On Managing Staff

1. “Welcome to Management!”

There is a saying — “into everyone’s life, a little rain must fall” — we’ve all heard it.

As a manger, you know how important it is to maintain a consistent positive environment. When the environment isn’t positive, morale and performance/production suffer. Yet, despite how much energy and commitment you devote to creating and maintaining a positive, productive, enthusiastic and successful environment — despite your check-ins, lunch meetings, incentives, one-on-ones and your personal commitment to your staff members and their success — you nonetheless, inevitably and without fail, will continue to have problems with certain individuals.

WHY?!?!?!?!?!?!

This is, in my experience, the biggest ongoing challenge faced by most managers — or anyone who supervises other people, really. It’s frustrating because —

• It can make you feel sometimes like you just can’t try hard enough.
• It can make you feel unappreciated by your staff.
• It’s always difficult to have the “serious talk” with an employee.

When you recognize a performance problem, you know that you have to deal with it in order to correct it. Yet sometimes even when you do everything in your power to help someone improve, they don’t. They can continue to fail to meet expectations. They can also fail to get any better. Sometimes they even get worse. Which can lead you to feel like you just don’t know what you’re doing.

When someone whose performance is your responsibility as their manager is failing, it can make you feel like you lack the ability to save this individual’s job.

Welcome to management.

2. The Secret of Your Success

As a manager, you feel a sense of commitment and accountability to your work, your department, your supervisor and your employees. This last loyalty — to your staff — is very important. It’s why some managers are good people to work for, while others suck. Arguably, it separates good managers from great managers. If you are genuinely loyal to your reports, you will manage them in ways that instills similar levels of loyalty in them — “like breeds like,” “you get what you give.” If you don’t have it, you won’t get it, and if you don’t get it, it will be extremely difficult for you to manage your staff in anything but a superficial because-you’re-the-boss way. In fact, it could actually cause you to fail as a manager.

How can you win, secure and instill this loyalty in your staff?

Let’s look at some basic truths.

3. Basic Management Truths

Truth #1 — Successful employees succeed for different reasons.

We all know successful people. Some succeed because they are driven to achieve, to be at the “top of their class.” Some do it for money. Some do it for recognition. Some do it because they’re afraid to fail. Some do it without knowing how they do it. Some will do it for their own personal satisfaction. And some will do it for you, because you want them to.

As a manager, you have to look at the success of your employees from two perspectives. The first is that it doesn’t matter why they succeed, as long as they are successful within the guidelines of your operation. The second is that you need to find out why they succeed in order to help them. You can not truly manage them to success without knowing what motivates them to succeed.

Truth #2 — Find out what motivates your employees to succeed, and work with it.

As managers, we all work with many different people — different individuals and different groups. Each has its own distinct personality. I’ve managed a lot of different staffs in different roles. I can sum all of them up with the following description: They’ve all been teams comprised of different individuals.

Different individuals have different personalities, and different personalities have different energies. It is those different energies which combine to form different staff “vibes.”

For example, the first staffs I ever managed were a group of one dozen phone representatives, working part-time to raise money for the Pittsburgh Public Theater. They earned $5/hour plus nominal bonuses. Their “vibe” was the theater — the excitement of live, off-Broadway productions, and the care and quality of the Public Theater’s productions. We worked in the theater’s administrative offices, which were in the basement of the theater. Far from being a disadvantage, this makeshift set-up served to enhance staff morale. While we were on the phones, we could hear the applause, laughter and cheers of the audience as they enjoyed the performances, which took place in the hall above us.

This group was successful. They loved the theater — many of them were struggling actors/actresses, or loyal theatergoers. And they put that passion for the theater into their work, into every call they made. We were hired to raise $75,000 in 8 weeks. Well, it took us 13 weeks — but we raised $125,000, more than the theater had ever raised before. And we had fun.

When I ran a campaign to sell season subscriptions to the Civic Light Opera, my co-manager and I had as a phone room an entire floor of an office building smack in the middle of downtown Pittsburgh (it was “donated” by a generous friend of the CLO’s executive director). We ran two shifts, day and evening, and had about 35 callers total. They worked part-time, for $5/hour and bonuses. In subscription campaigns, you (ideally) sell seats. For the CLO, we actually assigned the seats right from the phone room. On the walls of this huge office, we hung actual blown-up seating charts for Benedum Center, where the CLO performs. When we made a sale, we did the seating assignment in real time. This provided us with visual feedback of our progress; all of the staff watched the seating charts filling up, rapidly becoming covered with marks that indicated whether the subscriber had purchased a whole season, the first or second half, or a mixed package. The managers assigned the seats while the callers were on the phones with their customers, and we wrote the names of the happy new subscribers right on the charts. This group was successful. They loved what they were doing, and they wanted to sell out that hall. And they did it, selling blocks of up to 12 seats at a time — entire rows — during single phone calls. (This staff rocked. I still miss them.)

At this point, I wouldn’t be surprised if some of you are wondering why I’m telling you these stories. Part of it is that I think they’re fun. Which brings us to another truth…

Truth #3 — Fun is good, and success is fun.

I’m fortunate to be able to do work that I enjoy. If I didn’t enjoy it, I wouldn’t be able to continue to do it. There’s probably as many ways to think of your relationship with your work as there are to think about any type of relationship. Given the nature of the work that I do (fundraising mostly), if I didn’t enjoy it, there is another reason why I likely wouldn’t be doing it: I wouldn’t be any good at it. If I didn’t care, I would have been “selected out” of the business long ago.

Raising money for non-profit organizations is not the kind of work you can do for a long time if you don’t care about the work itself, and the organizations they employ you.

Our society has seen incredible, even unimagined, advances over the past century that have dramatically changed how we see the world, and how we view our existence in our universe. We forget that people used to work constantly, every day, from dawn to dusk, because they had to in order to survive. Industrial and economic forces have combined to generate social changes — we no longer have to work 100% of our waking hours. We have “evolved” to the point of being able to get more work done in less time, which has freed up time that used to be spent working. Hence, the creation of the 40-hour work week, and The Weekend.

But. Yes — but.

Despite this totally positive improvement in our general quality of life, our culture still in many cases exhibits a rather perplexing tendency to look down on fun. Simultaneously, The Powers That Still Be convey a bizarre admiration for the “non-fun,” and this attitude conveys a message that Only The Most Very Serious Things Matter. Exactly what such things are is hard to determine, but in my experience, they seem to be things that generally are a drag — bills, taxes, car repairs, job security, power struggles, relationship turmoil, social obligations, crises of faith, gender inequity, natural disasters, not enough burlesque shows — enough!

We continue to be taught in a very diligent manner, from quite a young age, that Life is a Very Serious Matter.

Yeah, ok. But it’s good to have fun, too. Especially— more so, even — if it truly is A Very Serious Matter. I can’t think of anything more important to enjoy more than whatever that very important thing happens to be! Whatever “that” thing is, it’s something that’s critically vital to an individual’s personal self; perhaps that is an attempt at a definition. These things are different, and most of us have more than one very important thing in our lives.

All professions and crafts have their own critically important things. For an artist, it’s a painting, or a sculpture; for a writer, it’s the story, the poem, the novel or the play. For a chef, it’s the entree and the dessert. For actors, “the play’s the thing”; for comedians, it’s the laughter of the crowd. For a parent, it may be their children; for most of us, it’s often the quality of our relationships with each other. For the Spring, it is the color of the sky; for a fish, it’s the worm. Whatever it is, it’s critically important.

Find out what is critically important to you. Then apply that self-knowledge to finding out what is critically important to your employees.

This is a very creative process — which is why it will make all the difference between enjoying your work, and just going through the motions of your job. If you are genuine about it, your employees will pick up on it — they’ll feel your commitment, begin to internalize it, and start to want the same things, professionally, as you do. And as we know, there is power in numbers.

The nutshell: If life is The Very Serious Thing, shouldn’t we aspire to live it in a very satisfying manner? Because when “the big one” hits, it really won’t matter how much you stressed yourself out about the caterer who handled your graduation party. That time will be over, and you won’t have the opportunity to live it over again and make the best of it. When your number’s up, it gets played. We only live once (this time). We might as well live well. Make the best of it now.

Truth #4 — If your employees fail, you fail.

&

Truth #5 — If your employees succeed, you succeed.

As a manager, you directly influence what the group energy of your staff will be by effective managing each of your individual reports. It’s important to remember that you are managing your staff’s energy as well as their performance. If you don’t learn how to do this, you will not stay in management. I don’t say that to be scary. I say it because it’s true, and I want you to succeed.

Quite simply, Darwinism is alive and well in the workplace.

Truth #6 — To succeed, manage.

How?

Do it. Set expectations and stick to them. Set your goals higher than you need to be. Stretch. Find out what motivates you, and find out what motivates your staff (and your peers, and your boss). You may find very early that what most motivates you doesn’t quite match what you need to be successful in your current job. If that’s the case, so be it. Get out of it and find something to do that does motivate you. Tap into the energy of your staff by developing strong, personal connections to all of them. When you understand the range of different work styles, motivations and “energy types” that you have to work with, you will find it much more intuitive to manage your staffs to success. But you have to do it consciously and with intent. It will not just happen on its own.

Truth #7 — Great staffs don’t “just happen.” They are created by great managers.

You are the manager. Take care not to underestimate the degree to which you influence and can determine the success or failure of your reports. No, you aren’t the All Powerful Oz — don’t let your title go to your head. But as a manager you do play a very real role in the quality of life of your staff during work hours, and often the experiences that your employees have under your management can directly influence their futures.

As the manager, you play an active role in determining the group/team dynamic of your staff. To pull this off, it is critical that you understand the importance of your role. The manager controls this process and will ultimately determine whether or not it succeeds. You combine the energy of your reports. You stir the pot. You are the cook, the coach, the teacher. Sometimes you’re the cop, sometimes the gardener. Sometimes you will be supportive, sometimes a pain in the neck. It’s all ok. Just assess the situation and the people you are managing, and then be whatever the situation requires you to be in order to succeed.