| A | B | C | D | E | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Principle | Passage/Summary | Author | Book | Page |
2 | 1:1 Meetings | The best minute I spend is the one I invest in people. It's ironic that most companies spend so much of their money on people's salaries, and they spend only a small fraction of their budget to develop people. In fact, most companies spend more time and more money maintaining their buildings, technology, and equipment than they do on developing their people. (Blachard & Johnson, The New One Minute Manager, pg. 51) | Blanchard & Johnson | The New One Minute Manager | 51 |
3 | 1:1 Meetings | One way leaders can “own” their morale is to meet with members of their leadership team one-on-one and ask them to be candid with you about the areas that are impacting staff morale. If you want them to be honest, they’ll need to trust that you will respond positively and act to improve areas they think need attention. Although these conversations may lead to some moments of discomfort, they need to happen if positive change of any magnitude is going to occur. | Casas | Culturize | 86 |
4 | 1:1 Meetings | Focused attention is one of the most important aspects of quality time. Most of us pride ourselves in the ability to multitask. While that may be an admirable trait, it does not communicate genuine interest in the other person when you are spending time with them. Most often, quality time involves giving someone your undivided attention. (Chapman & White, The 5 Lanaguages of Appreciation, pg. 70) | Chapman & White | The 5 Languages of Appreciation in the Workplace | 70 |
5 | 1:1 Meetings | As a rule, managers should give their employees meaningful feedback at least once a week. | Clifton & Harter | It's The Manager | 79 |
6 | 1:1 Meetings | Without effective ongoing conversations between managers and employees, the success of any goals and performance metrics is left to chance. In most companies, objectives change and change often creates anxiety and confusion. But with ongoing coaching, employees are more likely to have clear expectations that are aligned with the overall business, so they can better handle change with confidence and clarity. | Clifton & Harter | It's The Manager | 80 |
7 | 1:1 Meetings | How do you create a climate where the truth is heard? Lead with questions, not answers. Make good use of informal meetings where you ask groups of managers and employees with no script, agenda, or set of action items to discuss. Instead, ask questions like so what's on your mind? Can you tell me about that? Can you help me understand? These non-agenda meetings become a forum where current realities tend to bubble to the surface. (Collins, Good to Great, pg. 74) | Collins | Good to Great | 74 |
8 | 1:1 Meetings | One-on-one conversations accelerate innovation. Each staff member saw the value in the ideas we discussed (during 1:1 meetings) and found a new confidence to share those ideas with others. | Couros | The Innovators Mindset | 78 |
9 | 1:1 Meetings | Often when people are really given the chance to open up, they unravel their own problems and the solutions become clear to them in the process. When people are really hurting and you really listen with pure desire to understand, you’ll be amazed how fast they will open up. There are people who protest that empathic listening takes too much time. It may time more time initially, but it saves so much time downstream. People want to be understood. And whatever investment of time it takes to do that will bring much greater returns of time as you work from an accurate understanding of the problems and issues and from the high emotional bank account that results when a person feels deeply understood. (pg. 263) | Covey | The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People | 263 |
10 | 1:1 Meetings | Set up one-on-one time with your employees. Listen to them, understand them. Set up system to get honest, accurate feedback at every level. You save tremendous amounts of time, energy, and money when you tap into the human resources at every level. When you listen, you learn. And you also give the people who work for you psychological air. You inspire loyalty that goes well beyond the 8-5 demands of the job. (pg. 271) | Covey | The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People | 271 |
11 | 1:1 Meetings | Ensuring that everyone has a voice is easy to talk about but hard to accomplish. This is why many successful groups use simple mechanisms that encourage, spotlight, and value full-group contribution. One manager held one-on-ones with each employee for about 30 minutes. The manager asked the same three questions of each employee. | Coyle | The Culture Code | 84 |
12 | 1:1 Meetings | At Intuit, managers meet with direct reports each month to discuss individual goals. Employees have three to five business objectives per quarter, along with one or two personal goals. | Doerr | Measure What Matters | 106 |
13 | 1:1 Meetings | Regular check-ins are essential to make sure expectations stay at a high level. Without an action plan, the leader becomes a prisoner of events. And without check-ins to reexamine the plan as events unfold, the executive has no way of knowing which events really matter and which are only noise. | Doerr | Measure What Matters | 117 |
14 | 1:1 Meetings | Peter Drucker was one of the first to stress the value of regular one-on-one meetings between managers and their direct reports. It is estimated that ninety minutes of a manager's time can enhance the quality of the employee's work for two weeks. The one-on-one should be regarded as the employee's meeting, with its agenda and tone set by that person. The supervisor should also encourage the discussion of heart-to-heart issues during one-on-ones. | Doerr | Measure What Matters | 182 |
15 | 1:1 Meetings | At Intel, a one-on-one is a meeting between supervisor and a subordinate, and it is the principal way their business relationship is maintained. Its main purpose is mutual teaching and exchange of information. The supervisor teaching the subordinate his skills and know-how, while the subordinate provides the supervisor with information about what he is doing and what he is concerned about. Regularly scheduled one-on-ones are highly unusual outside of Intel. Other managers say, "I don't need scheduled meetings with my subordinate; I see him several times a day." But there is an enormous difference between a casual encounter and a one-on-one. (Grove, High Output Management, pg. 73) | Grove | High Output Management | 73 |
16 | 1:1 Meetings | A key point about a one-on-one: It should be regarded as the subordinate's meeting, with its agenda and tone set by him. There's a good reason for this. Somebody needs to prepare him for the meeting. The supervisor with eight subordinate would have to prepare eight times; the subordinate only once. What should be covered in a one-on-one? Performance indicators, anything important that has happened since the last meeting, potential problems - and any issue that preoccupies and nags the subordinate. What is the role of the supervisor in a one-on-one? He should facilitate the subordinate's expression of what's going on and what's bothering him. He should try and keep the flow of thoughts coming by prompting the subordinate until they have gotten to the bottom of a problem. (Grove, High Output Management, pg. 75) | Grove | High Output Management | 75 |
17 | 1:1 Meetings | The supervisor and the subordinate should have a copy of the notes from the one-to-one meeting. I do it to keep my mind from drifting and also to help me digest the information. Also, many issues in a one-on-one lead to action required on part of the subordinate. This allows the supervisor to follow up at the next one-to-one meeting. (Grove, High Output Management, pg. 76) | Grove | High Output Management | 76 |
18 | 1:1 Meetings | The best managers talk with each individual, asking about strengths, weaknesses, goals, and dreams. They work closely with each employee and they notice things that the employee does. They ask their employees about their goals. What are you shooting for in your current role? Where do you see your career heading? What personal goals do you feel like sharing? | Harter & Buckingham | First, Break All the Rules | 162 |
19 | 1:1 Meetings | Investing in those who struggle is not the best use of your time. Instead, spend the most time with your most productive employees. When investing in your best employees, make sure to tell them why they are so good, and whey they are a cornerstone of the team’s success. | Harter & Buckingham | First, Break All the Rules | 169 |
20 | 1:1 Meetings | Great managers excel at giving performance feedback. One executive meetings with each of her 22 direct reports once every quarter. In those meetings she quickly reviews the last three months and then focuses attention to the next three months. What are their plans and goals? What measurements will they use? | Harter & Buckingham | First, Break All the Rules | 220 |
21 | 1:1 Meetings | The best managers provide constant feedback. Whether the meetings lasted for 20 minutes every month of 60 minutes every quarter, these performance feedback meetings are a constant part of their interaction with each employee throughout the year. In most cases, the total time spent discussing each employee’s style and performance is roughly four hours per employee per year. If you can’t spend four hours a year with each of your people, then you’ve either got too many people or you shouldn’t be a manager. | Harter & Buckingham | First, Break All the Rules | 221 |
22 | 1:1 Meetings | One-on-one meetings provide an excellect mechanism for information and ideas to flow up the organization and should be a part of your communicaiton design. Generally, people who think one-on-one meetings are a bad idea have been victims of poorly designed ones. The key to a good one-on-one meeting is the understanding that it is the employee's meeting rather than the manager's meeting. This is a free-form meeting for all of the pressing issues, brilliant ideas, and chronic frustrations. Remember that the manager should do 10 percent of the talking and 90 percent of the listening. In the end, the most important thing is that the best ideas, biggest problems, and the most intense life issues make their way to the people who can deal with them. One-on-ones are a time-tested way to do that. (pg. 177) | Horowitz | The Hard Thing About Hard Things | 177 |
23 | 1:1 Meetings | Your first responsibility is to deliver whatever results your organization expects from you. For many managers, this creates a problem. You can't name your top five key results that you owe your organization this year. You most likely can't list the key things for which you're responsible. You may be able to say, my boss wants me to focus in these areas, but that's not enough. You can't quantify what is expected from you. About the only way to really feel good about your responsibilities are to have quantified goals, in numbers and percentages. The problem with not having clearly delineated responsibilities is that you can't make intelligent choices about where to focus. You begin to feel that everything is important. You begin to try to get everything done. Of course, you can't, and you probably know that already, because you're working long hours and never get everything done. | Horstman | The Effective Manager | 2 |
24 | 1:1 Meetings | Effectively managed modern organizations now measure retention in addition to results when they are evaluating a manager. It's intended to be a break against an unrelenting focus on results. They want to ensure that a manager's team members don't leave the organization. For today's manager, it's not enough to get results. | Horstman | The Effective Manager | 4 |
25 | 1:1 Meetings | If you want to be an effective manager and if you want to maximize your job security, you've got to achieve these two metrics: Get results and keep your people. You've got to know how your organization measures them, and you've got to choose to spend your time on things that achieve them. | Horstman | The Effective Manager | 4 |
26 | 1:1 Meetings | The single most important (and efficient) thing you can do as a manager to improve your performance and increase retention is to spend time getting to know your direct reports. The most efficient way to get to know your team is to spend time regularly communicating with them. | Horstman | The Effective Manager | 8 |
27 | 1:1 Meetings | What are the first names of all of the children of the people who report directly to you? If you failed the test, consider this: what makes you think you can get the last full measure of devotion to work out of someone when you don't know the names of the people who are the most precious to them in the world? | Horstman | The Effective Manager | 11 |
28 | 1:1 Meetings | Many managers say they talk to their people all the time. They're constantly in communication with their direct reports through email, text, and face-to-face conversations. In fact, they feel like they talk to their direct reports so much that they hardly have time for their own work. Most managers, however, have no idea how one-sided their conversations are with their team members. They have no idea how little influence those brief conversations actually have in building relationships. You don't realize the extent to which your chitchat with them is driven by you, by your agenda, and by what you want. | Horstman | The Effective Manager | 12 |
29 | 1:1 Meetings | By having your 1:1 meetings scheduled you are saying to your directs, "You're always going to have time with me. I'm always going to be investing in the relationship." Plus, if it's not on your calendar, it's unlikely to happen. | Horstman | The Effective Manager | 38 |
30 | 1:1 Meetings | Directs are uncomfortable about bringing up something formal or something that requires planning while you are hanging around their desk. Some topics require thinking through the issues and asking questions and a certain way. Most directs don't think, “Oh, my boss is going to stop by my desk today; I need to pitch him the idea I've been thinking about.” Directs tell us that having scheduled time with them on your calendar allows them to prepare for the meeting. | Horstman | The Effective Manager | 40 |
31 | 1:1 Meetings | A lot of managers resist our guidance on scheduling their 1:1 meetings. They claim that their schedule is always changing. But our research shows that moving an already scheduled 1:1 to a different time due to a conflict has no significant effect on the manager's results. Managers who schedule and then move their meetings frequently achieve similar results as managers whose schedules are more fixed and rarely move their meetings. | Horstman | The Effective Manager | 40 |
32 | 1:1 Meetings | You may be thinking "I'm too busy" for 1:1 meetings. This is a rational response to another meeting in your already busy day, but part of the reason your schedule is so full is because you're not spending enough time communicating with your directs. I know you're busy and squeezing five hours of meetings into your schedule this week is nearly impossible. Fair enough, but let's try an experiment. Look at your calendar three or four weeks from now. It's mostly empty, isn't it? Your calendar is always full because you're generally only looking at the current week. | Horstman | The Effective Manager | 41 |
33 | 1:1 Meetings | If you implement 1:1s, we guarantee that you will get more time back into your calendar then you spend in having them. You'll develop more trust with your direct. They'll know more often what you expect, because they'll be hearing it more regularly, so they won't ask you as many questions. You won't get interrupted as often for non-urgent issues. Your directs will wait to bring things to you that can wait. If you're like a lot of managers, you probably get interrupted frequently by your directs. They have a quick question or they just need a minute. And that minute often turns out to be ten minutes. | Horstman | The Effective Manager | 42 |
34 | 1:1 Meetings | Our data shows that 30 minutes is a magic number for scheduling time for 1:1s. There's no benefit to going longer than 30 minutes. It's better to have a jam-packed meeting that lasts 30 minutes then to have a relaxed meeting that is scheduled for an hour but for which you only have 40 to 45 minutes worth of content. If you overschedule meetings, your directs will gradually begin to under-prepare and will lose interest. Shorter and busier 30-minute meetings will cause you and your directs to use them fully and not to miss them. | Horstman | The Effective Manager | 46 |
35 | 1:1 Meetings | How do you stay in touch with people who are two levels below you? Insist that your direct reports are having 1:1 meetings with their direct reports. That way you are able to maintain relationships with all employees. You won't have as strong of relationships with your "skips" but that's ok - you simply don't have enough time to have strong relationships with everyone. Build an organization of effective managers under you. This is how organizations stay healthy and effective as they grow. | Horstman | The Effective Manager | 49 |
36 | 1:1 Meetings | Directs have told us that their manager taking notes elevates the conversation, making it more important. Managers who just chatted but didn't take notes about possible follow-up were deemed to be less engaged, less interested, and less likely to take action on topics that came up. The problem with a 1:1 in which the manager does not take notes isn't the lack of note taking; it's the lack of accountability that no note-taking implies. | Horstman | The Effective Manager | 50 |
37 | 1:1 Meetings | The manager should take notes during 1:1 meetings. These meetings can count as documentation for your employees. Despite what most managers think, the standard for what constitutes "documentation" is incredibly low. You don't need great details either for memory or for official record keeping when it comes to feedback. You need the raw data that will allow HR and their lawyers to construct a history of you communicating frequently with your directs about their performance. The key to documentation isn't form or length - the key is whether or not the info was documented at the same time as the incident. It is whether or not it is “contemporaneous”, that is, documented roughly at the same time as the incident or communication. This is all the formality your HR or legal department needs. You don't need to meet some legal standard, write a memo, or write out exactly what you said or how your direct responded. | Horstman | The Effective Manager | 52 |
38 | 1:1 Meetings | Don't ever be surprised by pushback to 1:1 meetings. Just because you think it's a good idea doesn't mean that your directs will go along with it. When you change how you manage, fear and uncertainty are part of the response. Don't assume it's just you; it happens to all of us. | Horstman | The Effective Manager | 57 |
39 | 1:1 Meetings | Some directs think 1:1s are micromanaging. They don't need them, they don't like them, and they don't want them. Would you deny your boss the right to see you for 30 minutes once a week? Would you turn down his request for a meeting? Never tolerate from your directs what you would not do to your box. 1:1 meetings are not micromanaging - in fact - a direct who wishes for virtually no managerial oversight is a liability risk. The direct who believes a 30-minute meeting once a week is burdensome is telling you either that he is afraid of oversight, or that he is above it. The problem today with the average manager-direct relationship is NOT one of too much management … but of far too little. | Horstman | The Effective Manager | 59 |
40 | 1:1 Meetings | 1:1 meetings are not unreasonable, it's a new form of communication that eliminates several other less efficient forms of communication, such as one 15 minute conversation about 10 different things. Further, 1:1 meetings are only asking for 1 percent of your direct report's time assuming they are working 50 hour weeks. The idea that 1/100th of a direct's time cannot be spent in work-related meetings with his boss is laughable. | Horstman | The Effective Manager | 61 |
41 | 1:1 Meetings | The agenda for 1:1 meetings is simple: First, allow your direct to speak. Then, with what time is left, you get to speak. Always start with the direct and allow them to speak. However, you don't have time to chit-chat; that's why it's not on the agenda. But don't ask your direct to send you an agenda - it shouldn't feel like more work to your directs. During a typical 1:1 meeting your direct reports portion includes updates about ongoing work, questions about problems they're having, requests for guidance about steps or about approaching a problem, clarification on what you want or how you want something done, reminders on information or materials they need from you, and so on. | Horstman | The Effective Manager | 71 |
42 | 1:1 Meetings | During 1:1 conversations, you should share the vision and ask each person to identify what it means to him or her. You will do with this with your direct reports, and then each person you lead will do this with their direct reports, and so on throughout the organization. For the vision to come to life, it must have meaning to us individually...After the people on your team identify what the vision means to them, ask them what their personal vision is and how it can help contribute to the bigger vision of the organization. Then ask them how you can help them on their journey. What do you need from me to be your best? | J. Gordon | The Power of Positive Leadership | 39 |
43 | 1:1 Meetings | Probably the most important thing you can do to build trust is to spend a little time along with each of your direct reports on a regular basis. Holding regular 1:1s in which your direct report sets the agenda and you ask questions is a good way to begin building trust. | K. Scott | Radical Candor | 121 |
44 | 1:1 Meetings | To understand a person’s growth trajectory, it’s important to have career conversations in which you get to know each of your direct reports better. Need to learn about their aspirations and how to help them achieve those dreams. You should have these conversations with each person who reports directly to you. | K. Scott | Radical Candor | 174 |
45 | 1:1 Meetings | One on one conversations are your must-do meetings - your single best opportunities to listen to the people on your team to make sure you understand their perspective on what’s working and what’s not working. This is NOT the place to dump all of the criticism you’ve been saving up. That should come in those short conversations you’re having. The purpose of the 1:1 meetings is to listen and clarify - to understand what each person working for you wants, and what is blocking them. Don’t treat them as meetings, being treating them as if you were having lunch or coffee with somebody you are eager to get to know better. | K. Scott | Radical Candor | 201 |
46 | 1:1 Meetings | The best leaders are great listeners. They listen carefully to what other people have to say and how they feel. Some leaders schedule regular check-ins with employees, which usually begin by asking many questions about how they are doing and actively listening. They must be vulnerable, give feedback, and create a space for everyone to be heard. Finally, they ask about their colleagues aspirations and then remembering what they’ve said and following up with them after the fact. | Kouzes & Posner | The Leadership Challenge | 109 |
47 | 1:1 Meetings | When direct reports meet one-on-one with great leaders the leader will give their full attention. The leaders listens intently and asks what is really happening on the ground. They ask probing questions. In a typical conversation, some of the best leaders end up spending 80 percent of the time listening and asking questions. | Liz Wiseman | Multipliers | 79 |
48 | 1:1 Meetings | Strong leaders make feedback on job performance continuous. You should not wait a year to correct mistakes, and team members don’t need to wait a year to bring problems to leadership either. For this reason, there isn’t really a need for the annual review, but an annual checkup can be valuable. Job evaluation should be an ongoing discussion. | Ramsey | EntreLeadership | 223 |
49 | 1:1 Meetings | Many leaders tend to dive in and start talking to people when they assume a new position. You will pick up much soft information this way, but it is not efficient. That’s because it can be time-consuming and because its lack of structure makes it difficult to know how much weight to place on various individuals’ observations. Instead, you should consider using a structured learning process with structured questions…When you are diagnosing a new organization start by meeting with your direct reports one-on-one. Again, be sure to stay consistent in the questions you ask. | Watkins | First 90 Days | 58 |
50 | Address Poor Employees | At a time when we have 24/7 access to social media and news feeds that are being refreshed literally every second, our exposure to other people's energy - positive or negative - is higher than ever. And the more of it we absorb, the more it impacts our motivation, our engagement, our performance. | Achor | Big Potential | 69 |
51 | Address Poor Employees | Just as being around negative, unmotivated people drains our energy and potential, surrounding ourselves with positive, engaged, motivated, and creative people causes our positivity, engagement, motivation, and creativity to multiply. | Achor | Big Potential | 70 |
52 | Address Poor Employees | Simply observing someone who is stressed - especially a co-worker or family member - can have an immediate impact on our nervous systems, raising our levels of the stress hormone cortisol by as much as 26 percent. In short, being surrounded by only negative and stressed-out people very quickly tips our balance from motivated and positive to frazzled and negative. | Achor | Big Potential | 149 |
53 | Address Poor Employees | Roughly 90 percent of the anxiety at work is created by 5 percent of one's network - the people who sap energy. | Achor | Big Potential | 150 |
54 | Address Poor Employees | Interpersonal conflict manifests in many ways, and when it's not dealt with, it tends to grow and spread. Gossip can be a barometer for the overall interpersonal health of a community. It also seems to be a behavior that can quickly spread if not addressed. Left unmanaged, rampent gossip fuels toxic cultures, which are further characterized by individuals working independently all the time, warring camps, divisions across racial or ethnic lines, Perpetual negativity, hostile faculty meetings, and misdirected values focused on enforcing rules, teaching basic skills, and serving a small group of elite students. Toxic cultures are contagious. New teachers can become acculturated in only weeks because of the strong negative personalities of the informal leaders and a faculty. Positive staff members tend to leave or are driven out. | Aguilar | Onward | 117 |
55 | Address Poor Employees | Venting rarely makes us feel good, and often leads to cynicism. In some organizations, cynics are placed on a pedestal. They are seen as wise, sophisticated, and knowing; they have seen initiatives and people come and go. they warn others: don't be fooled by this or that shiny thing. They shame the hopeful, dismissing them as unrealistic, naive dreamers, and stop at those who inclined toward the positive. | Aguilar | Onward | 180 |
56 | Address Poor Employees | When my boss gives me a redirect, he reminds me that I'm better than my mistake and that he has confidence and trust in me. He says he doesn't expect a repeat of that mistake and looks forward to working with me. The redirect only takes about a minute, and when it's over, it's over. But you remember it, and since it ends in a supportive way, you want to get back on track. (Blachard & Johnson, The New One Minute Manager, pg. 42) | Blanchard & Johnson | The New One Minute Manager | 42 |
57 | Address Poor Employees | Many managers store up observations of poor behavior until frustration builds. When performance review time comes, these managers are angry in general because they have so much to share. They charge in and dump it all at one time. They tell people every single thing they have done wrong for the last several weeks or months or more. It's not fair to people to save up negative feelings about their poor performance, and it's not effective. (Blachard & Johnson, The New One Minute Manager, pg. 71) | Blanchard & Johnson | The New One Minute Manager | 71 |
58 | Address Poor Employees | What I cannot and will not accept in my school or from those around me is negativity, drama, or excuses. | Brewer | Relentless | 122 |
59 | Address Poor Employees | When delivering tough criticism, there is absolutely no benefit to pushing through an unproductive conversation unless there's an urgent, time-sensitive issue at hand. I've never regretted taking a short break or circling back after a few hours of thinking time. I have, however, regretted many instances where I pushed through to get it over and done with. Those self-serving instincts end up costing way more time than a short break. | Brown | Dare to Lead | 48 |
60 | Address Poor Employees | Being clear is kind. Being unclear is unkind. Feeding people half-truths to make them feel better (which is almost always about making ourselves feel more comfortable) is unkind. Not getting clear with a colleague about your expectations because it feels too hard, yet holding them accountable for not delivering is unkind. Talking about people rather than to them is unkind. | Brown | Dare to Lead | 48 |
61 | Address Poor Employees | One of our most favorite rumble tools is the time-out. When difficult conversations become unproductive, call a time-out. Give everyone ten minutes to walk around outside or catch their breath. Consider saying "I need time to think about what I am hearing. Can we take an hour and circle back after lunch?" | Brown | Dare to Lead | 68 |
62 | Address Poor Employees | When a manager focuses on compliance and control it is normally about fear and power. Those managers reduce work to tasks and to-dos, then spend their time ensuring that people are doing exactly what they want how they want - and then constantly calling them out when they're doing it wrong. They use the fear of "getting caught" as motivation. Not only is this ineffective, it shuts down creative problem solving. It also leaves people miserable, questioning their abilities, and desperate to leave. | Brown | Dare to Lead | 99 |
63 | Address Poor Employees | Always give people a "way out with dignity." This means that you need to remember the human and pay attention to feelings. Of course, leaders must make the thoughtful business decisions that are right for the company - definitely do what makes sense to achieve the company's goals. And, while you're doing what you need to do, always hold the human in mind. Keep that person who will be impacted by your decision squarely in front of you. This person has a family, a career, and a life that will be affected. When you're delivering the news, be kind, be clear, be respectful. Be generous. Can you let the person resign rather than be fired? Can you provide severance pay? Ask the person how they want to let colleagues know about their departure and follow their lead on that if possible. | Brown | Dare to Lead | 133 |
64 | Address Poor Employees | In tough conversations leaders need the grounded confidence to stay tethered to their values, respond rather than react emotionally, and operate from self-awareness, not self-protection. Having the skills to hold the tension and discomfort allows us to give care and attention to others. | Brown | Dare to Lead | 168 |
65 | Address Poor Employees | I did a little experiment several years ago to see how long the intense, in-the-moment discomfort lasts during difficult conversations. After a couple months of tracking it, I landed on eight seconds. In most situations, there are only eight seconds of discomfort. | Brown | Dare to Lead | 193 |
66 | Address Poor Employees | Discussions about race can be difficult. You first listen about race. You will make a lot of mistakes. It will be super uncomfortable. And there's no way to talk about it without getting some criticism. But you can't be silent. To opt out of conversations about privilege and oppression because they make you uncomfortable is the epitome of privilege. | Brown | Dare to Lead | 195 |
67 | Address Poor Employees | Without real conversation around feedback, there is less learning and more defensiveness. Because it's human nature to turn on some level of self-protection when dealing with setbacks and receiving feedback, it's important to circle back with employees to ensure that the intention of the message matched what was actually heard. | Brown | Dare to Lead | 266 |
68 | Address Poor Employees | Letting someone save face is vitally important - let's remember this the next time we are faced with the distasteful necessity of discharging or reprimanding an employee. | Carnegie | How to Win Friends... | 211 |
69 | Address Poor Employees | If there is a concern or issue that needs to be addressed, it is better to have the conversation in person rather than via email. If you receive a contentious online communication, respond by asking if you can meet face-to-fact to discuss the concern. | Casas | Culturize | 82 |
70 | Address Poor Employees | Tolerance of mediocrity is the enemy of the best organizations. High development cultures define high team performance based on a combination of metrics such as productivity, retention rates, customer service, and employee engagement. It is clear to managers than their job is to engage their teams . The best companies have consequences for ongoing patterns of team disengagement - most important, changing managers. | Clifton & Harter | It's The Manager | 116 |
71 | Address Poor Employees | Employees can become resentful when they have a coworker who is not contributing or being held accountable for subpar performance. Great managers do not sit idly and let a team erode. The establish performance and accountability standards and ensure that all team members are held responsible for them. | Clifton & Harter | It's The Manager | 296 |
72 | Address Poor Employees | Only those who “fit” extremely well with the core ideology and demanding standards of a visionary company will find it a great place to work | Collins | Built to Last | 9 |
73 | Address Poor Employees | Because visionary companies have such clarity about who they are, what they’re all about, and what they’re trying to achieve, they tend to not have much room for people unwilling or unsuited to their demanding standards | Collins | Built to Last | 121 |
74 | Address Poor Employees | If you start to fill key seats with the wrong people you will start to institute bureaucratic procedures to compensate for the wrong people's inadequacies. This, in turn, drives away the right people. This then invites more bureaucracy to compensate for having more of the wrong people, which then drives away more of the right people; and a culture of mediocrity gradually replaces a culture of disciplined excellence. When bureaucratic rules erode an ethic of freedom and responsbility within a framework of core values and demanding standards, you've become infected with the disease of mediocrity. (Collins, How the Mighty Fall, pg. 56) | Collins | How the Mighty Fall | 56 |
75 | Address Poor Employees | The one warning sign of above all others when it comes to the decline of an organization would be a declining proportion of key seats filled with the right people. You should always be able to answer the following questions: What are the key seats in your organization? What percentage of those seats can you say with confidence are filled with the right people? What are your plans for increasing that percentage? What are your backup plans in the event that a right person leaves a key seat? (Collins, How the Mighty Fall, pg. 57) | Collins | How the Mighty Fall | 57 |
76 | Address Poor Employees | "I would rather we lost lawsuits from time to time than keep employees who are not up to our standards. Because a weak employee will make the others around him weak, and drag them down." (Collins, How the Mighty Fall, pg. 175) | Collins | How the Mighty Fall | 175 |
77 | Address Poor Employees | Highly successful cultures eliminate bad apples. They have an extremely low tolerance for bad apple behavior and were skilled at naming those behaviors. | Coyle | The Culture Code | 81 |
78 | Address Poor Employees | Always deliver negative messages in person - if you have negative news or feedback to give someone you are obligated to deliver that news face-to-face. This rule is not easy to follow (it’s far more comfortable to communicate electronically), but it works because it deals with tension in an up-front, honest way that avoids misunderstandings and creates shared clarity and connection. | Coyle | The Culture Code | 161 |
79 | Address Poor Employees | When dismissing someone remember this: "Whoever is under a man's power is under his protection too. We should never have hired this man in the first place because he's not cut out for this kind of work. But since we did, the least I could do was help him to relocate. Anyone can hire a man. But the test of leadership is how one handles the dismissal. By helping an employee relocate before they leave builds up a feeling of job security in everyone in the department. (D. Schwartz, The Magic of Thinking Big, pg. 284) | D. Schwartz | The Magic of Thinking Big | 284 |
80 | Address Poor Employees | I have regularly seen people kept in jobs that they don't deserve because of their personal relationship to the boss, and this leads to managers trading on personal loyalties to build fiefdoms for themselves. Judging one person by a different set of rules than another is an insidious form of corruption that undermines an organization. | Dalio | Principles | 328 |
81 | Address Poor Employees | Provide transparency to people who handle it well and either deny it to people who don't handle it well or remove those people from the organization. It is the right and responsibility of management, and not the right of all employees, to determine when exceptions to transparency should be made. | Dalio | Principles | 335 |
82 | Address Poor Employees | Every leader must decide between 1) getting rid of liked but incapable people to achieve their goals and 2) keeping the nice but incapable people and not achieving their goals. Whether or not you can make these hard decisions is the strongest determinant of your own success or failure. | Dalio | Principles | 423 |
83 | Address Poor Employees | Avoid the anonymous "we" and "they," because they mask personal responsibility. Things don't just happen by themselves - they happen because specific people did or didn't do specific things. Don't undermine personal accountability with vagueness. Instead of the passive generalization "we," attribute specific actions to specific people. Since individuals are the most important building blocks of any organization and since individuals are responsible for the ways things are done, mistakes must be connected to those individuals by name. Someone created the procedure that went wrong or made the faulty decision. Glossing over that can only slow progress toward improvement. (Dalio, Principles, pg. 479) | Dalio | Principles | 479 |
84 | Address Poor Employees | When staff members see mistakes being made and nothing being done to correct those mistakes, they start to question their loyalty to, and support of, the workplace. | Fisher et al. | How to Create a Culture of Achievement | 138 |
85 | Address Poor Employees | There are also times in which a realistic discussion regarding whether this school and its commitment to its cultural pillars is a place for the staff member feels in sync with and ultimately weather this assignment is the best match for his or her talents and beliefs. | Fisher et al. | How to Create a Culture of Achievement | 161 |
86 | Address Poor Employees | If we're struggling with trust issues and staff not getting work done, it means we made a poor hiring decision. If a team member isn't producing good results or can't manage their own schedule or workload, we aren't going to continue to work with that person. We employ team members who are skilled professionals, capable of managing their own schedules and making a valuable contribution to the organization. We have no desire to be babysitters during the day. If you can't let your employees work from home out of fear they'll slack off without your supervision, you're a babysitter not a manager. Remote work is very likely the least of your problems. To successfully work with other people, you have to trust each other. A big part of this is trusting people to get their work done wherever they are, without supervision. Either learn to trust the people you're working with or find some other people to work with. | Fried & Heinemeier Hansson | Remote | 55 |
87 | Address Poor Employees | Once you catch a criminal you can try to help him get better - put him in therapy, try to rehabilitate him - but there is very little you can do to prevent the crime from happening in the first place. | Gladwell | The Tipping Point | 167 |
88 | Address Poor Employees | Talented employees need great managers. Talented employee may join a company because of its charismatic leaders, its generous benefits, and its world-class training programs...but how long that employee stays and how productive he is while he is there is determined by his relationship with his immediate supervisor. | Harter & Buckingham | First, Break All the Rules | 7 |
89 | Address Poor Employees | The employee’s direct supervisor directly influences turnover. This means that people leave managers, not companies. Businesses have thrown so much money at the challenge of keeping good people - better pay, better perks, better training - when in the end, turnover is mostly a manager issue. If you have a turnover problem, look first to your managers. | Harter & Buckingham | First, Break All the Rules | 31 |
90 | Address Poor Employees | It’s not that employee-focused initiatives are unimportant, it’s just that your immediate manager is more important. They define your work environment. If they set clear expectations, know you, trust you, and invest in you, then you can forgive your company if they have policies or procedures in place that are not employee friendly. It’s better to work for a great manager in an old-fashioned company than for a terrible manager in a company offering an enlightened, employee-focused culture. | Harter & Buckingham | First, Break All the Rules | 32 |
91 | Address Poor Employees | The cost of turnover is about 1.5 times the cost of the former employee’s salary. | Harter & Buckingham | First, Break All the Rules | 32 |
92 | Address Poor Employees | Poor performance must be confronted head-on if it is not to degenerate into a dangerously unproductive situation. And it must be confronted quickly. As with all degenerative diseases, procrastination in the face of poor performance is a fool’s remedy | Harter & Buckingham | First, Break All the Rules | 181 |
93 | Address Poor Employees | You will have to manage around the weaknesses of each employee. But if, with one particular employee, you find yourself spending most of your time managing around weaknesses, then know that you have made a casting error. At this point, it is time to fix the casing error and to stop trying to fix the person. | Harter & Buckingham | First, Break All the Rules | 191 |
94 | Address Poor Employees | Some top people leave their jobs because of the lack of praise and recognition they receive from their supervisor. | Heath & Heath | The Power of Moments | 148 |
95 | Address Poor Employees | When you have to fire an executive (principal or other leadership member) make sure to preserve the reputation of the fired executive. The failure was very likely a team effot, and it's best to portray it that way. You don't make yourself look good by trashing someone who worked for you. I recommend scripting or rehearsing what you plan to say so that you do not mispeak. The executive will remember the conversation for a very long time, so you need to get it right. Three keys to getting the converstion right include, 1) being clear on the reasons, 2) using decisive language, and 3) have the severance package approved and ready. Finally, the executive will be keenly interested in how the news will be communicated to the company and to the outside world. It is best to let her decide. Think: "You cannot let her keep her job, but you can absolutely let her keep her respect." (pg. 78) | Horowitz | The Hard Thing About Hard Things | 78 |
96 | Address Poor Employees | When an average manager gives feedback, the focus is on what happened in the past. The manager thinks about what happened in the past and asks herself how to talk to the direct about what happened - in the past - about which the manager can do nothing. However, the purpose of performance communications is to encourage effective future behavior. Regardless of whether your direct was ineffective or effective this morning, the true purpose of any performance communication is exactly the same: you want more effective behavior in the future. If your direct made a mistake, you want different behavior. If you're direct did something well, do you want more of the same. | Horstman | The Effective Manager | 108 |
97 | Address Poor Employees | When your direct gets defensive, you needn't do anything at all about it, because you have already fired a shot across their bow. They likely know they're in the wrong, and they know you're aware of what they did. If it continues, you'll likely be back. Enough said. If your direct becomes defensive, he is being defensive about what happened, or why it happened, or that it didn't happen. These are all arguments about the past. Don't be afraid to give in when a direct argues or gets defensive. Don't get drawn into a discussion about who said what, what she actually did, or who reported the behavior to you. Do not discuss with the direct what happened. None of these topics is about the future you want to focus on. Once you've given the feedback and the direct has pushed back, pause, smile, apologize, and walk away. You have made your point. | Horstman | The Effective Manager | 132 |
98 | Address Poor Employees | If transforming the negativity (of an employee) doesn’t work, you must remove it. Your job as a leader is to create an environment where your people can do their best work without being affected by an energy vampire. | J. Gordon | The Power of Positive Leadership | 77 |
99 | Address Poor Employees | If the signs of employee disengagement are missed for any period of time, it’s the leader’s fault. Period. Or, if the signs are noted, yet not addressed, this is the fault of the leadership in allowing it to continue. | Johnson | The Art of Alignment | 219 |
100 | Address Poor Employees | The worst scenario in terms of employment issues is the employee who quits but does not leave. These employees have checked out mentally and emotionally. The challenge for leaders is to identify who these individuals are and quickly decide whether or not they can be turned around. If there’s no way to re-engage them, leaders must help them to find something else to do outside the organization (termination). It rarely happens that someone who performs at a low level all of a sudden changes direction and becomes the fantastic employee everyone wants on their team. | Johnson | The Art of Alignment | 222 |