Grow Your People, Grow Your Business. Karen Jett
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with the occasional crisis.
Organization enables you to complete all these additional jobs while still getting your normal job responsibilities accomplished.
Another management role is that of coach. As a manager, you are responsible for your own productivity and outcomes, and also for that of your staff. Don’t panic — this doesn’t mean that you should do your employees’ jobs for them.
A farmer cannot force a plant to grow and produce flowers and then fruit, and a manager cannot force his staff to produce results. A manager can only assist in his staff ’s growth by providing the proper training, tools, and environment. As coaches, managers continually evaluate each employee’s needs. Does the employee require more nourishment? Perhaps it’s time to provide additional training. Or maybe you should give them one last boost of confidence and let them grow quietly for a while.
Finally, a manager needs to be a leader. Just as a farmer provides direction for plants by installing trellises for them to climb, a manager provides a vision of where the department is going.
Being an effective leader involves the ability to see the big picture. Farmers need to be aware of the weather and other challenges in the industry. Similarly, a good manager knows what’s going on inside his department, within the company as a whole, and in the general industry.
These five roles — intermediary, communicator, organizer, coach, and leader — require diverse skill sets. Just as being a farmer involves more than planting and harvesting, being a manager means more than just watching your staff work and accepting praise for what they accomplish. In order to be an excellent manager, you need to see the big picture, engender respect, authentically empower your employees, balance priorities, and inspire others to perform to the best of their abilities.
As a farmer of people, are you prepared to do more than plant and harvest?
What have you done to ensure that you are aware of “the weather”? Are you keeping up with events within your company, in the industry and perhaps in the wider world? Are you aware of impending new regulations or policies before your manager talks about them? Are you able to warn your supervisor about outside events that may have an impact on business before it’s too late?
Are you keeping an eye on your “crops” as they grow? Are you aware of which employees are flourishing and which are bogged down by weeds?
Are you keeping an eye on priorities and doing the tasks that are most important? Are you watering when it’s dry, and not immediately before a rainfall? Are you fertilizing before a plant looks diseased and half dead? Are you anticipating what lies ahead? And are you figuring out contingency plans for dealing with those possibilities?
Quick Tips to Grow Your People:
Successful managers are able to …
•Effectively intermediate, communicate, organize, coach, and lead.
•Create strong professional relationships with as many people as possible.
•Effectively use the three parts of communication: words, voice tone, and body language.
•Use strong organization skills to meet all of your responsibilities.
•Work with your staff, one-on-one, to determine specific needs.
•Keep up to date on issues outside your department.
Building up the Soil
Trust & Respect
Any good farmer will tell you that a plant’s health is dependent upon the soil in which it is planted. Farmers use a variety of techniques to build up the nutrient value of their soil.
They may add items such as compost or fertilizer to provide specific nutrients to the soil. After the season has ended, they may add other nutrients, such as lime, to adjust the soil’s chemistry. In addition, they often till under cover crops or dead plants from the previous season to decompose and return nutrients to the soil. And to further strengthen the soil, farmers routinely rotate crops.
Like farmers, managers need to build a strong substrate to produce abundant crops. They do this by building strong interrelationships based on trust and respect. The question is, with whom should you build these relationships?
The old paradigm of management was a pyramid in which a manager was sandwiched between his staff and his immediate supervisor, as the only people of concern. Today’s manager interacts with many different types of people in an average week, not just those two groups.
As we discussed in the previous chapter, a manager is not only responsible for his own job duties, but also the duties of his staff. This does NOT mean that a manager completes his staff ’s work for them. It means that the manager takes responsibility for ensuring that the staff is working effectively and efficiently.
As a manager, you also interact on a regular basis with your own supervisor. Do you know what your supervisor’s expectations are for you and your department? Because, let’s face it — if you don’t meet those expectations, or come darn close, your services may no longer be needed.
There’s a good chance that your supervisor’s expectations include you interacting successfully with other people inside and outside your company. To be truly effective, you must be able to work well with other departments. Your department is not an island, it is connected to many others in the company.
For example, to get supplies, you may need to work with the purchasing department. A good relationship with them ensures the vendor is paid promptly so that the next time you make a purchase, you are welcomed. If you purchase your own supplies, are you on good terms with the accounting department? If not, you run the risk of not getting reimbursed. Do you know the company policies and procedures from front to back? No? Then, it’s a great idea to forge a strong alliance with a member of the personnel department so you can quickly and easily get the answers that you need.
Are you starting to get the picture?
If you are starting to feel a bit overwhelmed, and perhaps alone in all this, don’t fret. Other managers are great internal resources. Networking successfully with other managers allows you to find support, as well as to learn from their successes and failures. Successful relationships involve both give and take, so don’t forget to give as well as receive advice! Good farmers understand that to continue getting bountiful crops from the soil, you must nourish the soil and keep it healthy.
Make sure that when you encounter other executives in the company you create good relationships with them. Be professional and polite. If you can assist them in some way, do it. This is just good business sense, but if you are looking for a more personal angle, here it is: You never know if one of them could be your boss someday, or could recommend you for a promotion.
But remember, your “soil” isn’t just the individuals inside your organization. You may also work with vendors, customers, regulators, or others outside your company. By forging strong, professional ties, you make your job easier to accomplish.
In one of my first office jobs, I was an accounts payable clerk. One of my responsibilities was to field collection calls. Unfortunately, the company I worked for was frequently cash poor. I learned early on that by forging a professional, yet personal, relationship with the collection agents, collection calls were easier to manage.
One call I fielded was particularly memorable. I was on the phone with Carol from a freight company for about 10 minutes. After