Skills – CH 3

Building Momentum in a New Job

Consistency Counts
- The best way to build momentum as a new manager is to make it clear to
everyone what you stand for. Then follow through.
- With a written credo as your reference, you can always remind yourself of
the big picture: what you’re trying to accomplish and how you intend to get
the job done
- Most employees respond well to straight-talking managers.
- It’s fine to say “I don’t know,” as long as you ask some fact-gathering
questions and show interest in formulating a serious answer.
3 rules to follow:
1. Don’t improvise when you can repeat yourself.
o Provide the identical response as many times as necessary
2. Don’t oversell or overpromise.
o Learn to consistently underpromise and overdeliver.
o Make modest commitments you’re sure you can keep; then, if you
wind up exceeding others’ expectations, you’ll be a hero.
3. Don’t fake it.
o Never speak authoritatively on a subject you know nothing about.
o There’s no better way to build credibility than to acknowledge your
limits and show a willingness to learn along with your employees
- A final point about consistency: don’t play favorites. Treat every individual
the same; Drill home the same messages, give the same answers, and
express the same goals
Love at First Sight?
- By making a favorable first impression with your employees, you make
everything that follows much easier
- you want to win over your staff from the beginning.
- With careful planning, you can make all the right moves.
Staging the First Meeting
- If you want to get off to a running start with your employees, here are
three words of advice: don’t wing it.
- Plan every detail so that you create a supportive, nonthreatening
atmosphere.
- Prepare by making a list of questions that your employees may ask you.
- Include issues that individuals have already raised with you one-on-one.
- Plan responses to each question, noting key points you want to express.
- Test yourself by rehearsing your answers
- How to structure the meeting room: Arrange the seats in a circle so that no
one appears more senior than anyone else, including you.
- Remember: your employees will be nervous, too.
- Your short introduction should consist of no more than the basics: your
relevant experience and your goals and expectations for your team
- Begin the meeting by introducing yourself briefly. Then ask employees to
introduce themselves by isolating a skill that they bring to their job.
- When you invite your employees to speak, don’t keep tugging the
conversation back to you
- Keep the personal reflections to a minimum, unless you’re asked point-
blank by an employee to share your views on a particular topic
Score a Quick Win
- In the course of your first meeting with employees, you should begin to
identify the problems they care about most
- There’s no better way to establish momentum as a new manager than to
show that you’re responsive to your team’s concerns
- Explore the benefits of enacting a Practical Process Improvement (PPI)
program—a series of steps for work teams to continuously enhance
operations, reduce waste, and maximize efficiency
Ways you to endear yourself to employees:
 Remove long-standing irritants
o Employees love having can-do mavericks for managers
 Simplify their lives
o Find a way to make your employees’ jobs easier.
 Assign team leader to recommend solutions

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 o Avoid acting like a politician who’s scared of making a tough decision
by distributing a precise timetable to each team leader
- In your eagerness to please your new staff, beware of giving too much
away.
- The whole point of scoring quick wins is to generate momentum and assert
your leadership.
- You must still choose your battles and guard against overindulging your
employees.
- If you give them too much too soon, you will set yourself up to fail over the
long run.
Unclog “Input Channels”
- To avoid falling into a black hole of uncertainty, you need to flood yourself
with feedback from all sides.
- By collecting helpful feedback on how you’re doing, you can make
adjustments before it’s too late.
- Input channels = Ways in which you can get feedback from your peers,
bosses, and employees on your performance as a manager.
- To establish input channels, you must make it easy for others throughout
your organization to give their input
Here are three ways to probe for information on how you’re doing:

1. Formalize the process.

- An advantage of gathering feedback from multiple sources is you can spot
trends and address them sooner rather than later.
2. Seek casual advice
- show plenty of interest in your employees’ ideas and opinions
- The more you get them to share their thoughts, the more likely they’ll open
up to you about your performance
3. Trace changes in behavior

- ASK THE RIGHT QUESTION: Wording counts when you seek feedback. By
wording your question more broadly, you indicate that you expect a longer,
more thorough response

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 - Accept feedback in a graceful manner; the worst response is defensiveness
- The more input channels you establish, the more prudent risks you’ll take
- You need to expand your repertoire by finding new people management
tools, not just rely on what’s worked when you were on your own.

Are You Ready for Anything?

- By anticipating what can go wrong and devising a strategy to guard against
it, you impose at least some order on an otherwise disorderly universe of
work-related mishaps.
OUTSIDER HELP: A great way to anticipate crises that can derail your early
progress is to interview key vendors, suppliers, and consultants who are familiar
with the job you’re starting.
- As an added precaution, submit a list of challenges that you expect to face
in your new job. Review this list with your boss
- Finally, train your employees to anticipate problems and address them in
advance.
- To increase everyone’s preparedness, ask your employees what kind of
crises they found to be the most disruptive before you arrived.

New Manager’s Checklist for Chapter 3

 Send clear, consistent signals in your early months as manager. Express
your core principles and key goals and stick to them.
 If you don’t know something, admit it. Employees will appreciate your
honesty, and you’ll earn credibility.
 Make a strong first impression by holding a staff meeting on your first day
as manager. Leave plenty of time for employees to introduce themselves
and discuss their strengths.
 Chalk up a quick win that endears you to your employees. Examples include
removing a much-hated bureaucratic process or arranging for workers to
have better tools or equipment.
 Make it easy for your employees to give you feedback. Give them many
ways to communicate their input to you and respond to it gracefully.

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  Put out fires before they begin by anticipating what can go wrong and
devising appropriate strategies.