One common denominator all Managers share (or should share) is their responsibility and accountability for the results they are getting in their areas of concern.
That fact is, in many organizations, understood in a unidimensional way: the managers have to achieve short-term results. Period.
That limiting view of what a Manager should do is very detrimental to the overall level of results that that Manager would be able to deliver to the organization. In this video, we explore a more holistic approach, that is also aligned with the leaders in the industry.
To your growth and success.
Eduard.
Video Transcript
Today, I would like to talk about the responsibilities of any manager in one organization.
And when talking about one new subject is never a bad idea to look at what the leaders in the industry do, and try to see where we are compared to them and how we can benefit from what they are doing.
So, I would like to put an example of how Google approached this subject. Google is not only the global IT leader in the industry, but it's also a leader in how they manage people. So it's not a coincidence that Google has been voted as the number one preferred company to work in the world for several years. And they have even appointed a figure in the company that is called Chief Culture Officer to maintain or to be sure that their core values are maintained in whatever they do.
So they have been thinking a lot about how they can train and make their managers perform better.
Their first big project, a base project in that area is called Project Oxygen, which they did in 2008. In that project, they took, or they analyzed, thousands of managers globally at Google and they tried to identify which were those behaviors that made those people successful as managers in the organization. So they came up with a list of eight behaviors, and in the subsequent years, their focus was on training all the managers in the company to become better at those eight behaviors.
So fast forward to today, Google has identified three key areas of responsibility any manager should have in the organization. Let's review these three key areas of responsibility.
Area #1: any manager should lead the work they do in the company.
By leading the work I mean they should align their team around the goals, they should guide their team's work to achieve the best results, and they should drive those actions that are needed to achieve the results that they need to achieve. So this is what is meant by they 'having to lead the work they do'.
The second responsibility of any manager is related to developing people.
Any manager should prepare their team for success, they should help them grow professionally and personally, and they should be prepared to make those wise decisions to attract and retain talents in the organization.
And the third area of responsibility is related to building a Community.
They have to create that sense of belonging in the organization, creating the environment where the people naturally would gravitate towards because they like it. It's an environment where they can develop themselves. They have to encourage people to well-being practices, and they have to be role models in following those practices.
So these are the three areas of responsibility: leading their work, developing people, and building a Community.
So, compared to that, where do you think your organization is? Where do you think your managers are spending their time and energy in those areas of responsibility?
If you ask, most the organizations say "yes, all of our managers are involved in those areas" but more than being involved they just pay lip service to those concepts, because if you take every manager and you analyze their, let's say, weekly calendar of activities, you will see that they are almost exclusively involved in the responsibility number one, that is, attending meetings, creating reports, driving actions, analyzing KPIs... while the responsibility number two, or number three, fall down their priority list.
So the important thing is how you can, as a leader in your organization, help your managers to balance better their time to make them focus more on other areas that will eventually be much more impactful for the organization than just focusing almost exclusively on one of them.
So, that holistic approach to the manager's development is a core theme in our LeadUp Leadership Coaching Program.
If you would have more questions, comments, or you would like to have a deeper conversation on these subjects, please go ahead and schedule a call with me and we'll have time to go over that.
Thank you very much for listening today. Take care.
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