Are You a Traditional Manager or Facilitator for Self-Management?

• April 30, 2018

Are you a traditional manager or self-management facilitator?    A shift is occurring.  Some managers recognize the need to change now and they are aware and working hard to personally transform their thinking and their methods.  Some organizations will be able to delay the transformation and others will need to change now or will suffer increased costs in turnover and low employee engagement.  Those organizations who are unaware of the need and/or who ignore it may end up going the way of the Dodo bird at some point.

The current management model that requires managers to “drive” results, and evaluate performance is not fast enough to keep up with changes occurring in the global economy.  There is a need for instant adaptability and traditional managers, as smart as they may be, cannot respond or plan fast enough.  The need to adapt to change is one of the dynamics creating a need for organizations to prepare for self-organizing teams and employees who can self-manage.

Besides the need to adapt to the speed of change, managers must also be able to create environments that engage people naturally and not force so called engagement with bribes and threats.  Many traditional managers use so called “new” motivational initiatives to create employee engagement but these programs are often just the same old traditional management with fancy digital bells and whistles.

Furthermore, it is impossible for bribes and threats of the traditional management policies, such as pay for performance and the traditional performance review, to encourage optimal innovation and creativity.  Those policies are no longer able to meet the needs of the organization nor the needs of engaged employees.  Like the Dodo and the Dinosaur, the environment has changed, and these policies are going extinct.

How do you know you are making the transition to a self-managing facilitator?  Here are a few questions to challenge you and to consider what you are doing.

Are you a systems thinker?   In the face of mistakes, do you step back and ask questions about how the system is impacting the results or do you immediately think about blaming the individual who made the mistake?

Do you understand that there is always variation in processes and therefore you avoid setting new policies and expecting perfection in policy deployment?   Do you appreciate that the individual employees work in the system that you created?  Do you believe if an employee makes a mistake it is rarely done on purpose but instead it’s likely because of the way YOU designed the process?  Do you accept that it is your job to work on improving that system?

Have you clarified a specific context of trust and do you have a process to continuously reinforce trust by behaving with integrity?  Do you continuously reinforce the company values, mission and vision?  When employees do not appreciate why their jobs are so important and how their responsibilities impact the customer, do you ask “How can I improve my communication about company values, mission and vision?”

Do you ask questions about what barriers are holding employees back from doing an optimum job?  Do you listen and act on their suggestions?  Do you then facilitate agreements with employees to act on their own?  Do you encourage them to self-manage?

Are you able to provide the tools that enable your people to create self-managing teams make more and more of their own decisions?  Do you provide employees with the tools and the data they need to track their own performance in a collaborative way without you micro-managing?

Are you trusting them to continuously improve their hand offs with each other?  Do you explain that higher quality hand offs delivered faster increases profit and happier external customers?

Are you personally developing, and offering opportunities for your people to develop the skills of emotional intelligence, critical thinking skills and systems thinking skills?

The traditional manager has a difficult job, but the future self-management facilitator is prepared with a completely new set of sophisticated skills.  Are you making the transition?  Are you getting the help you need to make the transformation?  If not, watch out for the Dodo.  You might see it cross the street in front of you very soon.

Check out the interview on C-Suite Best Seller TV to learn more about how to stop leadership malpractice and replace the typical performance review: https://www.c-suitetv.com/video/best-seller-tv-wally-hauck-stop-the-leadership-malpractice/

Wally Hauck, PhD has a cure for the “deadly disease” known as the typical performance appraisal.  Wally holds a doctorate in organizational leadership from Warren National University, a Master of Business Administration in finance from Iona College, and a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from the University of Pennsylvania.   Wally is a Certified Speaking Professional or CSP.  Wally has a passion for helping leaders let go of the old and embrace new thinking to improve leadership skills, employee engagement, and performance.

For more, read on: https://csuiteold.c-suitenetwork.com/advisors/advisor/wally-hauck/