As a manager you shouldn’t strive to do the mininimum amount of work possible to get by each and every day. Your ultimate goal should be to become the absolute best manager you can be – not just a good manager but an excellent manager.

So what can you do to set yourself apart from the rest? Evaluate your performance to determine whether or not you’re adhering to the fundamental concepts of excellence. They are as follows:

• Are you a results oriented person? Are you always looking towards the final outcome or are you merely interested in the here and the now?
• Are you focused on your customers? They’re the backbone of your business. If you have no customer focus you’ll eventually lose all your business.
• Do you manage your team based on your personal beliefs or do you stick to the facts and processes implemented by the company.
• Are you constantly striving to improve yourself, taking continuing education courses to learn about innovative new ideas and technologies?
• Do you have a sense of leadership and purpose?
• Are you focused on developing your relationships with your partners, both internal and external?
• Do you have a sense of corporate responsibility? Have you made your organization’s goals your own?

Take a step back and evaluate your own performance as a manager. There are things you can do to improve your performance. Are you ready to meet the challenge?

Thanks again,
Sean

Sean McPheat
Managing Director
MTD Management Development

Click below for a:
FREE email course “Improve Your Management Skills”

As we enter the New Year I want to kick things off by taking a cold, hard look at ethics and how they apply in the workplace. Most managers believe they are ethical and, consciously, they may be. The problem is that everyone has a habit or bias that can be viewed as slightly unethical, whether they realize it or not.

Most of us have some sort of implicit bias, whether we recognize it or not. What is an implicit bias? It is one that, despite you not saying it outright, shows in the way you act. There are a few organisations that have tested managers and individuals to uncover some of their implicit biases, including Harvard and Tolerance.org. Here are a few examples of information about biases they uncovered:

• A large percentage of participants had an implicit bias towards young people.
• A large percentage of participants had an implicit bias towards white people.
• A large percentage of participants had an implicit bias towards rich people.
• Consciously desiring to not be biased will not make you an unbiased person.

What does this mean? Let’s say, for example, you claim not to be biased towards men. You have two similar resumes on your desk and you have interviewed both candidates – one male and one female. They are both highly qualified and it’s a very difficult decision to make but we’ll say for the purpose of this example that there may be one or two areas in which the female candidate might make a better fit. You claim to be reviewing their applications from an objective standpoint but your implicit bias towards men allows you to justify hiring the male candidate instead. You literally dig for a reason not to hire the female candidate and you  may not even realize why.

Being biased can be costly. You can lose great candidates or team members and possibly even be accused of bias and become the victim of a discrimination lawsuit.

I urge you to step back and think about your management ethics and hiring practices. Are you biased? Do you even realize it? Are you treating your employees fairly? Think about it and let me know.

Thanks again,
Sean

Sean McPheat
Managing Director
MTD Management Development

Click below for a:
FREE email course “Improve Your Management Skills”

Depression is a very serious issue. More than 10 million people between the ages of 25 and 44 are affected by depression every single year, and many go untreated. What does this mean to you as a manager? It means that at any given time at least one out of every 20 team members you employ may be depressed.

It’s true that some people get “the blues” from time to time but most of them are able to shake their blues off in a day or so. Those who are truly depressed can’t just “shake it off” the way other can. They can’t control the aches in their bodies, the way they are thinking, or the way they act. Before you know it, depression is affecting your employee’s judgement, productivity, and ability to socialize with other team members or clients.

The first thing you need to do is learn to recognize and identify the symptoms of depression. Some of the most common include:

• Sad moods that seem to be persistent
• A decreased energy level or overwhelming sense of fatigue
• Sudden changes in eating habits
• Excessively crying throughout the day
• Trouble concentrating or making clear decisions
• An irritated attitude
• Complaints about lack of sleep
• A sudden change in morale
• Sudden absenteeism
• Increased accidents in the workplace

As a manager, you have to take some sort of action if you identify an employee as becoming depressed. Here are a few things you must remember:

• You aren’t a doctor and you can’t diagnose depression.
• Objectively let your employee know you’ve noticed change and let him know that your organisation has resources available if he needs help
• Learn about depression so you can understand how it impacts life and the workplace
• Hold frequent coaching sessions to try to keep your employee’s performance goals on track

These are just a few of the things you can do if you begin to notice depression in the workplace. First and foremost is the need to make sure your employee gets the help he deserves. In the end, he’ll be glad you reached out to help.

Thanks again,

Sean

Sean McPheat
Managing Director
MTD Management Development

Click below for a:
FREE email course “Improve Your Management Skills”

A very respected business theoriest known as Dr. Ichak Adizes outlined a very interesting theory regarding the life cycle corporations go through. Formally known as the Corporate Life Cycle Model, the theory contains 10 distinct stages each business must pass through as it moves from a simple idea, through realization, and to its ultimate end.

Let’s first look at the 10 stages of the Corporate Life Cycle Model. They are as follows:

1. Courtship is the period during which you have an idea you are toying with in your head. You alk about development, create business plans, look for funding, etc.
2. Infancy describes the very first stages of a business, immediately after the official public launch.
3. The go-go stage occurs when a business is still relatively new. This stage tends to be very busy and in some cases is very chaotic.
4. A business is in its adolescent stages when it begins to define itself but still experiences growth.
5. The prime stage of any business model occurs when it is at it’s most profitable and competitive point.
6. A business is in the stability stage when it is starting to lose its edge but is still considered popular and profitable.
7. Aristrocracy occurs as a business begins to lose more of its edge and market share but still has a strong presence; it can’t keep up with new technologies.
8. Recrimination occurs when people begin to have doubts about the future success of a business and begin to feel threatened. They lose sight of their original goals.
9. A business will turn into a bureaucracy when the administration begins thinking only of themselves. At this point, you’ll notice many of the investors looking elsewhere and key players in the organization leaving for other opportunities.
10. Finally, a business will just die off. It will be sold to another company for the sake of a client base, file for bankruptcy, or simply close.

The trick, in any business, is to keep a business in the early and middle stages for as long as possible. This means using innovative marketing strategies to come up with new products and new marketing techniques in order to stay as competitive as possible for as long as possible. You and your team should always be looking forward, wondering what you can do next to make things better. If you fall into a rut, you’ll only push yourselves further towards the end of your careers.

Thanks again,
Sean

Sean McPheat
Managing Director
MTD Management Development

Click below for a:
FREE email course “Improve Your Management Skills”

David McClelland was an American professor at Wesleyan University and Harvard in the United States before he died in 1998. While at Harvard, he spent more than 20 years studying the way people are motivated and how they address their achievements and needs.

After years of research he published a book called The Achieving Society in which he discussed the three types of motivational need he discovered: affiliation motivation, authority or power motivation, and achievement motivation. He found that everyone, regardless of their level in the workplace, experiences all three of these needs on some level – whether they need to motivate others or be motivated themselves.

The need for affiliation covers the idea that everyone needs to have positive relationships and, as a result, everyone is motivated towards developing some sort of interaction with others. Those who fall into this category, also labeled n-affil, want to be liked and work well in teams.

A person with a need for authority and power, also referred to as an n-pow person, wants to make a huge impact on the world. They want their ideas to be heard and also focus on making sure others see them as prestigious or with high status.

Those who feel a need to achieve, or the n-ach people, are highly motivated. They set a lot of challenging goals but remain realistic at the same time. Those who need to feel as though they’ve achieved their goals constantly seek to hear feedback from others.

Most people possess all three of these characteristics but spend most of the time leaning more towards one than the others. The one a person leans towards most will determine what type of worker or manager he will become – objective, determined, flexible, etc. Achievement motivated individuals, however, always seem to get the best results in the end!

Thanks again,
Sean

Sean McPheat
Managing Director
MTD Management Development

Click below for a:
FREE email course “Improve Your Management Skills”