A recent British radio series invited people to discuss their life’s legacy and discuss what they would like to be remembered for. It set me thinking: What would you like to be remembered for when you leave your current position? (always assuming that it may happen in the future!)

Many managers I speak to rarely think past the next campaign or project, never mind what the distant future may hold! But I always believe that your present creates your future, so what you do today will naturally build your destiny.

One manager told me that he would like to leave his department in better shape than when he started. Admirable goal! Then what was he doing today that would set a firm foundation for achieving that goal tomorrow?

Actually, not very much. He was stuck in today’s urgency, rather than building for tomorrow’s importance. He hadn’t committed to excellence or decided to do something that would drive him towards that end result. To him, it was a dream, something that he would like to have people say about him. Then it was back into that urgent report or that manic project deadline.

A legacy takes time to determine in reality. You can’t just write something down on the back of a fag-packet and expect that it will motivate you or keep driving your performance. No, it needs thought and application.

Ask these questions: What was my department like when I started here? What was the culture when I arrived? What qualities did my people have back then?

Now, what would I like people to say about me after I move on? Is that realistic or just a dream? How could I make it into a reality? What must I start doing today that will create the future legacy I desire? How must I become consistent in my approach? What do I need to learn or reapply myself to so this all becomes what I stand for?

You will leave some sort of legacy, whether you want to or not. Only you can prove that legacy to be one you are proud of or one that you will regret.

Many thanks

Mark Williams

Head of Training

MTD Management Training Course

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Who wouldn’t want their team to exhibit excellent work? The main reason I see managers complain about the quality of work produced by their teams is because we rarely talk about what excellence looks like and how we would know if it actually occurred.

People make individual choices about what to do and how to do it based on two things; their understanding of expectations of quality and their intrinsic motivations.

So how do we define ‘excellence’? Imagine that your team is performing at the top of its game, to its true potential. What would you see people doing? What communication is taking place? What time issues are people dealing with? What happens when they confront problems? How are they showing creativity? What does it look like when projects exceed expectations to clients and customers? How are people learning from their experiences?

You could put answers to these questions down on paper, and then ask your team to add to it so you all create a vision of excellence, one that can be agreed and committed to by all.

Here are some examples of excellence that you can build on:

• Teams are focused on what’s most important, clear on priorities and know how their work ties into corporate and departmental goals

• Team members feel challenges and important. Communication is focused and open. They are driven by their internal drivers of excellence and accomplishment

• Time is used wisely. Meetings are held only when necessary, not because it’s a certain time of the day or week. People want to contribute ideas and are encouraged to be creative

• You make sure your people aren’t buried beneath tons of projects and they have time to devote to quality rather than quantity

• Your department knows how to serve the best interests of internal as well as external customers

• Everyone recognises that change is the only constant. You recognise your role involves helping the team become comfortable with changing environments driven by progress and customer needs

• You model excellence in all you do, not allowing prejudices and favouritism to bounce you off course. People respect you for your integrity and you don’t say things behind people’s backs that you wouldn’t say to their face. You are trustworthy and reliable.

As you see, this is a journey. Imagine what it will feel like when you reach the destination. Imagine the impact on your team and its results as they all follow the example of excellence. Gone will be the lame excuses. No more ‘it-will-do’ attitudes. Less time spent moaning and groaning about things out of their control.

The possibilities and potential results are many-fold. It just takes one person to make the decision that ‘excellence will be the norm round here’. Let that person be you.

Many thanks

Mark Williams

Head of Training

MTD Management Training Course

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The article Four Levels of Employee Engagement evoked a lot of response from people, especially on the subject ‘how do you get people to level 4?’.

A typical question came from Henry, who asks, “Getting people to operate at level four is very difficult. Most people in my experience have too many other things going on in their lives to get total commitment from them. How do you get them to level four?”

Great point. Most people do not have the incentive or will to devote the kind of passion or enthusiasm that you would like at work. Their real passion lies outside of the working environment. They work to live, not the other way round.

The enthusiasm, loyalty and commitment you would like from team members can’t be forced on them. It only happens through a ‘culture of commitment’, where customer-facing staff reflect to the outside world the intense pride and ownership they are experiencing on the inside.

It’s what Vanderbilt professor Roland Rust calls ‘service climate’. He calls those attributes of overall workplace climate those that characterise how well-equipped employees are to deliver excellence at the point of contact with external or internal customers, such as adequacy of resources and equipment and job skills development.

Cornell’s School of Hotel Administration found that employees’ emotional commitment and sense of identity with the company is a key factor in providing excellent service.

And Henry Mintzberg, a key writer on all-things management, is quoted as saying, “Managers should function so that people can be naturally empowered. If someone is doing their job to an excellent standard, they should know their job better than anyone else, and so they don’t need to be ‘empowered’ but encouraged and left alone to be able to do what they know best.” (Italics ours)

This means creating a Performance Partnership with your team. It means you are all in it together. And it starts with you.

As manager/leader of your team, you need to show the commitment to the business that you would like others to show. This commitment doesn’t mean you work all hours of the day and night; it means that when you are actually at work (whether it’s nine-to-five or beyond), you bring your enthusiasm and commitment to every minute of that time.

You should communicate openly as much as possible with your partners. The more they know, the more they will understand. The more they understand, the more they will care. The more they care, the more you can trust them. If you’re serious about forming a Performance Partnership, then you’ll share information that is relevant and also some that is ‘nice to know’.

You should appreciate everything your team does for the business. Giving a salary is the base level of appreciation. However, building praise and recognition into the way that you lead will enhance your relationships and build pride in what people do and bring to the business.

Listening to what is being said may seem a strange way to gain commitment; but, if you take on board others’ requests, identify why they feel the way they do, endeavour to change processes so they support the teams’ activities and create a climate of change that emphasises the attention to results, you stand a far greater chance of people offering their hearts and minds to the cause.

All this isn’t easy. As we said before, engaging employees so they bring their hearts to work as well as their minds, is not something that an increased salary or better perks will bring. No, they need to be encouraged to commit to bring excellence to everything they do. You can’t buy commitment; but you can provide the conditions and environment and atmosphere that encourages people to support the purpose and objectives of the business. Becoming Performance Partners together is the first step on that journey.

Many thanks

Mark Williams

Head of Training

MTD Management Training Course

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A bus driver was having a hard day. No matter how quickly he drove between bus stops, he simply couldn’t keep to the timetable his bosses had demanded. He came back to the depot with a look of frustration and a feeling of anger.

His boss approached him and asked if all was OK. The bus driver replied, “No, it’s not. How on earth do you expect me to keep to the timetable, if I have to keep picking up passengers?!”

This is obviously a case of a confusion between company goals and company purpose!

I often ask on programs we run ‘What’s your purpose at work?’

To show there is sometimes confusion between purpose and goals, many answers come back that state hitting objectives or targets is ‘what we are here to do’. In other words, they say that their whole reason for working is to hit a goal or goals, or to achieve an objective.

A dictionary definition of ‘purpose’ states “the reason for which something exists or is done, made, used, etc.”

The same dictionary defines ‘goal’ as “the result or achievement toward which effort is directed; aim; end.”

So, the main difference revolves around the ‘what’ and the ‘why’.

Very often, we will direct someone to carry out a task (the goal) without giving adequate backing to the purpose of the goal (what it will achieve and why it will be beneficial to achieve it).

Jim Rohn once said, ‘If you have a big enough ‘why’ you can achieve any ‘how’.

I take that to mean if we have a clearly defined reason to do something that appeals to our intrinsic motivations, we will find the best way to achieve it.

Next time you ask someone to achieve a goal, ensure they are fully aware of the reasons why the goal is so necessary. That way, they will ‘buy-in’ to the goal, because they recognise the purpose it will serve in achieving it. And you’ll not only get understanding as to why it should be achieved, you’ll also get commitment to achieve it.

Many thanks

Mark Williams

Head of Training

MTD Management Training Course

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That is the question.

Many ‘managers’ have wondered if there is a real difference between the two, that is, aren’t the terms synonymous these days, and isn’t it just a case of semantics?

Well, let’s take a look back and identify where the words actually came from…

The word ‘Manage’ is derived from an old French/Saxon verb ‘Man’ij’, which meant the senior person whose job it was to control or train horses, but this job would also have included the supervision and training of more junior people who helped the Man’ij to undertake their duties.

At some early point during the Industrial Revolution the plural ‘Man’ijur’ became a popular phrase within an Industrial context, which is not surprising given that it would have been a word that lots of people from the Agrarian economy would have known. However, the emphasis of its meaning had slightly changed in order to describe someone who was responsible for ‘controlling people, processes and paper’ (or any combination of the three) in a transactional sense, as opposed to controlling horses. 200 years on, and within a contemporary context, the word ‘Manager’ still retains its original connection to  ‘Control’ (of people, processes and paper).

The word ‘Leader’ comes from a word that meant ‘to show the way by going first’, or ‘to act as a guide’. It was adopted by sailors in antiquity to describe the boat that had the most experienced navigator on board, someone familiar with local currents, and where other ships could follow the ‘Leader-ship’, although they
in turn had adopted the word from land based ‘guides’ (leaders) who showed people the ancient routes and trails in order to conduct trade. During the 18th and 19th centuries, land-based armies adopted the word to indicate how people were expected to behave (e.g. lead from the front). Given the several hundreds of years that have passed since it was first used, ‘Leadership’ still means ‘showing the way through personal example’.

Managers therefore undertake a series of Transactional activities ensuring people, process and paper are all controlled within a set of clearly defined rules to achieve an organisational goal. Whereas Leaders undertake a series of Transformational activities, more connected with inspiring people to achieve their own (or more usually the leader’s) vision or goal, but relying upon their own charisma to galvanise people into achieving the goal.

There. That’s all cleared up then!

Many thanks

Mark Williams

Head of Training

MTD Management Training Course

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Click below for a:
Free email course “Improve your Management Skills”