When They Win, You Win
by Russ Laraway
The Manager’s job is accomplished by providing Career development to help them discover the long-term vision for their careers and showing them what actions they can take right now that will allow them to make tangible progress towards it.
The Manager's job is accomplished by providing Coaching to improve what’s not working, and to continue what’s working.
Big 3 are: Direction, Coaching, Career
Coaching: Situation => Work => Impact
Select managers for disposition, mindset, and skill in accordance with your organization’s leadership standard and the specific factors that lead to employee engagement and results.
Direction - Determine the destination: Vision. The mountain we are jointly trying to climb, often multiyear, often measurable.
Improve feedback Conversation"I think I’m seeing some behavior that I believe is getting in your way. Are you in a spot when you can hear that right now?”
Coach managers in real-time to help close the gap between teaching and assessment and to help enable behavior change.
Asses managers on how they’re doing relative to that leadership standard and from their employee’s perspective.
Prioritization being an exercise in subtraction, not addition.
Direction - Plan the route: OKRs. Objectives and Key Results — quarterly, semiannual, and at times annual expressions of work at all levels of the company.
Teach managers formally what the leadership standard is, and set the expectation that they will need to adjust their behaviors to meet it.
Good Continue Coaching is Specific + Sincere
Top-performing managers, by performance ratings and quota attainments, outperformed the average of each of the manager effectiveness questions
Career development conversation 2: Articulating a crisp Career Vision Statement answering 3 core questions: 1) What industry? 2) What size company? 3) What role?
Career development Conversation 1: Life/career conversation for assessing values alignment: Understanding the values that have shaped someone's career decisions is essential for helping them define a career vision that is aligned with those values.
Continue feedback Conversation: “I wanted to take a few minutes to call out something I saw you do today that I really liked. You got a sec?”
Coaching - Affirmative feedback aka “continue” feedback aka calling attention to “what’s working”
Direction - Priorities: Weekly and daily expressions of work.
Direction - Create the map: Purpose. Reason for existence, possibly lasts for decades. Often more or less synonymous with a mission.
A simple definition of the job of a manager: 1. Deliver an aligned result 2. Enable the success of the people on their teams
The Manager's job is accomplished by providing Clear direction — not necessarily setting the direction themselves but ensuring that one is set.
3→E↔R The Big 3 measurably and predictably deliver better Engagement and Better Results.
Career development conversation 3: Developing a concrete Career Action Plan that tangibly identifies the next steps that can be taken toward the Career Vision Statement across 4 dimensions: 1) Making changes to the current role 2) Developing your skills formally 3) Identifying the next job 4) Activating your network.