Management for engineers
#79-1/12/09-Trust Your Experiences
Trust Your Experiences
“How do you recognize good management advice?”
Posted by Steven Cerri on Monday, January 12, 2009
Hello everyone!
“Who do you trust and what is the truth in management?”
This last week I was reading some of the blogs on the people skills necessary for successful management. One blog, in particular, caught my eye. It had to do with “behaviors” that are necessary for a good manager.
Some of the behaviors put forth by the author included things like these soft skills:
1. When you are managing, never show your emotions.
2. When you are managing, never raise your voice. Always have a calm voice. If you get frustrated you can scream into a pillow in your office.
3. Always have a smile on your face.
4. Walk around and talk to your direct reports. Ask them how they are doing and give them suggestions on how they can do their job better.
These were just a few of the “best practices” that this author put forward regarding how to behave if you want to be a good manager. The author had been a manager for five years and wanted to share what he had learned.
Fair enough.
What I find interesting is this; “How is a new manager who is reading this information, to use and apply these suggestions and to know which suggestions are true and which are false?
But wait… the truth!
How do you know that the information put forth is accurate? Is there any way that you might know if 5 years as manager is enough to give authoritative knowledge? Is the equivalent of two years of engineering school enough to allow someone to sign off on the design of a bridge or analyze the orbital velocity requirements for rendezvous with the International Space Station?
Actually there is a way to know.
In our own personal experience we know what works for management and what doesn’t. In our own personal experience we have a sense of what good managers do and what bad managers do or don’t do.
And yet, many, many people choose to discount their own personal experience in order to follow the “leader”. They discount what they know in their gut to be true, because the “leader” says that something else is true, instead. And yet, we know it’s not.
So lets take some of those “gems” put forth on the blog post and see if they align with our personal experience.
When you are managing, never show your emotions.
My experience: Not true.
It’s not a question of showing emotions, its a question of what emotions you do show and the degree to which you do so. It’s not very useful to be a tyrant and yell at people and insult them in public. But it’s certainly useful to show compassion, and determination, and even sternness, and maybe levity, politeness, and at times frustration, disappointment, and even anger. It’s impossible to not show emotions. The key is to show the right ones and at the appropriate level. (I could write a book on this.)
When you are managing, never raise your voice. Always have a calm voice. If you get frustrated you can scream into a pillow in your office.
My experience: Half true, half not true.
Never raise your voice… well it depends. I have had direct reports with whom I would never raise my voice. And I’ve had direct reports with whom a good, hearty, give-and-take, with raised voices and even yelling was the only way to build the rapport and connection that the direct report (and I for that matter) wanted. To be always calm with this direct report would have actually adversely affected our professional relationship.
And the idea of always having a calm voice… come on. Have you ever been really upset and in need of help? So you called a customer service representative and the person at the other end of the line sounded as if they were as calm as could be. What was your response?
I know that my response has been to be annoyed with them. They were too calm. They didn’t understand that my situation was important.
Always being calm is nearly as bad as always yelling, almost.
And yes, if you are going to go off on someone… go scream into a pillow until you calm down.
Always have smile on your face.
My experience: Not true.
First, have you ever been around someone who always has a smile on their face? Have you ever thought to yourself, “What are they doing… always with a smile on their face. It can’t be real.” And often it’s not real.
No one wants to be around a doom and gloom person (except other doom and gloom people) but it’s important to be authentic and yet appropriate.
So rules like “always have a smile on your face” are just not useful. A better suggestion is to always be appropriate and effective in any given situation so that you and the team can achieve your/their desired outcome. (This is a topic for another book).
Now the important point about my comments is this; the suggestions put in the blog I read were a decent attempt to quantify behaviors that would make a manager a good manager.
However, management is not a simple process. It is not given to quick and simple rules. In engineering, F=ma. The laws of physics are clear, stable, repeatable. Unfortunately or fortunately, management doesn’t have similarly clear, stable, repeatable rules. The biggest rule in management is “it depends.” The best way to know if what someone is telling you is true, is to match it to your experience. And if you have no experience in a specific are, then take it “one-step-at-a-time”.
With respect to every suggested soft skill behavior I listed from the blog, we all have personal experiences that contradict what was suggested.
We all know of times when emotion displayed by our managers was just what we wanted to see, hear, and experience. Therefore, when to display what emotion is context dependent. It depends.
We all have experiences when we didn’t want our managers to display a smile. We want to be able to “read” our managers by hearing the tone of their voice. We don’t want them to be smiling when they are laying people off. Once again, it depends.
And, there are times when we certainly don’t want our managers to come around talking to us, looking over our shoulders and giving us suggestions about how we can do things better. There are times when we will welcome the advice and other times when we’ll probably consider it micromanagement. So once again it depends.
The bottom line is...
So the bottom line is this. Management, leadership, even contributing your maximum to your organization is not something you learn in five years of on-the-job training. (How long was the intense training your received for your engineering degree?)
It’s also not something you learn from a simple set of rules.
In basic terms…
Engineering is about knowledge; Management is about judgment.
Engineering is about rules; Management is about context.
Engineering is an application of knowledge in search of certainty; Management is the application of judgment in search of an outcome.
Very different worlds.
Be well,
Steven Cerri
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“What would it be like to be as successful with people as you are with your technology?” Steven trains, coaches, and facilitates engineers and technical managers to BE the answer to that question. More information can be found at the:http://stevencerri.com/index.php/Home/index/
Copyright©2008 STCerri International and Steven Cerri. You are free to pass this information on to others and to reproduce it. If you reproduce it in whole or part please give attribution to Steven Cerri. Thank you.
Posted by Steven Cerri on 01/12 at 11:15 PM Engineer to Technical Manager • Becoming a manager • Technical Manager • Leadership • Engineering Leadership • Management • Engineering Management • Management for engineers • Inter-Personal People Skills • Soft Skills for engineers • (0) Comments • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink
#15-10-30-06: A Million and One
Have It Your Way
”A Million and One Ways to Lead!”
Posted by Steven Cerri on Monday, October 30, 2006
Good evening!
If you’ve been reading my recent blogs you have probably gotten the seemingly radical message that there are a million and one ways to manage and/or lead. There is the best way to manage or lead in any given situation and the best way … depends.
It depends on the context, the situation.
This is the reason that, if we are to measure a successful leader by the amount of financial reward he or she accrues, we find that in the world, there must be a million and one different ways to lead because there seem to be all sorts of ways to lead and make money.
In fact, I hear people say things like, “Real leaders care about their people”. Not necessarily. Some do and some don’t and whether they do or they don’t doesn’t guarantee success. I’m sure you’ve known leaders who have cared about their people deeply and failed and leaders who have not really cared about their people, in fact abused them (verbally), and still they produced a hugely successful operation.
So we are back to the same answer… success is not tied to how you treat people…only. Success is not tied to how well you understand business. Success is tied to six parameters that all come together to define a context. The successful leader finds the most effective way to pull the strengths from each of the six parameters to make decisions that lead the organization forward successfully.
One of the six parameters in Contextual Leadership© is the expertise of the direct report or the team compared to the expertise of the manager. That means that depending upon the quality of the people you bring on board, that will have a huge influence on the management and leadership choices available to you.
In fact, one of the reasons that Jack Welch, the ex-CEO of General Electric was so successful, was that he wanted to function within a specific set of management and leadership styles and that dictated that he keep certain of the six Contextual parameters relatively constant.
One of those parameters that he needed to keep constant was the quality of the people. That is, the only way to narrow his management choices consistently was to be certain that he had a specific quality of employees reporting directly to him. That is why he spent so much time on his employees and that is why he used the A,B,C evaluation system. Jack’s goal was to provide him with a type of direct and indirect report (one layer below his direct reports) that would allow him to use a specific range of management and leadership styles; those that he preferred.
Had he been less diligent regarding report selection, he would have had to range further in his application of management and leadership styles.
By controlling closely the quality of the employees who report to you, you control one of the important parameters that will dictate how flexible you must be in your application of management and leadership styles in order to be successful.
(Note: I’m not a personal friend of Jack Welch. I have not interviewed Mr. Welch. The conclusions I have drawn here are based on my own understanding of management and leadership, new concepts of management and leadership that I have developed, and the books I have read about Jack, interviews I have seen with Mr. Welch, and speeches I have heard given by Jack Welch.)
Be well
Steven Cerri
Posted by Steven Cerri on 10/30 at 08:30 PM Management • Engineering Management • Management for engineers • Management for technologists • Technical Management • (0) Comments • Permalink
#14-10-26-06: Contextual Definition
Contextual Definition
”Define your context, get your management style!”
Posted by Steven Cerri on Thursday, October 26, 2006
Good evening!
So ultimately we get back to the fundamental, basic question and that is:
What is the best management style to use in a given situation?
By now, after reading my last three blogs, you probably get that achieving results and selecting the management style that best achieves results is not just about the qualifications of the direct report or team being managed. In fact, I’m finishing a book right now and I’ve sent pre-publication copies out to friends, colleagues, and clients. Recently in talking to one who has been reviewing my book I asked him what was the one main idea he thought he’d gotten out of the book. (He’s a newly promoted manager in a technical company.) His response was:
“I now know that to the question ‘What’s the best management style in a given situation?’ the only answer that makes sense is ‘It depends. It depends on those six parameters you list.’”
That is the answer to Andy Card’s situation. It’s the answer to what has happened at Hewlett Packard. It’s the difference between the Army sergeant and the software business development manager.
And the best management style depends on the “Context Definition” which is defined by the following six parameters:
1. The expertise of the manager as compared to the expertise of the individual or team being managed
2. The risk of the task or project
3. The time frame of the task or project
4. The complexity or interfaces of the task or project
5. The learning outcome desired by the manager for the individual or team being managed
6. The management style preferred by the individual or team being managed
These six parameters define the context and will direct a manager to the best management style for a given situation.
These six parameters make up the Contextual Definition©. The contextual definition then leads the manager to a sliding scale of management styles from authoritative/directive to participative/coaching. The more the expertise lies with the manager, the more the task has high risk or a short timeframe or is complex, the more the manager would want to lean toward an authoritative/directive management style. The more the expertise lies with the team, the risk is low, the timeframe is longer, and the task is less complex, the more the manager would lean toward a more participative/coaching management style.
It’s quite clear that in the case of the Army sergeant, the risks are high, the timeframe is short, and the expertise generally lies with the sergeant. Therefore, the more directive approach works best.
In the case of the software development manager, the immediate risks are low, the timeframe will be relatively long, the complexity of the immediate task is low, and the expertise lies with the team. Therefore, the better management style is a more participative/coaching style.
In the case of HP the same thought process holds true. When the HP board went looking for a replacement for Carli Fiorina, they went looking for someone with a “difffernet management style”. From my vantage point, it’s not even appropriate to ask what management style an HP CEO should have. Carli Fiorina shouldn’t have had one, major management style to work from. Mark Hurd shouldn’t have one, major management style to work from. Their management styles should be tailored to the specific task to be achieved based on the six parameters that define the Contextual Definition. Their management style should change. A leader or manager shouldn’t be capable of being “pigeon-holed” as this type of manager or that type of manager.
The downfall of Carli Fiorina is that she joined HP with the idea that a specific management style, hers, was what was needed. It wasn’t a fit and a match and she was ultimately forced out. Now Mark Hurd is at the helm and he seems to have been labeled with a specific management style, one that currently is a fit and a match. As HP changes will Mark Hurd change his management style as well? Does he change it now as the tasks change on a daily or hourly basis or is the culture in such a backlash that his general style will due, for now, even if it doesn’t vary much?
Watch the news and the results will tell us.
Be well
Steven Cerri
Posted by Steven Cerri on 10/26 at 06:57 PM Management • Engineering Management • Management for engineers • Management for technologists • Technical Management • (0) Comments • Permalink
