Posts Tagged ‘feedback’

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Turns Out That The Secret To Leading A Team From The Inside Is…

Thursday, September 29th, 2011
Image Credit Leading A Team From The Inside Requires Good Feedback Skills…

Leading A Team From The Inside Requires Good Feedback Skills…

When I work with IT Leaders who are looking for ways to get that next promotion, I tell them that they are going to need to demonstrate leadership. This is an easy thing for me to say and a very hard thing for them to do. Complicating matters even more is the fact that IT managers are finding themselves drafted onto team that they are just members of, not leaders of. What’s an IT manager to do?

The Secret Of Feedback

Here in the 21st Century you’d think that IT managers would have all of the tools available to them that they would need in order to be successful even when they are working as part of a larger team. And although this is true, if you really want to be successful you’re going to need to learn to use the most important tool of all: feedback.

So just what is this thing that we call feedback? Sure we all think that we know what it is, but do we really? Often times the IT managers that I’m working with view feedback as simply remembering to talk with their team members every so often.

Feedback is so much more than that. The key is that feedback, when done correctly, is not something that you do casually or “off the cuff”. At the same time feedback does not need to be done in a formal environment (although it can be).

Feedback is how you as a manager can provide other members of a team that you are working on with a reflection of how they are doing even if they don’t work for you. This is critical feedback because you may be the only person who can provide them with an accurate view of their job performance.

When done correctly feedback provides a mix of both encouragement and correction to your staff. You need to take the time to do things as simple as providing your fellow team members with encouragement (“”Hey, great job on that report.”) as well as suggestions for doing a better job (“Maybe next time you can tone down your voice a bit when you are presenting…”).

How To Use Feedback Correctly

Feedback is a fantastic tool for IT managers to use. It’s free, easy to use, and we are all born with the ability to do it. To manage the team that you are working on effectively, you need to learn to use this tool in a way that will allow you to get the most out of your team.

One of the most effective ways to use feedback that I’ve found is as a way to provide a gentle guiding hand to team members who may be in the process of making a poor decision. As we all know, providing guidance to team members is one a manager’s most important tasks (and one of the hardest to do).

The way that I use feedback to accomplish this is to share stories of past accomplishments. When a member of a team is facing a new challenge, having the manager sit down with the team member and use feedback to have a conversation with them about what the best way to proceed is. Saying something along the lines of “You know, I faced a similar situation like this awhile ago and what I did to solve it was…” This kind of feedback can provide the gentle nudge that is needed to keep your team members on track…

What All Of This Means For You

In the never ending quest to become better IT managers, we are all looking for ways to use our skills to manage our teams. New management fads come and go, however the ones that work are always available for us to use.

One technique that IT managers have used over and over again, is the feedback technique. You need to take the time to have a real conversation with your team members and use the feedback session to really connect with them. Additionally, you can use feedback to help team members make decisions based on situations that you’ve faced in the past.

Being an IT manager has never been an easy job. However, having the feedback technique to use makes your ability to connect with your team and keep them on the right path that much easier.

- Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World IT Management Skills™

Question For You: How often do you think that you should try to have feedback with each employee?

Click here to get automatic updates when The Accidental IT Leader Blog is updated.

P.S.: Free subscriptions to The Accidental IT Leader Newsletter are now available. Learn what you need to know to do the job. Subscribe now: Click Here!

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

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Posted in leadership | No Comments »

IT Managers Know How To Fix Problem Employees Using Feedback

Thursday, March 24th, 2011
You Just Have To Get Them To Listen To You

You Just Have To Get Them To Listen To You

IT Managers who discover that they have a problem employee on their hands need to move quickly to solve their problem. The trick is determining just exactly what you need to do. Sure you could fire them, but then you’d have to go through all of the effort of going out and finding their replacement. It sure seems like coming up with a way to transform a problem employee into a good employee is what you should be looking for.

How To Use The Feedback Technique

You would think that using the feedback technique would be pretty straightforward, right? I mean it’s just sitting down with your problem employee and telling them what they are doing wrong. How hard could that be to do?

If that was all that there was to using the feedback technique, this would be a very short article. It turns out that there is more. The simple fact is that in order for feedback to be successful, you as an IT manager actually need to do a lot both before you have the talk and then during the talk itself.

The first mistake that a lot of IT managers make when trying to use the feedback technique is that they assume that they already know it all. They schedule the meeting with the problem employee and then just show up and start talking.

The problem with this is that there is a good chance that you really don’t know it all. Every situation has a lot of background to it. If your problem employee is not meeting your performance expectations, you need to do some checking in order to verity that you’ve clearly laid out for them what you expected them to do. This means that you’re going to have to go back and dig through your emails and meeting notes to verify both what’s been requested and what’s been promised.

Next you’ve got to make sure that you’ve been measuring the correct things. In order to say that there’s a problem, you’ve got to be able to point to specific things that prove that there’s a real problem. To put it simply, you’re going to need to take a look at the performance objective that you’ve specified and then you’re going to have to take a look at how your are measuring your problem employee against this objective. Double check to make sure that the measurement matches the objective.

How To Handle The Feedback Meeting

When the day arrives for the big meeting, make sure that you handle it correctly. A lot of what determines the outcome of your actions has to do with how you prepare for and handle the meeting.

The first thing that you want to keep in mind is that when it comes to dealing with workplace performance issues, nobody likes a surprise. This means that you can’t spring a feedback meeting on someone. You need to tell them ahead of time that you want to have a feedback session with them, and this is the important part, make sure that you tell them what issue you want to discuss with them. This will allow them to get ready for the talk.

How you start the feedback session makes all of the difference in the world. If you start the meeting in an upbeat, positive way, then your chances of working with the problem employee and creating a solution are greatly increased. Starting in a “we’ve got a problem here” mode or one in which the employee fears for their job will only result in confrontation and denials.

Finally, instead of berating your problem employee for not performing at the level that you want them to, instead take a different approach. Take the time to explain why their behavior is having a negative impact both on you and on their fellow coworkers. By showing them how their actions are holding back the team, you have your best chance of making them want to change how they are going about doing their work.

What All Of This Means For You

As an IT Manager, one of your primary responsibilities is to make sure that your team is maximizing their contributions. If you’ve got a problem employee, then you’ve got a problem that you’ve got to solve.

The feedback technique provides a quick and simple way to go about starting this transformation process. However, it’s not something that you can do casually – you are going to have to both prepare to do it as well as treating it like a project.

The benefits of using the feedback technique to turn around a problem employee are numerous. It’s well worth the time that it takes to work with an employee that’s already on the team instead of having to fire them and then start over. Feedback is what good IT managers do well!

- Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World IT Management Skills™

Question For You: What signs do you think that you should look for in a problem employee that would show that the feedback technique is working?

Click here to get automatic updates when The Accidental IT Leader Blog is updated.

P.S.: Free subscriptions to The Accidental IT Leader Newsletter are now available. It’s your career. Subscribe now: Click Here!

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

You’d think that to be a good IT manager all that you’d have to be good at is managing people and understanding technology. Most of the time you’d be correct; however, it’s the times when this isn’t the case that far too many IT managers drop the ball.

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Posted in employee | 5 Comments »

IT Managers Need To Play The Role Of Coach If They Want To Win The Game

Thursday, March 10th, 2011
Image Credit
Sometimes your staff needs a coach, not an IT manager…

Sometimes your staff needs a coach, not an IT manager…

IT managers understand that they are responsible for conducting performance appraisals with their team every so often. What many IT managers don’t realize is that they are also responsible for what comes next: coaching…

What Is Coaching And Why Do You Have To Do It?

Coaching is not managing. Instead, it’s a two-way activity in which you work with your team member to help them improve in some very specific way.

Your coaching activities are based on a goal that a member of your team wants to achieve. This goal was identified during the employee’s performance review; however, as their manager you realize that they are not going to be able to achieve this goal by themselves.

This is where coaching comes in. When you are engaged in coaching, you are sharing your experiences and knowledge with your employee in order to show them how they can accomplish their goal. A critical part of coaching is that the employee must want to be coached – you can never force someone to accept your coaching input.

The benefits of coaching when done correctly are immense. An employee’s job satisfaction and motivation can skyrocket when they feel that they are getting personalized attention from you. Additionally, by spending the time with an employee coaching them, you may be preparing them to take on management responsibilities later on.

How Does An IT Manager Coach Their Staff?

The first step in starting to coach an employee is to take the time to observe their actions. The goal of doing this is to allow you to understand what strengths and weaknesses they currently have.

You should also carefully watch how they interact with their coworkers. Taking some of these coworkers aside and finding out what they think of the employee who will be coached can also reveal important insights.

Your next step has to be to sit down and have a discussion with the employee. The purpose of this discussion will be to share with them the results of your observations.

You must be careful to make sure that everything that you say is based on what you saw. You’ll want to describe the behaviors that you saw and what their impacts were.

During this type of discussion what you hear from the employee will be more important than what you say. You need to work very carefully to be an active listener.

When you are an active listener you must maintain eye contact with the employee and repeat what they’ve just said in order to make sure that you hear them correctly. These types of behaviors will show the employee that you are interested in what they have to say.

During a coaching session you also have to be asking the right questions. By asking questions you are showing the employee that you are interested in what they have to say and want more information from them.

When you ask a question, you want to ask an open-ended question. This type of question can’t be answered by a simple “yes” or “no” – it requires a more detailed response from your employee.

Finally, the result of any coaching session needs to be an action plan. This is a plan that you and the employee come up with that will allow them to achieve their goal. This type of plan does not always have to be written down, but it should be created by the employee and it should contain clear goals and a timeframe that both of you agree to.

What Does All Of This Mean For You?

Good IT managers understand that their responsibility to develop their staff includes coaching the team members who need extra assistance to become better. By taking the time to coach team members, IT managers can help them both improve their job performance as well as boost their job satisfaction.

In order to be an effective coach, an IT manager needs to start by taking the time to observe what the employee is doing right and where improvements are needed. Next discussing what needs to be done with the employee and doing a good job of listening is what will allow a plan of action to be created. Finally coaching can occur as you use the information that you’ve collected to offer constructive feedback.

Coaching is one of the most important tasks that you’ll do as an IT manager. Take the time to study how to do it right, and you’ll have developed the skills that you need to turn a good team into a great team.

- Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World IT Management Skills™

Question For You: How soon after completing a performance evaluation do you think that you should have your first coaching session with a team member?

Click here to get automatic updates when The Accidental IT Leader Blog is updated.

P.S.: Free subscriptions to The Accidental IT Leader Newsletter are now available. It’s your career. Subscribe now: Click Here!

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

Not all IT employees are created equal. As an IT manager you are going to have some great employees on your team – and then you are going to have the others. Every bunch of apples has at least one bad one in it, and every IT manager finds that he or she has a problem employee somewhere in their midst.

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Posted in coaching | 3 Comments »

Can IT Managers Do A Good Job Of Performance Appraisals?

Thursday, February 17th, 2011
Image Credit
How Should IT Managers Grade Their Employees?

How Should IT Managers Grade Their Employees?

Performance appraisals are just about the worst part of an IT manager’s job. You don’t like doing them, your team doesn’t like receiving them. However, as per company policy it’s a required part of the job. Considering how critical they are, you would think that you would have received a great deal of training on how best to do them. I’m going to bet that this isn’t the case…

The Purpose Of The Appraisal

If managers hate doing them and IT employees hate receiving them, then why do we even bother with performance appraisals? Love ‘em or hate ‘em, the reason that performance appraisals are done is pretty simple – it’s the way the company is able to check to see how employees are doing in accomplishing their assigned goals.

More often than not, performance appraisals are done at least once a year. The reason that employees don’t like them is because they always seem to fall into one of two different camps. Either the employee is going to be told that they are doing a wonderful job and have exceeded all expectations (no new information there), or they are going to be told that they are not living up to expectations (and who wants to hear that?)

IT managers have never really enjoyed the performance appraisal process. There are two main reasons for this. The first is that nobody ever enjoys having to sit down with people that are part of your team and telling them that they are not doing a good job. The other reason is that just by their very nature, performance appraisals take a lot of time. There is the time that is required to get ready to do them, the time that it takes to meet with each employee and have a meaningful conversation, and then the post-meeting documentation that needs to be done. Who has that kind of time?

Why Performance Appraisals Are A Good Thing

From an IT manager’s point-of-view, a performance appraisal is a useful tool for identifying employee performance problems early on. They also serve as a reminder for both managers and employees as to just exactly what everyone should be working on – something that can be forgotten in the day-to-day process of doing work.

The reason that performance appraisals are a good thing is because ultimately an IT manager’s career success depends on what his / her people are able to accomplish. It’s how you manage these employees that will determine how far your career will go. This makes taking the time to do appraisals correctly well worth the effort.

Conducting appraisals should be seen as what it really is, an opportunity to communicate with employees. In addition to performance related issues, an appraisal give an IT manager the opportunity to discuss:

  • Goals: this is your opportunity to let your team members know what goals they should be working on and get feedback from them to confirm that they understand what needs to be done.

  • Feedback: : one of the side benefits of providing your staff with a frank evaluation of their performance is that it will almost always result in a boost in their workplace productivity.

  • Ranking: : not all employees are created equal. Going through a performance appraisal process allows you to evaluate each employee and make decisions on career related items such as pay, personal development, and potential promotions.

  • Legal Issues: : if a team member ends up eventually being fired, all manner of legal issues can quickly pop up. If you have a clearly documented set of performance reviews, then if a lawsuit requires it, the company will have your reviews to fall back on.

What All Of This Means For You

Performance appraisals have a long history of being disliked: IT managers don’t like doing them and IT employees don’t like receiving them. The reality is that they are both necessary and useful.

IT managers can use the reviews to ensure that they have clear communication with their team. Important tasks like clarifying goals that should be worked on, providing feedback, and creating a paper trail just in case there are legal issues in the future are all benefits of doing reviews well.

No, doing staff evaluations won’t help the company move forward any faster. However, it will help you develop your staff so that they can grow in both their current jobs and their careers. In the end, isn’t that what being an IT manager is all about?

- Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World IT Management Skills™

Question For You: How often do you think an IT manager should meet with the team to do a performance appraisal?

Click here to get automatic updates when The Accidental IT Leader Blog is updated.

P.S.: Free subscriptions to The Accidental IT Leader Newsletter are now available. It’s your career. Subscribe now: Click Here!

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

On top of everything else that you have to do as an IT manager, there are those performance appraisals. You don’t want to do them, your staff doesn’t want to do them, and yet the company insists on everyone doing them. As long as you’ve got to sit down and evaluate the performance of each member of your staff, it sure seems like you may as well get the most out of it. I’m willing to bet that nobody ever told you how to do a performance appraisal the right way. Well, that’s all going to change now because I’m going to share 4 secrets to getting the most out of performance appraisals with your staff…

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Posted in performance | 1 Comment »

Maximum Mentoring: How To Get The Most From The Relationship

Thursday, July 29th, 2010
Image Credit It Takes Work To Get The Most Out Of A Mentoring Relationship

It Takes Work To Get The Most Out Of A Mentoring Relationship

Finding a mentor can be a real challenge for any IT Leader – they seem to be few and far between these days. However, if you think that when you get someone to agree to show you the ropes that the hard part is over, you’ve got another thing coming…

Get A Backup (Mentor)

The one thing that none of us seem to have enough of these days is time. The same is going to be true of anyone that you find who is willing to act as a mentor for you.

Since you know going in to the relationship that they may not always have enough time to work with you, it makes sense that you’d pick out (or have them recommend) a backup mentor. Having multiple mentors means that the load on any one given mentor will be less and yet you’ll still get the guidance that you are looking to get out of the relationship.

Be Careful Who You Pick

Just to make sure that you get off on the right foot, you need to be careful who you pick to be your mentor. It’s a two-way street, but it needs to be a good thing for both of you.

One of the biggest pitfalls seems to be those situations where you “get assigned” a mentor. That’s never a good idea – you may not want them to be your mentor and they may not want to be your mentor. Whenever possible, make sure that both parties are willing to enter into the mentoring relationship of their own free will.

Lay Out Some Ground Rules

The key to any good relationship is for both sides to both agree to a set of ground rules. We’re not talking about a legal document that you have to sign, but rather a set of agreements that you can both live with. No lawyers need be involved.

Key agreements that you need to work out in the beginning include such things as what you are looking for, what your mentor has to offer, and such mundane things as how often you are going to meet.

It’s All About Feedback

The question that will keep coming up over and over again is “how am I doing?” Both the mentor and the person being mentored are going to be looking for answers to this question.

One important feedback channel needs to be from the mentor to the person being mentored’s boss. This type of communication allows any issues that show up to be identified early on and a solution created quickly.

What All Of This Means For You

A mentoring relationship could be the “secret sauce” that could move your career to the next level. However, once set up you can’t let your mentoring relationship run on autopilot.

In order to make your mentoring relationship successful, you need to know what you have to do. Make sure that you have a backup to your primary mentor, pick the right mentor in the first place, have ground rules, and create ways so that both of you can provide feedback.

A good mentoring relationship will save your career a great deal of time. Yes, you’ll have to make an effort to get the most out of relationship, but if you do then you’ll find that a good mentoring relationship will allow your career to move along much faster than it is today…

- Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World IT Management Skills™

Question For You: How many backup mentors do you think that you should have – is just one enough?

Click here to get automatic updates when The Accidental IT Leader Blog is updated.

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

If you’ve been reading any of the trade press over the last couple of years, you have undoubtedly run across story after story that talked about the next big thing in IT: on-demand computing. I’m willing to bet that members of your IT team may be clambering to take your next project “into the cloud”. Sure it sounds sexy, but should you do it…?

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Posted in mentor | 1 Comment »

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