You look around the table at your monthly staff meeting and survey the members of your team. It’s amazing how different they all are: Sam is a creative type. Mary is analytical. Joe is outgoing. Chris is shy. Harold is highly skilled, but easily distracted. Bob is really enthusiastic, but doesn’t have the experience to match. Rita is totally focused, but not always on the right things. Juanita is a perfectionist, and takes forever to finish anything. As each employee takes a turn giving a status report on his individual work, you pay especially close attention because you will be preparing annual performance evaluations for every one of them soon. Most of the team is doing fine. Mary and Joe are doing especially great as usual. But Chris and Harold are struggling.

Every employee is different, yet most managers take roughly the same approach to managing every person in their group. Whatever technique they use to manage—weekly reports, monthly team meetings, or annual reviews—it is rarely calibrated to the individuals being managed. Instead, it is based on prevailing practices in the organization and the manager’s own style. This is what I call “one-size-fits-all” management. Whatever the one-size-fits-all approach may be in any given case, it works fine for some employees but not so well for others. Those who respond well to it appear to be high performers, while those who respond poorly appear to be low performers. Instead of managing every person to success, the boss manages everyone the same regardless of each person’s needs—let the chips fall where they may.

But would you take the same approach to maintaining a car as you would to a toaster? Of course not; you would calibrate your care and maintenance to the specifications of the machine. So why not calibrate your approach to managing based on what works best for each employee? Every person is different. Deal with it.

Figure Out What Works with Each Employee

All of your employees come to work with different levels of ability and skill: different backgrounds, personalities, styles, ways of communicating, work habits, and motivations. Some of them need more guidance than others. One employee needs details spelled out, while another has the details memorized. One responds best if you ask questions, while another prefers you tell him all the answers. Some need lots of reminders, while others need you to check in just once a week. The only way to cope with the incredible diversity among your employees is to figure out what works with each person and then customize your management style accordingly.

Customize Your Management

I’m not suggesting that you cater to the whims of each employee. But whims are not all bad. When you know the whims of an employee, you know what that person wants and you learn how to gain leverage with him. Am I saying “coddle employees”? No. Still, if an employee needs you to hold his hand and spoon-feed him assignments, you need to know that. In the end, you need to decide whether you are willing to do that for this employee, but don’t pretend he doesn’t need it. Finally, I’m not suggesting that you ask each employee how he wants to be managed. What an employee wants from you is not always the same as what he needs. For example, try asking a stubborn low performer if he wants your feedback on his performance. He’ll likely say, “Feedback? None for me, thanks.” Often employees think that they know what they want from you, but in fact they often don’t know what they want until they get it and it starts working.

The only way to learn what really works with each employee is to get in there and start managing. Those one-on-one conversations are the path inside. When you start having individual meetings with each person, the differences between your employees will jump right out at you. As you talk with each person face-to-face, try to tune in to that person and adjust your approach this way and that, just as you adjust the tuner on a radio. Be aware of how you are changing your approach and observe carefully the effects of each change on each person and her performance. And remember, you’ll have to keep making adjustments constantly because people change and grow over time.

The best way to keep fine-tuning your approach to each person is to continually ask yourself six key questions about each employee:

• Who is this person at work?
• Why do I need to manage this person?
• What do I need to talk about with this person?
• How should I talk with this person?
• Where should I talk with this person?
• When should I talk with this person?

Together, these six questions make up one of the most powerful management tools I know of—I call it the “customizing” lens. If you become obsessed with asking and answering these questions, you won’t be able to avoid customizing your approach with each person. Start asking and answering these questions and you’ll see what I mean.

Who Is This Person at Work?

Don’t worry: You don’t need to ask yourself who this person is deep inside—what her mind and spirit are like, or what her inner motivations are. In fact, you shouldn’t try. You are not qualified to do so, unless you are trained in counseling or you have a special sixth sense. Focus on figuring out the “self” this employee brings to work. That will be plenty.

Assess this person’s basic strengths and weaknesses as an employee. Consider his tasks and responsibilities. What is the nature of the work he handles? Assess his performance record. Is this one of your high performers, average workers, or low performers? Is he productive? Does he do high-quality work? Think about his work background and likely career future. How long has he been working here? How long is he likely to stay? Consider his social role in your workplace. Is he high energy or low? An enthusiast or a naysayer? Is he well liked? Talkative? Do other employees hold him in high regard or low?

Often managers ask me, “How much do I need to know about what’s going on in an employee’s personal life?” My answer: You need to know enough to be polite. Know that an employee has two kids. It would be a nice gesture if you remember roughly how old the kids are. It would be extra nice if you remember the kids’ names. But you really don’t need to remember their birthdays or keep their pictures in your wallet.

You should understand how an employee’s personal life bears on his role at work. Does his home life affect his schedule? Energy level? Concentration? And so on. The truth is that lots of employees leave their personal issues at home…but not everybody does.

Not long ago, I was debriefing with a senior executive of a hotel company after spending the day training a group of her managers. She immediately asked me what I thought about the head of housekeeping, a twentysomething woman who had obviously not been at her best during my seminar. I’ll call her Alice. As the head of housekeeping, Alice was supposed to be in charge of a team of eight housekeeping managers.

For about eight hours that day, I had watched Alice stare off into space. Though she hardly participated in the seminar, when she did speak, she uttered incoherent non sequiturs in a low unclear voice, and then wandered off to the ladies’ room. What did I think about Alice? “If her behavior at work is anything like her behavior in the seminar,” I told the executive, “I would be very worried about the housekeeping department.” That’s when the executive told me that Alice had some serious family problems at home. These problems, apparently, happened on an on-again, off-again basis. When the problems went away, Alice was one of their best employees and an especially conscientious manager. But whenever the problems returned, Alice was a mess. She arrived late and left early and disappeared for hours in the middle of the day. She was distracted and had low energy and could barely communicate.

“I’m amazed she made it all the way through your seminar,” Alice’s boss told me. “We all feel sorry for her. A couple of years ago, I helped her get some counseling through employee services, which she really appreciated. Things were better for a while…and then things got worse again…and then they got better…and now things are worse again.” This had been going on for years. Then I got the big punch line: “It’s none of my business what Alice does in her personal life, right? I can’t fire her because she’s having problems at home, right?”

It’s clarifying to reframe this very complicated issue in clear and simple terms: the question is not whether this person is having troubles at home, but rather, “Who is this person at work?” At work, Alice was highly inconsistent. She went through distinct periods as a high performer and distinct periods as a low performer. What should Alice’s boss do? One of the options, I suggested, was to manage Alice like a high performer when she’s up and like a low performer when she is down. Managing Alice when she’s low would take tremendous effort, and her manager might not be able to manage Alice to the level the company needs her to perform at—especially since she’s a manager herself. In the end, the executive felt that she couldn’t have a manager whose performance was so inconsistent, especially when her performance would decrease so markedly when troubles at home intensified. The next day, she made the decision to fire Alice, not because Alice was going through problems at home, but because of who she was at work.

Maybe you are thinking, “Alice is a special case.” Every employee is a special case. If you don’t know what makes one of your employees a special case, you better find out. Keep asking yourself: “Who is this person at work?”

• Assess each employee’s basic strengths and weaknesses.
• Consider the role each person plays in your workplace.
• Know how issues at home bear on an employee’s role at work.
• Manage the self each employee brings to work.

Why Do I Need to Manage This Person?

The key to answering this question is to have a clear understanding of your goals for managing each person and what you need from her. Do you need this person to do more work? Better work? Faster work? To change some behavior? With some people, if you don’t talk to them every day about their to-do list, they might not do any work. With others, if you don’t talk through with them exactly how to do a particular task, they might do it wrong. With one employee, if you don’t point out the shortcuts, he’ll take forever.

Whatever your reasons for managing employees, don’t make the mistake of thinking that some are so talented, skilled, and motivated that you don’t need to manage them at all. Even superstars must be managed. Like everyone else, superstars have bad days, sometimes go in the wrong direction, and have lapses in judgment or integrity. Even superstars need guidance, direction, support, and encouragement. They need to be challenged and developed. What is more, superstars often want to know that someone is keeping track of their great work and looking for ways to reward them.

Sometimes managers tell me, “This superstar is different. She is so talented, skilled, and motivated that I have nothing to offer her.” If that’s truly the case, it doesn’t mean the person doesn’t need a boss. It just means that maybe you shouldn’t be the person’s boss. If that’s the case, then perhaps you should promote her, move her to a boss who does have something to offer her, or change your relationship with her so that you work together as partners or collaborators. More often, what managers are really saying is “This person is so talented, skilled, and motivated that she is able to handle more responsibility than most. She can make her own project plans; she gets lots of work done very well, very fast, all day, every day; she doesn’t cause problems; she learns quickly and steadily; she has great relationship skills; she understands the big picture; she is a great critical thinker; and she takes exactly the right amount of initiative without overstepping. How do I deal with that?”

You need to manage this superstar because she challenges you in ways that you don’t expect. She forces you to stay on your toes and think on your feet. You need to check in regularly to make sure that things are going as well as you think, ask her for regular reports on her projects and responsibilities. Regardless of her talents, you need to verify that the work is getting done. Most of all, you need to manage this superstar so that you can make sure she is getting her needs met and isn’t going to start looking for another job. Go out of your way to ask her regularly, “What do you need from me?” Try hard to reward her generously for her great work. And count yourself lucky.

Remember, every employee needs to be managed. If you don’t know why one of your employees needs to be managed, you better figure it out:

• Clarify your goals with each person. What do you need from this person?
• Keep in mind what might go wrong if you don’t manage this person.
• Pay attention: The reasons for managing each person will change over time.

What Do I Need to Talk about with This Person?

Once you figure out why you need to manage a person, you are well on your way to knowing what you need to talk to that person about.

Of course, you need to talk about the work with every employee. But what details should you focus on with each employee? Should you talk to this person about big-picture strategy or, rather, go over his to-do list for the day? Should you review standard procedures for each task or talk about ways to be creative with those tasks? What you talk about with any employee, ultimately, should be determined by what you want that employee to do in the immediate future. If you want the person to do more work, then talk about the number of items on his to-do list each day. If you need her to work faster, talk about how long each item on the to-do list is going to take and figure out what’s taking so long. If you want her to quit, then you need to tell her, incessantly, all the things that are not going well. If you want the person to never quit, then talk about whether she is happy, has what she needs, or wants something that she is not getting. If you want the person to change some behavior, then talk in detail about exactly how you want him to behave.

A while back, the manager of an audiology clinic told me about his receptionist—I’ll call him Chris—who seemed to have a hopeless performance problem. Chris was efficient at opening the clinic on time in the morning, answering the phone, and dealing with patients in the office. But he neglected to open the mail every day and file it as he was supposed to. As a result, other people in the office would pick through the mail each day to find items addressed to them, and the rest of the mail, mostly paperwork that needed to be filed, would pile up on Chris’s desk. The manager told me, “I actually saw Chris using a dustpan to scoop up excess mail that had fallen onto the floor…I watched him dump it right back on the pile on his desk!”

On top of this, whenever patients called to check if their hearing aids were ready, Chris would answer yes or no—but his answers were not based on accurate information about whether the hearing aids were in fact ready. “Frankly, I have no idea how he decides whether to say yes or no,” Chris’s manager told me. “I think he’s just winging it. Usually, he just says no and they call back again. The real problem is when he says yes. About half the time he’s right, I think by chance. But the other half of the time, people come in to pick up their hearing aid and it’s not ready. Sometimes they have driven quite a way and often they are older people. They complain bitterly. I’ve talked to Chris about this over and over again. I talk with him about it every time it happens. But it always happens again.”

The manager wanted to know, “Do I need to tell Chris, ‘Each morning, print out the status list of hearing aids on order. Keep it by your desk. When a patient calls to see if her hearing aid is ready, check the list. If it’s ready, say yes. If it’s not ready, check the delivery date on the list and ask her to call back on that day.’ Do I really need to spell it out that much for him?” My answer: When you don’t spell it out for Chris, he gets it wrong. So, yes. Spell it out for him, every day if necessary. Also spell out how he needs to distribute the mail every day. Turn that big pile of mail on his desk into a project. Give him a clear deadline. Break it down into smaller goals with a series of deadlines if you want. Give him precise instructions. If you have time, go through some of the pile with him so that you can see if he knows how to file the paperwork properly. If he doesn’t, you can use this project to instruct him.

Several weeks later, I heard from this manager with an update about Chris: “Sure enough. All I had to do was tell him! I reminded him every day for a while. Now when I walk by Chris’s desk in the morning, he waves the [hearing aid] status list at me with a smile and says, ‘And don’t worry, I won’t forget the mail today.’” Amazing!

With every employee, keep asking yourself: “What do I need to talk about today?”

• Talk about the work.
• Focus on what you want the employee to do in the immediate future.
• Decide whether you should talk about the big picture or all the minor details.
• For some employees, breaking things down and spelling them out can make the difference between high performance and low performance.

How Should I Talk with This Person?

How should you talk about the work with each person? Some employees respond best if you ask questions. Others prefer that you just take the lead and do most of the talking. Some employees respond best if you take an even-measured tone and stick to the facts alone—the auditor style. Some respond best if you talk with more feeling—the older-sibling style. Some employees respond best if you pepper them with difficult leading questions—the cross-examining-attorney style. Some employees respond best to effusive enthusiasm—the cheerleader style. Some employees respond best to worry and fear and urgency—the Chicken Little style.

Keep in mind that what motivates each person is different, too. Some employees are enthusiasts and you need to tap their enthusiasm. Others crave inspiration. Some employees seek approval. Others are working to put food on the table. Some employees are all about the work. Others are all about the money. Some throw their whole identity into work and work into their identity. Others need to be reminded constantly where they are and what they are supposed to be doing and why.

How you manage is partly a matter of tone and style. Of course, you don’t want to try too hard at a style that doesn’t fit you. Nor are you looking for a tone and style that makes the employee comfortable, or makes you comfortable. Comfort is not the issue here. You are looking for the right tone and style to motivate each employee best and get your point across unequivocally. Ultimately, this question is about choosing the best tools and techniques for communicating with each employee on a day-to-day basis. Some employees are more challenging to communicate with than others.

Nowadays, it is not uncommon for managers to be struggling to manage employees with whom they have a real language barrier—the manager and the employee actually do not speak the same language. Now that is a communication challenge. What tools and techniques can possibly solve that one? How are you going to manage this person and make sure he understands exactly what you need him to do and how?

One manager in a landscaping business who deals with this problem every day suggests the following techniques: “You need to have someone on the crew who speaks both languages…you need a translator.” Second, teach and learn. “Most of the guys on the crew are Spanish speaking. Over the years, I’ve learned a little bit of Spanish, some key terms anyway…and most of the guys start learning some English after a while.” At least you can start to build up some shared vocabulary, maybe a combination of both languages that you can use to communicate what needs to be done and how. This manager explained, “Believe it or not, we also use our own sign language. I point a lot. Sometimes I do a little demonstration and have the employee imitate me. I do a lot of thumbs-up and thumbs-down, too.”

Another common technique is creating checklists and other written tools in both languages. That way, managers can actually point to items on the checklist and the manager and employee both know what they mean. This also helps the manager and employee learn key terms in each other’s language and gradually start talking about the checklists.

Keep asking yourself: “How do I need to talk to this person?”

• Think about what motivates this person.
• Figure out what tone and style work best.
• Most employees respond best to verbal communication supported by visual aids in writing.
• Choose the right communication tools and techniques for each person.

Where Should I Talk with This Person?

Whether it’s your office or some other obvious place to meet, it’s best to choose a place that works and then make a habit of meeting there. That space will become the physical scene in which your management relationship with that person develops. Choose it well.

If your employees work in remote locations, you should rely primarily on a rigorous protocol of telephone calls and e-mails. But if you work in the same location with your employee, the best place to meet might be on neutral ground. One manager told me that he and his employees are on their feet all the time and there is no obvious place to meet, so he takes employees into the stairwell for their quick talks. Restaurant folks often tell me that they take employees to a booth in the back for their one-on-one meetings. Factory workers often step away from the machinery so they can hear. Soldiers sometimes huddle behind a large rock. My own favorite venue for meetings is taking a walk (as anyone who has come to meet with me can attest!); just make sure you and your employee bring along a pad and pen so you can write stuff down.

Keep asking yourself: “Where do I need to manage this person?”

• Choose a place that works for you and your employee.
• Try to meet in that same place every week.
• Rely on the telephone and e-mail to communicate with employees in remote locations.

When Should I Talk with This Person?

When you are considering what days and times to meet each employee, you are often limited by your schedules.

Sometimes the time you meet is dictated completely by logistics. For example, if an employee works a different shift than you do, she may need to come in a little early or you might need to stay late to meet her. Sometimes the best time to meet is a matter of moods. Maybe you have an employee who gets a slow start in the morning (or maybe you get a slow start), and so you decide it’s best to meet with that person just before lunch instead of first thing in the morning.

Sometimes the best time might be indicated by a performance issue. Let’s say you have an employee who is chronically late to work. Some managers try to deal with that problem by scheduling early morning meetings. I happen to think that if you want to help an employee arrive on time to work, the best time to meet with that employee is at the end of the day, just before that person leaves. The next item on that person’s to-do list will be coming in to work—which is exactly what you want to focus on at the end of your meeting: “I want to remind you that we start at 8:00 a.m. in this office. How long does it take you to get to work? Twenty minutes? Okay. How long does it take you to get ready in the morning? Thirty minutes? Okay. So what time do you normally get up in the morning? Seven thirty? Aha! That’s the problem. You need to start getting up at 7:00! Do you want me to call you in the morning and give you a wake-up call?” Have that conversation a few times at the end of the day, before the employee leaves, and I promise you that employee is likely to start coming to work on time.

One manager who runs a beer distributorship told me he tried this technique with one chronically late employee. “Every time she was late, she had told me that she missed the bus…this time I waited until the end of the day. I asked her what bus she normally takes. She told me the 8:40 a.m. bus. I asked her if there was an earlier bus. She said there was an 8:20 and an 8:00. So I asked her to please try to catch the 8:00 or the 8:20 bus. Then I reminded her every day for a week on her way out the door, ‘Please try to catch the 8:00 or the 8:20 bus tomorrow morning, okay?’ She has never been late again.”

But perhaps a tougher question than what time of day is best to meet with an employee is how often to meet with each employee.

First, keep this in mind: Most of your employees need to talk with you about their work a lot more often than you would guess, and much more often than they currently do. I always urge managers to force themselves to meet more often than they think necessary, until they know exactly what the person is doing—where, when, why, and how. Over time, you will probably be able to step back a bit and meet less often.

Second, most people need to talk with you more when they are new to a job, or working on a new task or project, and then less over time. But remember that it’s a moving target. You’ll have to start meeting more often again if the employee gets a new task, responsibility, or project; if the employee slows down, starts missing details, or develops a behavior issue. As things improve, you can probably step back again and meet less often.

Most self-starting high performers probably don’t need to meet with you every day. If one of your high performers starts taking over your one-on-one meetings, laying out her to-do list for the week, including step-by-step plans, and then offering you memos summarizing these presentations, that is usually an indication that you can step back even a little bit more.

But employees who don’t perform as well might require one-on-one meetings much more frequently—maybe every single day as they come in the door. I call this coaching employees into their roles: “Okay, Mr. Green, you’re going to be here for five hours, right? Here’s what I want you to do: A, B, C, and D. Okay? Let’s go through A…and through B…and so on. Here’s a checklist. Are you ready?”

That conversation—coaching an employee into her role—takes five to fifteen minutes. If you have employees who need a lot of coaching and guidance, try coaching them into their roles every time they walk in the door. Watch their performance improve radically in miracle time.

For some employees, even that’s not enough. Particularly low performers might need to be coached twice or three times a day, or they slow down and lose focus. But at what point do you say enough? Deciding that an employee requires so much of your management time that it’s just not worth it is a tough business call. You have to consider whether this employee is much less able, skilled, and motivated than other employees that you could hire from your available labor pool. Sometimes, depending on the job and the labor available for it, the only way you are going to get high performance consistently is if you commit to high-intensity management—twice, three times, four times a day. But sometimes the answer is clear: “No way! I’m paying this person too much and this job is too high level to justify the kind of management time this person requires.”

Keep asking yourself: “When do I need to manage this person?”

What days and times work best?

• Sometimes the time is dictated by logistics.
• The best time might depend upon your and your employees’ typical mood schedules.
• The best time might be indicated by a performance issue.

How often?

• Most people need to talk with you a lot more than you would guess.
• Most need to talk more when they are working on something new.
• Force yourself to meet more often than you think necessary for a while.
• Over time, you will probably step back a bit and meet less often.

Is it worth it? Do the math for yourself.

The Manager’s Landscape

Try creating for yourself what I call a “manager’s landscape.” Write down these questions across the top of a piece of paper: Who? Why? What? How? Where? When? In the first column—under “Who?”—list each person you manage and make a few notes about what you know or think you know about each of them. Then write notes for each employee under the “Why?” “What?” “How?” “Where?” and “When?” columns. If you lay out all this information on one page, you have before you an instant landscape of the management challenge you face. On that page is your world as a manager. Remember, circumstances change. People change. That means you have to revisit these questions frequently and revise and adjust your manager’s landscape on a regular basis.

Your goal as a manager is to help each person grow and develop. You want the answers to these questions to change. Who? You want this person to become a high performer who is really into the work. Why? You want this person to become so good at her job and so valuable that you can talk strategy and big picture, brainstorm great ideas, encourage her to take on more responsibilities, and help her meet more of her needs so she will never quit. What? You want this person to get so good at her job that in your coaching sessions you discuss her plan for her tasks, updates on her progress, ways she can add even more value, and how she can earn even more rewards. How? You want this person to become so competent and confident that you can just sit back and listen. Where? Maybe the person is so successful that she gets her own office and you can start meeting there. When? You want this person to become so good at managing herself that you need to check in only once a week to make sure things are going as well as you think.

Never stop asking yourself and answering these questions.