At last week's Seller Forum we published a few top line ideas for managers in our hyper-kinetic, often dysfunctional world. We're reprinting them here. Please feel free to share your own.
Don't try to manage what's inside the heads of your employees. Instead, focus on their actions. Don't try to change their minds. Change their behaviors and they'll end up changing their own minds.
Don't use meetings and personal interactions to share information that could be delivered in other ways. Reserve your personal interactions with employees and teams to do what you can only do in person - coaching, prioritizing, planning, deciding.
Many managers overburden themselves and their teams with too many scheduled meetings. But management doesn't fit into neat little boxes on your calendar. Focus instead on maintaining a helpful and healthy presence with your team. Accessibility and being able to focus intently in-the-moment are the superpowers that matter.
As a manager, you quickly become the PEZ dispenser of answers on a million tactical questions. About price, escalation, exceptions and more. Force your sellers to bring you two possible solutions each time they bring you a problem (see item 1 above). This change in the script will turn them from problem-bringers into problem-solvers and make your interactions far more productive.
As soon as a seller elicits your help - on strategy, on an email, in reaching a customer - immediately ask them for a first-draft. You want to put yourself in a position to coach and improve the work they do... not to do it for them.
Don't give feedback. As a term, feedback has become tainted by association with criticism, nitpicking and negativity. It's also always about the past. Instead, give guidance... it's about the future, about possibility. Language matters.
No team is too small or too temporary to benefit from a strong culture, and that culture starts with you. Get in touch with the specific values that matter most to you as a leader - tenacity, generosity, curiosity, whatever - and share them directly with your team. Invite them to hold you accountable to those values and bring them up frequently. Don't worry if you get a few eye-rolls; it doesn't mean they're not hearing you or that it's not making a difference.
Don't manage results. Manage excellence. You don't control whether your team gets the business, but you absolutely control whether they deserve it. Focus on deserving it and you'll be leading a team centered on excellence. The results will follow.
Insights like these are just the beginning. Join us for our final 2019 Seller Forum on Wednesday, October 23rd, at Reuters on Times Square and enjoy firsthand ideas and advice from your digital leadership peers. Contact us today to save your spot.
