Management Skills Week 2

Week 2:

A. Reality and Assessment,

B. Teambuilding Ingredients

Agenda

Review

Discuss ONE of readings… what do managers do?

Talk about assessment instruments you’re going to take

Talk about your first learning log

Suggestions for format

Create a table, then discuss it

Introductions

Refresher from last week’s lecture/s:

Managers get things done through other people.

Managers’ jobs involve:

Functions

Roles

Behaviors

A.
Reality and Assessment

What REALLY happens when you begin your FIRST NEW management job?

How well equipped are YOU?

How do new, first-time managers view their jobs? What are they hired to do?

? What have we learned?

Becoming a Manager:
Linda Hill (HBP, 1992)

New managers think of their jobs as being TASK oriented

Focus on budget

Focus on revenues

Focus on getting the job done by working hard THEMSELVES, as individuals.

It all goes back to their PRIOR experiences, and motivations.

Managers were stars -- INDIVIDUALS.

Sought out management jobs to gain MORE authority, power.

Wanted to have the same perq’s (perquisites) as their bosses.

Rights, Privileges

Looked at their abilities as directly translatable to new job.

What it Means to be A Manager

Summary:
They didn’t understand what getting work done through others MEANT

New managers tend to focus on issues related to:

Formal authority,

Agenda-setting responsibilities

Financial matters,

Business matters

Overlooked:

Network-building

A typical day:

Work on many problems simultaneously.

Constantly interrupted.

Have dozens of brief interactions with MANY people.

Read from pages: 56, 61

What’s the most COMMON mistake most new managers make?

Falling back on their previous roles as INDIVIDUALS…

Doing their subordinates’ jobs, instead of helping them develop.

Read from page 63

Where does this take us?

Many new managers "flush out" before they REACH the conclusions we’ve pointed out.

What do YOU need to do to make sure you CAN develop your staff, network with others and act as a liaison?

Network

Linda Hill on Business Education

With few exceptions, the schools emphasize functional expertise and spend little time developing interpersonal judgment and skill. Usually students must themselves connect theory and practice. And classroom learning is rarely supplemented with experiential exercises.

Until schools reconceptualize their traditional role of discovering and imparting cutting-edge knowledge to include that of helping future managers learn how to learn from experience, it is difficult to imagine how much progress they can make. (Page 275)

Self Assessment

Tolerance of Ambiguity

Locus of control

Assessing yourself: 1A

Big 5: 1B

Self monitoring: 1C

Social Mirror: 1D

Selective perception: 1E

EIQ: 1F

Assessing yourself: 2A

Johari Window: 2F

Tolerance of Ambiguity

A measure of attitude toward change

The higher the score the GREATER INTOLERANCE you possess

NOT related to intelligence

Positive correlation between tolerance of ambiguity and INTERNAL locus of control

Tolerance of Ambiguity Subscales

Novelty = tolerance of unfamiliar information

Complexity = extent to which you are tolerant of multiple, distinctive, unrelated information

Insolubility = extent to which you are tolerant of problems that are very difficult to solve

e.g., many alternative solutions, unavailable information, unrelated problem components

What does a high tolerance mean?

You pay attention to more information, interpret more cues.

Better transmitters of information

More sensitive to internal (non-superficial) characteristics of others when evaluating their performance at work.

More behaviorally adaptive and flexible under ambiguous and overloaded conditions.

Locus of Control

Internal = LOW SCORE

I was the cause of the success or failure of the change.

External = HIGH SCORE

Something or someone else cause the success or failure.

What does having an INTERNAL locus of control mean?

Less alienated from work, more satisfied in jobs, experience less job strain

Are more mobile

More likely to be leaders, more effective leading groups, and perform better in chaotic situations

Engage in more entrepreneurial activity

More active in managing own careers.

Use persuasion &expertise NOT coercion

Bad news about internals:

Less likely to follow directions

Less accurate processing feedback about successes and failures

Locus can SHIFT over time.

Assessing yourself: 1A

Focuses on current and preferred ways of understanding self in relation to others

Why is self awareness such a big deal?

"Know thyself," Socrates

Knowing your strengths and weaknesses is part of being a good leader

Daniel Goleman, "What makes a Leader" Harvard Business Review 1998

What is self awareness?

Knowing your motivations, preferences, personality

How these influence judgment, decisions, interactions with other people

Starting point for effectiveness at work.

Benefits of self awareness:

Understanding yourself, relative to others

Developing and implementing a sound self-improvement program

Setting appropriate life and career goals

Developing relationships with others

Managing others effectively

Increasing productivity

Increasing your overall ability to contribute to organizations, community, family

How to gain self awareness:

Analyzing your own:

Behavior

Personality

Attitudes

Perceptions

Big 5: 1B

What is personality?

Describes relatively stable set of characteristics, tendencies, temperaments that have been formed by inheritance, and by social, cultural, and environmental factors.

Big 5 model

Extroversion

Agreeableness

Friendliness, reserved, cooperative, guarded, flexible/inflexible, trusting, etc.

Emotional stability

React impulsively? Weigh options before acting?

Conscientiousness

Dependable, consistent, can be counted on

Openness to experience

Interest in broadening horizon

Self Monitoring: 1C

Self monitoring at work

Avoid extremes

Don’t want to be high self-monitor solely concerned with what others thing

Don’t want to be a low self monitor not at all interested in what others thing.

Social Mirror: 1D

Stephen Covey

How do others view us?

How are we shaped by others’ opinions of us?

We adopt a view of ourselves based on OTHERS’ views of us.

Learning to accurately read how others view us enhances our "self maps."

Selective perception: 1E

We are bombarded with information

Internet, tv, radio, word of mouth

We constantly FILTER information out

Absorbing and processing only those inputs we think we can handle, or want to handle

Can HINDER communication with others

Keep an open mind, stay "tuned in."

EIQ: 1F

Aristotle

Anyone can become angry – that is easy. But to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose, and in the right way – this is not easy.