Heart of Management

Category: Basis

Basic managerial and leadership issues

  • Positive Attitude

    Positive attitude. Seems trivial. What’s more basic then that?

    Well, as trivial as it is, having the habit of holding a positive attitude, even in the most demanding situations is not that simple. I think that in order to do so, one has to understand clearly why it is so important.

    Your attitude is one of the first things people will notice about you.  I guess that most people won’t start to analyze rationally your attitude, but most of them will surely remain with some sort of first emotional impression about it.

    Even more important then this is the fact that usually other people’s reactions toward you, will, to some extent, reflect your attitude back to you. As simple as that, if you smile to somebody, he’ll usually smile back, if you whine to someone, he’ll usually immediately start to tell you about his troubles.

    The effect of having the right or wrong attitude is even stronger, in modern-day organizations with complex, multi-dimensional matrix organizational structures. Unlike past, simple hierarchical organizations, where people had the chance to know each other on a more intimate level, and get past first impressions, in the contemporary organization, you might interact with people for a very brief moment, and the first impression you made, the one that is largely affected by your attitude, might just be your last one.

    Once you understand how crucial it is to maintain the positive attitude, the question that remains is how to do it?

    Maybe the first thing to do is to understand your current present attitude. This can be done by asking people you know about it. You can ask people you trust and you think would be honest with you. It is important to also ask people with whom you might have some difficulties (I intend to write a post about feedback in the near future, and I’m going to elaborate some more on this subject).

    Once you understand your current attitude you’ll probably know which parts are your strengths and which are your shortcomings. I’ve found out that the increased awareness about those behaviors immediately make me increase the good, positive ones and decrease the bad, negative ones.

    Other things that work for me are:

    • Smiling a lot without giving up being honest.
    • Being optimistic by seeing the positive side of everything. When coming to think about this, almost nothing is totally bad or good, you can choose which side you want to emphasize!
    • Being empathic to others by really listening and understanding their point of view.

    Good luck, please let me know what you think, what works for you?

    HoM

  • Trust

     

    In the next few posts, I plan to write about several issues which are in my opinion, the basis of management.

    I believe that trust is the baseline of every relationship, thus, trust is also the basis of every managerial relationship or leadership . It doesn’t matter whether you lead a single person (a one on one connection) or a team, trust is the first thing you’ll have to build, and maintain.

    I usually make a distinction between different levels of trust:

    1. At the first level stands what I call “Personal trust”, this is the basic level of trust between two people. To achieve this level of trust, people usually should at least know each other enough, so they understand in the most general terms, which common values they share and which they don’t agree upon. The best way to bring people to this level of trust is to make them spend some time together. A good way to speed up the process would be to facilitate a meeting with personal introductions and activities that will make each partner expose more information about himself (his personal life, his family, hobbies, beliefs etc.).
    The “Personal trust” is about knowing the other person / people on a personal level and being able to authentically respect at least some of his / her personal traits.

    2. At the second level stands what I call “Professional trust”; this is the belief that the other person is capable of performing the task at hand. The best way to build trust to this level is to give the involved parties an opportunity to watch the others perform their tasks. This usually require some time, so that each one has the chance to witness the other performing and getting the job done several times.
    The “Professional trust” is about believing that the other person is capable of doing his job.

    3. The third level is what I call “Mutual goal trust” or “Mutual mission trust”, this is the belief that the other person is committed to the same goal or mission that I’m committed to, and even better, that we share our views on how to achieve this mutual goal. In order to reach this level of the trust the involved parties should spend time to agree upon and clarify both mission and the path to get it.

    Often you’ll meet groups of people that didn’t go through all the above mentioned phases of trust. You might hear a sentence like “He’s a good guy but I’m not sure he’d be capable to help me” – achieved level one of trust but not level two. Or “I don’t trust this guy but he is surely a pro” – level two achieved while level one is missing.

    I sincerely believe that in order to get the best possible performance at any given task or mission, whether it’s you with your only subordinate Joe, or a leader with many followers, one must go through all three levels of building trust.

    That’s it for today,
    HoM (that is “Heart of Management”)