IS THIS WHAT YOU CALL FEEDBACK?

‘You little b*****d. What kind of job do you call this? You’ve made a complete f*****g mess of these clips. Get them fixed you useless little b*****d and I need them today!’

These were some of the first words I heard on the first day of my working life. I’m glad to say they weren’t directed at me personally but at one of my hapless fellow apprentices in the training department of a Glasgow engineering factory. The person handing out the verbal abuse was our beloved supervisor, Tommy.

Of course, Tommy wouldn’t regard his tirade as verbal abuse, it was just the way he communicated his instructions to us when he was unhappy. Come to think of it, he communicated the same way when he was happy.

In my eyes, Tommy had replaced my schoolteacher as the person who kept me right, told me what to do and was responsible for my engineering education.

I went home on that first day near to tears and desperately regretting the lack of study that would have taken me on to university or college. However, college or not, I would still have to face, at some time in my life, the world of work and the people who would manage and supervise me. Maybe not every supervisor would be like Tommy; sad to say, many were.

So what did you learn today?

I spent five years in that engineering factory completing my apprenticeship and one year plotting my escape. It would be wrong to say I hated the place as there was a sort of natural acceptance that this was something I had to do, it was ‘my work’.

However, it’s also fair to say that I didn’t learn much about engineering during these years. If you placed me anywhere near a lathe or a milling machine tomorrow I’d probably end up removing parts of my body.

Tommy’s first instruction to me on day one was ‘Goanmakyerselahama’. This was translated for me by one of my fellow apprentices as ‘Go and find someone to show you how to make a hammer.’ Excuse me! No blueprint to work to, no instruction and any chance of positive feedback on my progress? Somehow I don’t think so; it was just a matter of get on with it, and if it wasn’t right – ‘I’ll tell you about it.’ Some of my fellow apprentices spent their first six months trying to make a hammer working mainly by trial and error; and as you’ll probably have gathered, there was a lot of trial and error.

You need a ‘y’ to get on around here

During my five years I was moved around several departments to experience all aspects of mechanical engineering. I met several supervisors who all seemed to have a name like Tommy or Davy or Bobby. It appeared you had to have a name ending in ‘y’ to get promoted in this company. I was therefore pleased when an apprentice called Scud nicknamed me Stormy. If you want to know how that came about, check out my surname.

I remember one supervisor called ‘Davy’ who would arrive in the inspection department where I worked every morning dead on seven minutes past eight and then stride the length of the department. He walked up the middle between the benches where we slaved, swivelling his head from side to side and saying, ‘Good morning – good morning – good morning.’ He’d then disappear into his tiny cubicle and we’d never see him again all day. I suppose in his eyes he saw himself as a great communicator and a real people person. On the odd occasion that I entered his cubicle he would eye me up and down and then ask me what part of the factory I worked in. I took pains to explain that I was one of his devoted team.

In the inspection department I was assigned to work with a more experienced engineer and he told me what to do. Who told him what to do, I haven’t a clue. I think Davy just communicated his instructions by telepathy. Oh, and by the way, this more experienced engineer I worked with was called Charley; he was obviously on his way up.

We really don’t want to leave

I had a spell in the fitting-out workshop where we assembled components for submarine periscopes. They assigned me to another experienced engineer called John. Obviously his promotion prospects were limited until he got a ‘y’ on the end of his name. John was a real ‘yes sir, no sir’ type of guy. He did what he was told, kept his head down and got on with the job. I can remember him saying to me one day, ‘Watch it son, here comes the boss, keep your head down and look busy.’ At that point a senior manager would pass through the workshop in his three-piece suit, casting his eye over us servile peasants. It struck me even at that young age that there was something not quite right about this.

On the stroke of 4.30 in the afternoon the bell would ring, they’d open the gates and the factory would empty in thirty seconds. And woe betide you if you didn’t run – you’d probably be crushed in the rush for freedom. There were a handful of disabled people who worked in this factory and they were allowed to leave ten minutes before the rest of us in case they were trampled by the able-bodied.

People in this environment only did what they were told to do and no more. They reluctantly trundled into work each morning, did their job and got out as quickly as they could at night.

Having fun certainly wasn’t on the agenda so people looked to lighten up their day any way they could. I used to slip off to the men’s room as often as I could to read my latest edition of Mickey Spillane.

Some people even resorted to causing trouble or some form of sabotage just for a laugh. One day I inadvertently wrecked a large lathe I was working on. We were all on a bonus system based on the number of components we could turn out in a given period. This meant getting the component to be machined into the lathe as quickly as possible, machining it and getting it out again. I was in the habit of slipping the fast-forward lever into reverse so as to bring the lathe to a halt almost immediately. This was standard practice for us all, but for me this day it all went wrong. The gearbox exploded with an almighty bang and I was left trying to explain what happened. This of course gave me a great deal of credibility with a certain section of my workmates as they thought I’d done it on purpose. That must have cost the company a great deal of money.

These five years were my introduction to work and managers, my initial programming as to what management was all about. From what I could see, a manager or supervisor told you what to do and occasionally checked to see if you were doing it right. They never told you how to do it right and they reprimanded you when you got it wrong.

They gave the impression that managing was all about dealing with people who didn’t want to work, who wanted to do as little as possible and who would cause trouble whenever they had the chance.

These managers weren’t bad people; they just managed the way they thought best, which was probably very similar to the way they were treated by their manager.

Maybe sales managers will be better

A sales job was what I wanted: master of my own destiny – smart suit – company car – expense account – clean hands. I was delighted to be out of that engineering factory and starting a much better job as a sales representative. A bit of me thought it would be much different as far as managers were concerned. I was leaving an engineering factory to work in a more business type of environment; surely the managers would be more sophisticated and hopefully friendlier?

However, for me it was pretty much more of the same. ‘I’m the boss, I tell you what to do and if you don’t do it right you’re in trouble.’

If you’ve ever worked in sales then I’m sure that you’ve experienced the ‘macho’ style that is prevalent in many organisations: ‘Get out and get the order and don’t let anyone stand in your way.’

I had three successful years in my first sales job selling electrical appliances into department stores. My manager there was a bit of a softy and gave me an easy time. He wasn’t the kind of manager who was comfortable giving feedback whether it was good news or not so good. This meant that I was never sure if I was doing it right or if I could be doing it better. So, as with the engineering apprenticeship, I just learned the selling business as I went along.

How not to do it

In an attempt to further my sales career and use my engineering background, I joined a company in the welding consumables field. My job was to visit maintenance engineers in their workshops, demonstrate welding equipment, get the order and try not to set myself on fire. I passed through the initial four-week training course with flying colours and was assigned to work for an area supervisor called Peter. I learned so much from Peter, mainly how not to supervise people. I can remember thinking at the time, ‘When I become a manager or a supervisor, I will never treat anyone the way Peter treats me.’

Peter demanded that I phone him every evening with details of how many customers I’d seen, how many demonstrations I’d done and how many orders I’d taken. The results I reported were never good enough and the successes were never recognised. How I hated him and his stupid toupee. I used to dread the evening telephone calls and I left home every morning feeling a huge pressure to perform better; quite naturally, this didn’t help me sell any better.

Some days Peter would make calls with me on customers and afterwards, in the car, he would tell me all the things I’d done wrong.

As you’d probably expect, I hated this job and spent most of my time plotting how to push Peter under a bus and how to get a new job. It also had the effect of seriously undermining my confidence. Although I’d been in sales for four years, I was starting to think that perhaps I wasn’t good enough and maybe it wasn’t for me.

I was eventually accepted for a new sales job and I remember vividly the joy of writing my letter of resignation.

The next day I was summoned to a meeting with John the area manager, Peter’s boss. ‘Why are you leaving Alan? You’re doing so well, we don’t want you to go and you have a great future here.’ You could have knocked me down with a feather. I’d been under the impression that I’d probably be sacked pretty soon for being so useless. Of course, as you’ll realise, I wasn’t useless, it was just another case of bad management.

I went on to be successful in other sales companies and was eventually promoted into an area manager’s role. However, in my sales career I reported to many senior managers, many of whom didn’t get the best out of me.

Is it better now?

You’re probably thinking that I’m painting a very black picture and perhaps your experience of managers is much better than mine. You may also feel that we’ve come a long way since the days that I describe and that managers are much better now. And anyway, let’s face it, they wouldn’t get away with as much nowadays. However, many senior managers today are in my age group and were brought up in similar work environments to my own. This means that they’ve received the same ‘programs’ about how to manage people.

I believe managers nowadays are better but by no means good enough.

I continually hear stories from friends and other contacts about how they’re managed and it doesn’t make good listening.

My friend Martin, who works for a US software company, was telling me recently about his Vice President of Sales. Apparently, this VP likes to run a question-and-answer session at his sales meetings. He has $1, $5 and $10 questions that he fires at his team and if you get the question right you win the money. Woe betide you if you get the question wrong. You’re then humiliated in front of the team and you end up owing the VP the money. The VP obviously thinks that putting his team under pressure is a lot of fun and a good way for them to learn. So I asked Martin what he and his colleagues thought about this. ‘I’m used to it’, he said. ‘I’ve been around a long time and I’ve been through this stuff before. However, the VP’s overall way of running things and his “macho” style is starting to have a negative effect on the team. In fact, I’m starting to look for another job.’

How much does it cost the organisation?

People will often tell me about hard-driving managers they’ve known who ride roughshod over every one of their team but always achieve their target. The suggestion is that these managers must be successful because they achieve their business targets.

I’ve worked for managers like that; however, I’m also very much aware of the high turnover of people that those managers have to deal with. These managers are leading people who spend their evenings and weekends applying for new jobs. The team members are also not giving of their best when they’re at work. As a result the manager has to drive them harder to stay on top of them. It’s a vicious circle.

These managers also spend too much of their time and the company’s money interviewing and recruiting new people.

In the first week of my sales job with the welding company I described earlier I was constantly hearing from the customers, ‘Not another new salesman from your company.’ They would then tell me how the salesman I was replacing had ‘bad mouthed’ the company and the managers before he left.

That organisation was relatively successful, but how much more successful could it have been with a happy and stable team? And think how easy its managers made it for their competitors to steal their business.

So much of what we call management consists in making it difficult for people to work.

Peter F. Drucker (1909–, American-Austrian management consultant)

THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES

For the past fourteen years I’ve been running seminars for staff and managers across a whole range of organisations and businesses. There’s a lot of discussion going on in these seminars and I constantly hear complaints from staff about their managers and the organisations they work for.

When I run seminars for managers, many of them complain about their team, about the manager above them and, again, the organisation they work for.

It doesn’t matter whether I’m working with a multinational organisation or a small company, the complaints are much the same.

The Gallup Management Journal conducted a survey among US workers aged eighteen or older and I quote from its report:

24.7 million, or 19%, are what we call actively disengaged. This term describes people who not only fail to be enthralled by their work but are fundamentally disconnected from it. Actively disengaged workers tend to be less productive and report being less loyal to their companies, more stressed and less secure in their work. They miss more days and are less satisfied with their personal lives.

In its research the Gallup organisation also discovered that 70 per cent of people don’t leave their job – they leave their manager.

The Society for Human Resource Management reports that in terms of productivity, the United States is performing at 62 per cent capacity. It also reports that the cost of paid unscheduled absenteeism rose sharply in 2002 to $755 per employee. Employers have stated that they earmark 5.1 per cent of a company’s budget to pay for unscheduled absenteeism.

In the UK research by the Confederation of British Industry suggests that workplace absence is on the rise for the first time in five years. In 2006 we were off sick on average for 7.2 days, up from 6.8 the previous year. It costs UK businesses £11.75 billion a year. The CBI also estimates that 15% of all illness is due to people taking days off when they are not really ill.

A recent report in the Gallup Management Journal estimates that disengaged employees in Singapore are costing the country $4.9 billion annually, the root of disengagement being blamed on poor management.

So a lot of people are unhappy at work and therefore they tend to:

• Take more days off (one in three staff ‘sick days’ are not due to illness);
• Spend a lot of time looking for other jobs;
• Create internal problems;
• Lose sales;
• Let customers down.

There is too much evidence to suggest that managers are still not doing a good enough job with their people. The ironic thing is that the middle manager is the one who suffers most from unhappy staff.

I’m on your side

Now I know you’re thinking about that figure of 70 per cent quoted above as the people who leave their manager and about the people who’ve left your team. You’re likely thinking, ‘The ones who left my team are probably in the 30 per cent and I’m doing my best as a manager.’ However, you also have to ask yourself if you’re suffering from any of the other factors listed above.

I know from speaking to managers that a great deal of their time is spent dealing with issues that are a result of staff absence, having to recruit new people and deal with staff and customer complaints.

You may also be feeling that I’m having a real go at you, but I believe we all have to bite the bullet sometimes for our own good. I believe many managers are making life hard for themselves mainly because they don’t know how else to manage their people. They are also giving themselves a great deal of stress.

I know this because I’ve been there, I’ve made the mistakes and I’ve got the T-shirt. In my close contact with managers in various organisations I still see them making mistakes and conducting themselves in a way that makes their job harder.

Middle managers and supervisors are the most important people in any organisation. You’re the person who has to get the best out of your team every day. However, your team’s performance is determined by the relationship they have with you. I did the job of a manager for fifteen years and I know what’s involved. You’re the one stuck in the middle between the team member and your manager and that can be a hard sandwich to digest.

The way you treat your staff is the way they’ll treat your customers.

Karl Albrecht

We’re going on to look at what the successful managers do and what you can do to get even better and make your life a lot easier.

I’ve been talking about managers and supervisors up until now but I believe we need to think about ourselves more as Team Leaders. It doesn’t matter whether you’re in sales or customer service or in a production situation, you’re responsible for a team of people and you’re expected to achieve results through them.

However, for the purposes of this book I’m going to continue to use the word manager. I’m also going to switch genders all the time so that I’m not accused of being sexist.

So before we go on to look at how we get better, let’s consider what we’re up against.

WHY DON’T WE DO IT WELL?

The majority of managers that I’ve worked for and with were mediocre. Some of them were very poor and only one or two could be described as good. This isn’t a personal attack on these people, it’s just what I’ve experienced as a team member and colleague of these people. If you look back over your career then I’m sure you’ve had similar experiences. We’re going to take a look at the good guys in a short while but for the moment let’s consider why there are so many poor and mediocre managers. I believe that there are four reasons:

• 1.Because it’s such a difficult job.
• 2.Nobody shows you what to do or gives you the right training.
• 3.The media and our culture send the wrong message.
• 4.Some people don’t have what it takes to be a manager.

Why is it so difficult?

Managing, supervising, being a Team Leader is the hardest job in the world and I’ll tell you why.

Imagine what it’s like to drive a car. You turn the key to start the engine, select drive or the gear you want and press the accelerator. The car then moves off. If you want to turn you rotate the steering wheel to the right or left, and to stop you press the brake pedal. All this was quite difficult when you first learned to drive but its easy now. If I asked you to drive my car, you might take a short while to get used to it, but you’d immediately be able to drive down to the supermarket and get me some food.

However, if I was to tell you that my car was different from any other you’d driven then I’m sure you’d have a problem. ‘You don’t start it with a key, there’s a little switch somewhere. When you engage forward gear it might go backwards and if you turn the wheel left it might go right but sometimes it goes left. And the accelerator is what stops it and the brake pedal makes it go faster but not every day. You’ll get used to it in time; I’ve lived with it for years.’

Managing people is pretty much like this. Every model is different and you need different skills to ‘drive’ each one. Just because pressing the gas pedal on one model makes it go forwards, doesn’t mean to say that the next one will be the same; it might, but it might not.

The problem arises because we ‘learn’ on certain models and then find to our annoyance that the others are different. ‘Why can’t they all be the same?’ we scream in frustration.

Human beings are the most complex and complicated pieces of ‘equipment’ you’ll ever have to deal with. Many of them have similarities but every one of them is different and they all work in a slightly different way. Your job as a manager is to get these complex humans working as efficiently as possible, but there’s no one around to show you what to do and there’s no instruction manual.

What also complicates the relationship between the manager and the team is this – human beings are driven totally by their emotions. We all make decisions based on our emotions and then try to justify our decision logically. Let me give you an example of what I mean. If you were to ask a friend why they’d bought an expensive Mercedes they would probably tell you it was because of the superb German engineering. They might also tell you that the decision was based on the high resale value. Well let me tell you now, it was none of these things – they bought the Mercedes to impress you and the neighbours. Their decision to buy that car is based solely on their emotions.

What’s logic got to do with it?

When managers face a problem with one of their team they try to solve it logically and then they wonder why it all goes wrong.

Imagine that one of your team announces, ‘I’m leaving this job. I’ve found another job doing the same thing and it pays more money.’ You realise that you don’t want to lose this team member so you approach your boss and agree an increase in salary. However, when you offer the increase in salary the team member turns you down. So you think logically, ‘What’s wrong with this person? Why are they leaving?’

They might be telling you that they’re leaving for more money. However, that now doesn’t seem to be the reason. It might be that they’re leaving because they feel you just don’t care about them.

I’ve seen this happen so often with the good guys in a team. Because they’re one of the high achievers who don’t give the manager any problem they get left alone too much. What happens then is they feel that the manager doesn’t care about them so they leave.

Managing people is a hugely difficult job. A degree in psychology would help but if you haven’t got that then stay with me – I’ve got the answers.

Trust me – I’m a manager

The second reason I gave you for poor managers relates to being shown what to do. Imagine the following scenario. You pay a visit to your doctor one day and in the course of the conversation he lets it slip that he has no formal medical qualification. However, everything’s okay because he’s been involved in the ‘doctoring’ business for years, had lots of experience and has read several books on the subject. I bet you’d be out of there like a shot.

Imagine another situation where you’re looking to employ an auto mechanic to look after your company vehicles. One applicant tells you how good they are at fixing cars and trucks. They been doing it for years – the only thing is that they haven’t served an apprenticeship or had any other formal training. Would you give them the job? Of course you wouldn’t.

So why do so many organisations trust their most important and most expensive asset, their employees, to someone who has had no training in how to deal with people?

People most often get promoted into a manager’s job because they know the business they’re in and they know the products and the industry. Sometimes they also get promoted because they get on with the team and, ironically, in some cases because they don’t. (Some senior managers believe that you shouldn’t promote someone who is too ‘close’ to the team.)

When appointing a manager, organisations traditionally look for someone who can do all the ‘management’ things. All the technical skills required to do the job such as planning, cost control, resource allocation, interviewing, solving problems and dealing with customers.

Management training in many organisations usually addresses the activities listed above. Managers go on courses for time management, report writing and health and safety issues, among others. However, none of these activities helps the manager to motivate their team.

Before you start writing to me I’m aware that some organisations are running courses on leadership skills and management of change; more ‘people skills’ type of programmes. I know this because I’m running some of these courses. However, I also know that the people who come on my courses are often hearing for the first time about how to motivate their people. Some of them have been managers for over twenty years and have never had any people skills training.

It’s often just taken for granted by senior managers in an organisation that managers will have the ‘natural’ skills to motivate, coach, give feedback and get the best out of their people. Tiger Woods has the natural skill to play golf but he’s been listening to trainers and coaches for years and he still does.

I didn’t get any training when I started as a manager. I was left to get on with it and find out how to motivate my team. It worked out okay for the first few years but it was only when I started formal studies in motivation techniques at the Open University in the UK that my management success really took off. I’ve been reading books and studying successful managers for twenty-five years. That’s why I’ve written this book and I know it will help you.

This book is going to show how to develop your skills, and also show you how to ‘train’ your manager.

It must be true, I saw it on TV

My third reason for poor managers blames the media and our culture for sending the wrong messages.

We’ve all heard the old cliché ‘nice guys don’t finish first’, and that has a huge impact on how managers deal with their people. We’re led to believe that successful managers are tough, courageous, ‘no nonsense’ people. And if you’re weak or soft with your team, then you’ll get walked on and taken advantage of.

A manager will often look at ‘successful’ managers in business or sport to try to understand what makes them successful. The media often portrays these people as tough guys who drive their people by the force of their personality, shouts and threats – no wimps allowed.

As I write, the UK edition of the television show, The Apprentice, has just started a new series on BBC Two. The US edition is about to start another season on NBC. In case you haven’t seen it, it’s the show that pits the hungriest business brains against each other to see which one is worthy of a six-figure salary and the chance to become Sir Alan Sugar’s ‘apprentice’. In the US, Donald Trump is the man the contestants have to impress.

Both of these high-flying self-made billionaires are portrayed as tough, no-nonsense individuals. Their catch phrase is ‘Your Fired!’

Jack Welch, the ex-CEO of General Electric, writes in his book Jack:

Strong managers who make tough decisions to cut jobs provide the only true job security in today’s world. Weak managers are the problem. Weak managers destroy jobs.

That statement may be true. However, it leads managers to believe that they most certainly have to be ‘strong’. There’s no way that a manager wants to be perceived as weak. However, it’s how you define ‘tough’ and ‘strong’ that decides how successful a manager you’ll be.

We’re all aware of the big tough sports coaches who run successful teams. In the United States the legendary Red Wings coach Scotty Bowman, often billed as the greatest coach in ice hockey, was well known as a relentless, heartless and humourless task master.

Another legend, American football coach Vince Lombardi, was known to work his teams hard. He pushed his players and made them repeat plays over and over till they got it right. He yelled at his teams for any mistakes, even after games they had won. He had rigid rules, imposed discipline and had no tolerance for mistakes. One of his famous lines is: ‘Winning isn’t everything. It’s the only thing.’

Sir Alex Ferguson, Europe’s most successful soccer coach, was once in the news due to a dressing room incident at Manchester United. The team had just lost a game and he was letting the players know how he felt about that. Apparently, in his temper he kicked a football boot across the dressing room and hit one of his star players, David Beckham, just above the eye.

Unfortunately the media present these situations and character traits as what makes a successful manager. Managers, and particularly those new to a leadership role, try to model themselves on those that they read about and see on TV.

In a recent seminar I asked a young manager why she thought Roy Keane played so well under Sir Alex Ferguson at Manchester United. ‘It’s because Alex regularly kicks his ass,’ was her reply. Now Roy Keane is a real tough guy player known for his hard and uncompromising style on the soccer field. I asked this young manager how she thought Roy would respond to having his ass kicked regularly. She didn’t seem to have an answer to that.

Managers are misreading the signs sent by the media and our culture and it’s creating difficulty for them. Some managers can adopt the tough guy approach very easily but most feel uneasy with it. Those, who are uneasy, in an attempt not to be seen as weak, then manage their people in a way that makes them as a manager feel uncomfortable. This ultimately causes problems with their teams.

You can’t make a silk purse from a sow’s ear

My fourth point is that some people just don’t have what it takes to be a manager. Just as some people don’t have what it takes to be a doctor, a plumber, a lawyer or a bus driver. Whatever job or profession an individual ends up in doesn’t mean to say it’s the right one for them.

Remember my story earlier about my first job as an apprentice engineer and how I was expected to make a hammer. I have a mechanical turn of mind so it was fairly easy for me to file a piece of steel and turn it into a hammer. Some of my fellow apprentices hadn’t a clue and at that time I couldn’t understand how they found it so difficult.

I caught my brother changing a wheel on his new Mini Cooper one day; he was having a great deal of difficulty. ‘You’re trying to screw the wheel nuts on in an anti-clockwise direction’, I incredulously informed him. ‘What’s the difference?’ he said. ‘And what’s anti-clockwise anyway?’ My brother is a lovely guy and an extremely successful building surveyor, but please don’t ask him to change a light bulb.

Of course, people can improve with training but we have to accept the fact that some will not. You can send a poor manager on a training course but they’ll either reject everything they hear or they’ll realise that they’re in the wrong job.

When I was very much younger than I am now (about forty years younger) my father was determined that I would learn to play the piano. He went to the length of buying a piano in order that I could practise every day. My teacher, Miss Alexander, spent three long years trying to turn me into Liberace; to this day I cannot play a note. I realise now as an adult that I don’t have an ear for music and I’m not particularly interested in listening to it, never mind playing an instrument. Attempting to train me to play a musical instrument is a near impossibility.

You may be starting to feel that perhaps being a manager is not for you and that may be the case. You’ll obviously make your own decision about what track your career will take but I would ask you not to give up too easily. Although I’ve said that some managers are in the wrong job, they tend to be in the minority. If you feel that you’re not having the success you should have, ask yourself if you’ve ever received any help. I think you’ll find that like many managers, you’ve been left to get on with it. That’s why I’ve written this book. So stick with the book before you make any decisions about your career as a manager.

So the job’s difficult and you don’t get any help, the media misleads you and some of us shouldn’t even be in the job. Is there any good news? Of course there is. We’re going to look at how to get better. But first, let’s examine what the successful managers do, find out what we can learn from them and how we can get even better than them.