initiative.
Anyway, any punishment should be removed from your arsenal. For fun, I tried the “I'm the boss, you're a fool” approach, which gave very short-term results and always ended up leaving the team.
9. Make and keep promises
People stop trusting those who forget their promises. But it works the other way too. If you systematically follow your word, you begin to trust more.
Both apply even to micro-promises for the most trivial reasons. "In the evening I'll send you a link to the book I was talking about", "Yes, let's go to the cafeteria, I'll be free in 15 minutes." And even a postponed meeting will bring you a minus in karma. It is necessary to ensure that there are always more fulfilled promises than unfulfilled ones.
By the way, surpassing expectations in the hope of gaining respect is also not worth it. There is a suspicion that this not only does not bear positive consequences, but can also lead to the opposite effect.
10. One-man management
Henri Fayol (father of modern management) wrote about the principle of one-man management in management . This rule is still valid. If an employee receives assignments and reports on the results to several managers, this does not lead to anything good.
Stress, demotivation, loss of loyalty, missed deadlines, undermined authority are just the most obvious consequences. And then it becomes clear why it is so difficult to delegate. When your subordinate has his own team, you must give up personal control over this team. Ultimately, what is more important to you, work efficiency or a desire to lead someone?
11. Judge by results
The halo effect forces us to rate those we like higher and lower those we dislike. But employees cannot be judged by such parameters as "he is a good man", "I know his mother", "we have common interests", "she tried hard." You do not choose your spouse.
If a person does not do his job over and over again, he should be fired.
12. Do not delay parting
Nobody likes to fire, but this is not a reason to delay the separation. The company loses money, the project does not develop, the team sees its inefficiency. Sometimes you have to upset a good person to stop it.
It happens that even an asshole does not want to fire. “He will learn, he will be re-educated” - we tell these tales to ourselves, if only we ourselves are not considered bad. If it turns out that a person is toxic, incompetent, lazy, then there is no need to delay.
And someone else may simply be out of place and be dissatisfied with the situation and their position in it. Holding on to such a person is doing a disservice to him and to yourself.
In the end, you can always meet with adequate people again. And I have done this more than once.
13. Give thanks out loud
Everyone loves to be praised. But you need to praise for the cause. Over time, empty praise is simply not taken seriously by anyone.
It's very difficult for me with this. I think "delicious", but I say "normal". For people with the same problems, there are some tips:
- To show the results of work in action is also a praise. People like to know that their work is in demand
- If you decide to issue an award, then you need to personally tell the person about this decision, and not just ask the accountant to transfer it silently to the card
- It is necessary to publicly indicate as often as possible who took part in the work
- Well, just give thanks aloud and in front of witnesses
The article was written by Denis Elianovsky .
Thanks to Stanislav Lushin and Tatiana Kitaeva for their help and editing, to Elena Efimova for the picture in the header.