“No way. I was so nervous; I nearly threw up right before my presentation.”
Do you understand? An audience doesn't react to a speaker's nervousness. They react to the behaviors that they see and hear that they ascribe to nerves. If Paul is nervous but doesn't behave as if he is nervous, will his audience notice? Of course not. They'll think he's confident.
Suppose Paul is not nervous, but he engages in all the behaviors that a nervous person engages in. What is the audience going to think? That he's nervous and not confident. At the executive level, that's the kiss of death.
Success at work is about what you do– you are your behaviors. Almost nothing else matters. And that's what The Effective Manager is about.
About Manager Tools
My firm, which I co-own with my outstanding business partner Michael Auzenne, is a management consultant firm. We coach managers and executives at firms all around the world. We train managers at firms all over the world. In 2016, we will provide all-day training sessions to over 10,000 managers at our corporate clients worldwide. We also host training conferences all over the world, where individual managers can get trained. We will conduct over 100 of these training conferences in 2016.
However, if your company cannot afford to send you to training (we do offer a discount if you want to pay yourself), every bit of guidance in this book is available for free in our podcast, Manager Tools. You can find the podcast on iTunes and at www.manager-tools.com.
As of this writing, our podcasts are downloaded about a million times a month, in virtually every country in the world. We've won many Podcast Awards over the years, thanks to our loyal audience.
Our podcast is free because the mission of our firm is to make every manager in the world effective, and many of them can't afford to buy this book.
Periodically, I will encourage you to go to our website for more guidance. I can't put all the podcasts in here – there are, at the time of this publishing, close to 1,000 of them. You'll see many instances of There's a Cast for That™ throughout this book. There are links to additional free content in our podcasts on our website.
I encourage you to visit www.manager-tools.com and learn even more. Click on the “There's a Cast for That™” link near the top right of our home page for a full listing of all of the podcasts cited in the The Effective Manager.
A Note about Data
For the past 25 years, we've been testing various managerial behaviors and tools to see which work and which don't. I used to hate it when the manager training I received, or the books I read, basically were filled with someone's opinions, or they proffered an idea and then used a few anecdotes to support the person's position. We at Manager Tools like the aphorism, “The plural of anecdote is not data.”
We have tested and refined all of the four primary recommendations given in this book. We have tested or surveyed over 91,000 managers at various times, for various behaviors, responses, and outcomes.
In many tests, we track results and retention of managers in both a test group and an unchanged control group. This is especially true of the Four Most Effective Behaviors. We have also tested many of the phrases that we recommend you use. Our tests show a slight difference in responses, for instance, when using the phrases, “Would you please…?” and “Would you…?” We recommend using “Would you please…?”
That being said, no survey can completely predict how any one manager's results, retention, or relationships will be affected by the tools we recommend. Every situation is different. Often, that's what many managers say when they come to us for help and explain their situation: “My situation is special/different/unique.” Almost always, it's not different at all. But because there's a chance that a manager's situation is unique, we will tell you this: Our guidance is for 90 percent of managers, 90 percent of the time. It's possible that you're in a special situation, but I doubt it.
A Note about Gender
You'll notice that, throughout this book, I'll use different genders for managers – sometimes male and sometimes female. All of our content at Manager Tools – all of the audio guidance in podcasts and all the “show notes” – use a nearly perfect balance of male and female examples. (If you're a male, and it seems as if there are a lot of female examples, that says more about your biases than our examples.)
The reason for using different genders for managers throughout this book is that all of our data show that men and women make equally good managers and, for that matter, executives. If you're a female manager, we're glad you're reading this book, and we're here to help.
Now, let's find out what it takes to be a good manager and how to do it.
1
WHAT IS AN EFFECTIVE MANAGER?
There's a lot of talk about what good management is. When someone tells you they know how to manage or what it takes to manage, ask them, “How do you measure what a good manager is, or does?” If you don't get a crisp answer (like the one I outline below), don't take what they tell you very seriously.
I suspect you've known both good and bad managers. What makes them so? Is it what they do? How they think? Their personality? What they feel? Where they went to school?
Think about this for a minute: How do you know someone is a good manager? What is the definition of a good manager?
When we ask these questions at our Effective Manager Conferences, we get all kinds of answers, such as the following:
■ Their people like them.
■ They communicate a lot.
■ They're smart.
■ They CARE.
■ They listen well.
■ They are respected.
These are good efforts, but they're still incorrect.
Suppose a manager reported to you who did or embodied all of the above, and for the past three years, he had never achieved a single objective that the organization had set for him. Would you describe him as a good manager? Of course you wouldn't.
Your First Responsibility as a Manager Is to Achieve Results
This may be the most important concept related to being a manager. Your first responsibility is NOT to your team of directs. It's NOT to your people. You should NOT worry about them first.
Your first responsibility is to deliver whatever results your organization expects from you. Whether you're a sales manager, and you have to “meet your numbers,” or you're an accounting manager, and you have to “prepare the quarterlies,” or you're a project manager, and you have to “deliver, on time, on budget, in scope,” the thing that really matters is that you do what your company expects you to do.
For many managers, this creates a problem. You probably can't name your top five key results that you owe your organization this year. You most likely can't
