by Alison Green
Overfriendliness. Managers who are overly concerned with being liked by their employees can compromise their effectiveness if employees get mixed signals about the nature of their relationship. Ironically, this can lead from wimpy behavior into tyrannical behavior: if an employee starts taking advantage of the friendship, you may feel your authority is being challenged or undermined and end up reacting too aggressively.
Ricken Patel, executive director of Avaaz, an international nonprofit, says this about decision making:
I used to think in order to get extremely talented people to work together, you needed their buy-in in terms of a decision-making structure, that you needed more of a consensual decision-making structure. What I’ve learned is that you can build an extremely dynamic team of these kinds of people while still having a hierarchical management structure in place. The mixture of a highly collaborative, transparent culture combined with a clear hierarchical structure has been the magic mix. Earlier in my career, I tried getting together the people I most respected and having everyone be codirectors and taking equal management and decision-making responsibilities, but we eventually realized that often it’s best to have a single decision maker. Sometimes consensual processes place enormous demands on time and energy and sometimes result in compromises that are lower quality than following any single vision.
A more structured hierarchy has been highly effective, and far from people feeling less bought in because they don’t have equal decision-making power, people have felt more excited and more engaged because the team as a whole has performed better.
TYRANTS
Managers who are tyrants get things done through rigid control, negativity, and a climate of fear.
Most tyrants don’t set out to be mean, but they don’t trust that they can get the results they want any other way. However, tyrants aren’t as effective in either the short or the long term. Staff members who are distracted by fear or anxiety won’t bring up new ideas for fear of being ridiculed, and they won’t be honest about problems. In addition, very few great people with lots of choices are going to want to work for a tyrant. We’ve seen this play out in many organizations where not only do good employees leave, but a manager who gets a reputation as difficult to work for finds it incredibly tough to attract the level of new talent the organization needs.
Signs that you might be a tyrant include:
Yelling. We hear with surprising regularity about bosses who yell and scream. Managers who yell demean and humiliate the person being yelled at and diminish their own authority because they look out of control. In contrast, a manager confident in her own authority doesn’t need to yell, because she has far more effective tools available to her. Our advice here is simple: don’t yell.
Defensiveness. Tyrannical managers often respond defensively when their decisions are questioned. They may also squash dissent, making employees less likely to suggest new and different ways of doing things, and they are prone to shooting the bearers of bad news, which means that staffers will avoid sharing negative information. When you’re secure in your authority, you aren’t threatened by dissent, and you might even recognize that—gasp!—others’ ideas are sometimes better than your own. THE WIMP/TYRANT COMBO
Oddly enough, we see many managers who are both wimps and tyrants in one. Typically the manager starts out as a wimp, not being direct enough about what she expects or not addressing performance issues head-on. When her staff members don’t properly interpret her too-subtle signals or don’t deliver because they don’t have the requisite skills, the manager gets frustrated and yells. Later she feels badly about yelling and tries to be friendly with her staff rather than correcting the underlying problems, and the cycle repeats itself.
Passive-aggressive criticism. Rather than offering direct, constructive feedback, tyrants sometimes criticize in indirect asides, making it hard for the staff member to respond. For example, a manager given a memo only a minute before a meeting might walk in and say, “I don’t know why I’m just getting this memo now, but I guess we should go ahead and talk about it.” If you have feedback, make a note and talk to your staff member directly when the time is right.
Unreasonable demands. Tyrants cross the line from holding their staffers to a high standard to pushing their staffers to the brink. For example, a tyrannical manager might insist that staff members work over the weekend to complete a project even if it isn’t time sensitive, or might demand that a staffer do the truly impossible (such as getting a replacement part for a computer when all the stores that sell it are closed).
ASSERTIVE MANAGERS
Effective managers are neither wimpy nor tyrannical. They act with the confidence of their position: they directly lay out expectations and hold people to them; operate in a fair, positive, and straightforward manner; and back up their words with action. We’ll call them assertive managers.1
Signs of assertive management include these:
Directness. Assertive managers say what needs to be said in a direct and straightforward way. They don’t shy away from difficult or awkward conversations, and they know that addressing problems head-on is a key part of their job.
Calm. When giving an employee feedback or talking about a problem, an assertive manager may sound concerned but is rarely angry or hostile. For instance, in talking to a staff member who has been forgetting assignments, an assertive manager might say, “I’ve noticed recently that some of the projects we agreed you’d take on fell off your radar screen, and that’s a serious problem. I need to be able to rely on you to remember the assignments we discuss, because I can’t check back in on every item. How can you make sure it doesn’t happen again?”
Openness. Because assertive managers know they aren’t infallible, they’re open to the possibility that they may be mistaken or that there may be a better way of doing something.
Fairness. Inevitably conflicts among staff members will arise, and when they do, an assertive manager serves as a fair judge. We’ve seen managers who throw up their hands and say, “Just work it out on your own,” which tends to create a Hobbesian state of nature in the office, where people’s time on staff is nasty, brutish, and short. Rather than avoiding issues or appearing arbitrary in addressing them, an assertive manager’s aim is to consider the situation calmly, fairly, and impartially so that she gets to the right answer. Because her staff members know that she’s a fair judge, they’re more likely to buy in to her decision, even when it doesn’t go their way.
Comfortable in charge. The best managers see their authority as simply one more tool for getting things done. It’s neither something that makes them nervous nor something that they lord over others.
Let’s look at one of these here, fair decision making, because it’s so important.
When you’re faced with tough decisions, it’s a lot harder to get good outcomes if you don’t get the process right. Here’s what you don’t want to do:
Shy away from making decisions at all. (wimp)
Let consensus rule every time. (wimp)
Block out others’ input in favor of your own counsel. (tyrant)
Become defensive if others question your decisions. (tyrant)
You’re most likely to reach the right decision if you welcome what others have to say, while simultaneously remembering that it may be your job to make the final call. What’s more, your staff members are most likely to support decisions where they feel the decision-making process was fair. In this context, fairness means that when decisions affect them, staff members have a chance to be engaged by giving meaningful input on the issues. Fairness also means that staff members not only hear about the outcome of a decision, but about the rationale behind it in much the same way that judges often issue written opinions explaining the reasoning behind their decisions.
Suppose, for instance, that you’re wrestling with whether to expand your field department. You might explain the context to your staff and solicit their ideas, engaging in rigorous conversation about the pros an
d cons—for example, “It’s true that we could reach more people, but what about investing that money to beef up our development department, which might ultimately bring in even more resources for us?” After spending some time thinking it over and making the final decision, you’d then come back to your staff and explain how you arrived at it: “I thought about Julie’s point about increased workload next year and José’s concern about resources already being stretched thin, but in the end, I became convinced that we need to seize the momentum now and add these regions while we can.” In this way, no matter what your ultimate decision is, your staff know that they were heard, you considered their input, and you made a thoughtful decision. (For a fuller description of this approach, read the article by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne that we list at the end of this chapter in the Additional Reading section.)
WIMPS, TYRANTS, AND ASSERTIVE MANAGERS IN ACTION
A new receptionist is chronically late, leaving others covering for her.
What the wimp does: Very little. She may complain about the behavior to others or be silently irate, but she doesn’t address it with the employee directly.
What the tyrant does: Calls the employee into her office and says to her loudly enough for others to hear: “This is not hard! How do you function in life? If you don’t get your act together, you’re gone!”
What the assertive manager does: Addresses the person privately as soon as it’s clear there’s a pattern: “Kate, you’ve been late four times in the past two weeks. When you’re late, Alex and Jill have to cover for you. I need you to make sure you’re here by 9:00 from here on out. Can you commit to that?”
A manager is growing concerned that a field organizer is falling short of her recruiting goals for the year.
What the wimp does: Hopes to herself that the field organizer gets back on track by the end of the year.
What the tyrant does: Comes down hard: “Do I have to do your job for you? Do you really not know how to get this done?” or is passive-aggressive: “We’d have a better chance to win this campaign if our organizer would organize a house party with more than four people.”
What the assertive manager does: Addresses it directly: “I’m concerned that our recruiting numbers are lower than they should be at this point in the year. Let’s meet this afternoon to talk about what you could do differently to get back on track toward this goal.”
A communications director scores an editorial endorsement for the group’s legislation from a major newspaper.
What the wimp does: Responds more like a friend than a manager: “Sweet endorsement!”
What the tyrant does: Barely acknowledges it, if at all, or possibly takes the credit.
What the assertive manager does: Quickly praises the communications director for the victory and the work that went into it: “Great coup! All that outreach to the editorial board and the pitching you did really paid off.”
JUST BE NORMAL
Ultimately our advice to you is to just be normal. That is, be yourself and don’t overthink it. If you use humor in your personal life, don’t be afraid to use it in your work life too. If you’re on the quiet side, you don’t need to lead office cheers. Just be normal.
Of course, one response to this advice is to say, “Well, I am kind of a tyrant [or a wimp], so if I’m supposed to be myself, I’m going to be tyrannical [or wimpy].” But people are rarely tyrants across the board. What’s more common is selective tyranny. Few people are tyrants toward their own bosses, for instance, or toward funders, or toward their loved ones. So perhaps the rule of thumb here is to be yourself within the confines of bringing out the right pieces of yourself.
KEY POINTS
The best managers we’ve seen aren’t wimps or tyrants but simply normal, assertive people.
Managers who are wimps often get that way by allowing a desire to be nice to trump their fundamental obligations. These managers, who avoid difficult decisions or topics, are uncomfortable asserting authority, frame requirements as suggestions or overvalue consensus, or create environments in which problems go unresolved, no one takes responsibility for moving work forward, and good staff members get frustrated and often leave. GENDER DYNAMICS AND AUTHORITY
Women managers may at times confront the reality that authoritative women will sometimes be seen as “bitchy,” while men displaying the same behaviors are seen as resolute, strong leaders. In our experience, this is a very real, and unfortunate, dynamic. But until society changes, our advice to female managers is to do precisely what we recommend throughout this chapter: be normal, be assertive, and be neither a tyrant nor a wimp.
Managers who are tyrants generally don’t trust that they’ll get the results they want any other way. These managers, who get things done through rigid control, negativity, or a climate of anxiety and fear, create an atmosphere where staffers won’t raise new ideas or be honest about problems and where good employees won’t stay long-term.
Effective managers act with the confidence of their position: they directly lay out expectations and hold people to them, operating in a fair, positive, and straightforward manner and backing up their words with action. They are open to feedback, have a matter-of-fact attitude toward being in charge, and treat people as they themselves would want to be treated.
You’re most likely to reach good decisions—and receive your staff members’ advice—by assessing all sides fairly and impartially, and sharing the rationale for your ultimate decision.
Additional Reading
Lee Canter and Marlene Canter, Assertive Discipline: Positive Behavior Management for Today’s Classroom (Solution Tree, 2001), especially “Response Styles” (pp. 25–38).
Jim Collins, Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap . . . and Others Don’t (New York: HarperCollins 2001), especially “Level 5 Leadership” (pp. 17–40).
Joseph Grenny, David Maxfield, and Andrew Shimberg, “How to Have Influence,” MIT Sloan Management Review, 2008, 50(1), 47–52.
W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne, “Fair Process: Managing in the Knowledge Economy,” Harvard Business Review, Jan. 2003, pp. 3–11.
1 In Assertive Discipline (Bloomington, Ind.: Solution Tree, 2011), a book about classroom teaching, Lee and Marlene Canter present a similar framework for teachers, distinguishing nonassertive, hostile, and assertive styles.
CHAPTER 11
MANAGING YOUR TIME AND STAYING ORGANIZED
It’s the unspoken secret among managers: we all struggle with the seemingly simple job of staying organized and using our time well.
If you’re like many managers we know (and us on bad days), this may describe a typical day for you. You arrive at the office and begin sorting through your e-mail. A staffer drops by with some questions about a project, and just as she leaves, you get a phone call from a volunteer with feedback on a recent event. When you’re done talking to her, you begin reviewing a draft of a mailing, but when you’re halfway through, you’re interrupted by a stressed-out staffer who needs help prioritizing her workload. Before returning to the mailing, you check your e-mail and find a handful of urgent messages to respond to. The day continues like this, and by its end, you haven’t managed to touch the two biggest things you had hoped to get to.
Sound familiar? When you become a manager, the flow of stuff coming at you increases exponentially: e-mails, reports, questions, meetings, materials to review. As a result, systems that used to be adequate for juggling it all may no longer suffice.
How you manage yourself and your time and how you stay organized will have a serious impact on the kind of results you’ll get. There are many good books that delve into organization systems with more justice than we can do here, so in this chapter we’ll simply synthesize what we’ve seen work best. We address how to think about where your time should go (and how to make sure your intentions don’t get crushed by circumstance) and then move into some specific tips for managing your time and staying organized. And we end with some thoughts on how to tame the e-ma
il beast.
FIVE WAYS FOR WHERE TO SPEND YOUR TIME
There’s no magic bullet to managing your time; if you were busy before reading this, you’re probably going to be busy afterward. The key, though, is to make sure that you are spending your time on the right items, and the way to do that is by clarity—clarity about what you’re trying to accomplish. Yet in the hustle of daily work life, with a steady flow of demands coming at you, it’s easy to lose sight of the most important ways for you to spend your time.
In this section, we look at five ways you might think about where your time is best spent:
Tip 1: Focus on the big rocks.
Tip 2: Use comparative advantage, the time management principle that will change your work life.
Tip 3: You’re a manager, so spend time managing.
Tip 4: Manage your calendar; don’t let it manage you.
Tip 5: Know when you should get more involved.
Tip 1: Focus on the Big Rocks
The biggest time management mistake that most managers make is spending their time on what’s immediately at hand or what’s most comfortable to work on rather than what’s most important. If you don’t make time for the important work first, you may never get to it, as this parable from Stephen Covey illustrates:
