You just finished reading this book, It’s Okay to Be the Boss…Well, you are almost done reading it. But you’ve already decided to become a much better boss. You are ready—eager even—to start managing in a more hands-on manner. You start meeting with your employees, one-on-one, just like the book says. In fact, you are going to meet with everybody this morning. You have a notebook under your arm, ready to take notes. Of course, you haven’t been managing very closely up to this point, so your new approach takes your employees a little by surprise. They’re murmuring to each other, “What’s going on?” But one savvy employee chimes in, “Haven’t you noticed? He’s been walking around with that book, It’s Okay to Be the Boss, all week. He’s obviously trying some new management fad. Don’t worry. This will blow over soon.” The other employees start smiling and nodding with relief (and a tiny bit of disappointment), echoing, “Right. This will blow over. Just ignore it.”

Will it blow over or not? That’s entirely up to you.

Maybe you are inspired to become a better boss. You make real changes, managing more closely for a while, but then reality sets in. You are incredibly busy and realize that managing more closely is time consuming, especially at first. Perhaps some employees push back and complain that you are micromanaging or picking on them, or favoring some more than others. There has been a lot of tension in the air, so you get heat from your boss, who is not happy that you’ve “upset the apple cart,” as he put it. “You can’t just come in one day and say I’m changing everything around here. No more Mr. Nice Guy.” Everyone thinks you are being too harsh, and it’s clear your new approach isn’t going well. You start to wonder if you are just not good at this. After all, you’ve never been a natural leader. So you find yourself backing away from your new approach, quickly and steadily until you are back to the status quo ante.

“Phew! I’m glad that’s over,” you might think as you go back to the familiar routine of hands-off management, in which the problems are many and deep, but at least you don’t see them coming in advance. They strike by surprise and you run around, acting like Mr. Jerk Boss while trying to solve the problem. It’s a huge, unpleasant hassle, but at least when it’s over, everyone can go back to being disengaged until the next unnecessary crisis erupts. In the meantime, you and everyone else can enjoy going back to Mr. False Nice Guy Friend.

This Decision Is Too Important to Rush

Throughout this book, I’ve tried desperately to convince you to become a better boss. That is my mission: to persuade managers like you to dedicate yourself to being strong, disciplined, and all about the work. I want you to start holding your employees accountable and helping all of them work harder to earn what they need every day. I want you to get in there and start managing. But first, you have to take a giant step back.

Today’s workplace is high pressure and today’s workforce is high maintenance—managing is getting harder and harder. Think, think, think: Are you ready, willing, and able to commit the time, energy, effort, and consistency that it will take to change? Are you prepared to become a great boss? Your role at work is going to change. Your relationships at work are going to change. Your experience at work is going to change. You are going to be the person who is all about the work, who is setting people up for success every day, who is helping every person earn what she needs. That’s going to be you from now on.

Consider the Culture of Your Workplace

Before making a big change in your approach to managing, think about the culture of your workplace. Does the culture support hands-on management? Or is everybody else around here pretty hands-off? What will it mean for you, in the context of this corporate culture, to become a very strong, highly engaged, transactional, coaching-style boss? Will you fit right in? Or will this make you something of a maverick?

Sometimes managers tell me, “This organization is very conservative. We don’t believe in confrontation. We don’t like to rock the boat…So the culture is very hands-off management.” Just as often managers tell me, “This organization is very progressive. We let employees do their own thing. We don’t like to boss people around…So the culture is very hands-off.”

Sometimes managers say, “Our organization is very large and there is lots of red tape and bureaucracy…So the culture is hands-off.” Other managers say, “Our organization is very small and there is more of a family dynamic in the workplace…So the culture is hands-off.”

Or else, “Our work is very technical…So the culture is hands-off.” Or, “Our work is very creative…So the culture is hands-off.”

Or else, “Our employees are much older…So the culture is hands-off.” Or, “Our employees are much younger…So the culture is hands-off.”

Or, “Our employees do low-level grunt work…So the culture is hands-off.” Or, “Our employees are all high-level professionals…So the culture is hands-off management…”

You get the idea. Think about it. Corporate culture is the combined web of shared meaning and shared social practices that develop between and among people in an organization. Remember? There is an undermanagement epidemic throughout the workplace, at all levels in organizations of all shapes and sizes. So of course most corporate cultures support a hands-off status quo in which strong managers often feel like ducks out of water. What can you do about it?

Be different.

And don’t keep it a secret. Let people know. Stand out as the manager who is serious about the work and always goes the extra mile when it comes to managing. If being strong makes you a maverick in your particular organization, be a maverick. Being the maverick can be uncomfortable. Do it anyway. Be the manager who is not afraid to be the boss. Be the manager who is strong. Be hands-on.

I remember in the eighth grade, a year when I was more apt than not to be misbehaving, one of my teachers was really tough. Mr. Benson, my English teacher, was kind of a maverick among the other teachers. He was an intense guy and very strict. He gave pop quizzes all the time and made us write one book report after another. I remember trying harder and learning more in his class than in any other that year. Mr. Benson once ripped up my paper on Johnny Tremain because I had failed to dot my “i’s.” What a beautiful metaphor for quality control. Ever since then and to this day, I’ve always dotted my “i’s” with a star—anyone who has ever seen my written hand can attest to that.

I can’t remember any of my other teachers from the eighth grade, but I’ve never forgotten Mr. Benson.

Be that person.

You might find out that the culture supports good management after all. There may be more hands-on managers in your midst than you realize, doing their thing beneath the radar. Or you may find that your example is an inspiration to others.

Deciding to become a strong manager is a big step. If you think you are ready, commit to making permanent changes and remind yourself of that decision often. You’ll be surprised at how much that helps.

Prepare

Then, before going public, prepare yourself to change your management approach.

• Set aside one hour a day for managing.
• Practice talking like a performance coach.
• Create a manager’s landscape.
• Make a preliminary schedule.
• Set up a performance tracking system.

Set Aside That One Hour a Day for Managing

The first thing you should do is get in the habit of managing every day. But you don’t actually need to start managing people just yet. Find the one hour a day that works best for you, and set it aside every day for two weeks before you actually plunge into managing employees in one-on-one sessions. During those two weeks, use this one hour a day to prepare.

Start by gathering information and tuning in informally to your employees and their work. Stop talking about everything under the sun with your employees and start talking about the work. And ask more questions: “Hey, what are your priorities today? What are you planning to do on plan X today? What steps do you normally follow to do task X? How long do you think that will take?” At the end of the day, ask people: “Hey, what did you focus on today? How far did you get on task X?”

When you are informally tuning in, you don’t need to say too much. Just listen; you’ll find some surprises. Some people will be put off that you are even asking. That’s a good sign that you’ve been too hands-off until now. Some people will give vague answers. Others will tell you more than you would have guessed. You will start to learn who is doing what, where, why, when, and how. Just listen and make some notes to yourself. Remember, at this stage, you are just gathering information.

Practice Talking Like a Coach

As you are talking more and more with your employees about the work, practice talking like a performance coach.

• Tune in to the individual you are coaching.
• Focus on specific instances of individual performance.
• Describe the person’s performance honestly and vividly.
• Focus on concrete next steps and describe them vividly.

Of course, it takes a while to get good at talking like a coach. But you might as well practice that way of talking as you start to build the habit of managing for an hour every day.

Create Your First Manager’s Landscape

Do you remember the manager’s landscape tool I described in chapter 4? This is the tool for tuning in to each employee so that you can customize your approach to managing that person. Before you plunge in and start holding regular one-on-one management conversations with each employee, create a landscape. Lay out the six questions across a piece of paper:

Who? | Why? | What? | How? | Where? | When?

Then fill out each column by considering each question carefully.

Who is this person at work? What do I know about this person that is relevant to work? Where is she coming from and where is she going?

Why do I need to manage this person? What does this person need from me to succeed at this job? What matters to this person? What do I need from this person? What matters to me with respect to this person in this job?

What should I be talking about with this person? Should I be focusing on larger goals or small goals? Broad guideline or detailed guidelines? Reminders of basic standard operating procedures or ideas about innovation?

How should I be talking with this person? Should we be talking through the work to be done step-by-step? Or should we just go over the big picture of the assignment? Should I be giving instructions? Or should I be asking questions? Should I be stern or warm?

Where? What location is the best to meet? If the person is in a remote location, how are we going to make the phone and e-mail work?

When? Should I check in several times a day with her or is once every other day or once a week enough? When is the best time to talk to her?

At this stage, remember, you are still making educated guesses. Your first manager’s landscape is only a starting point. But you have to start somewhere. Over time, as you start managing people more closely, you will get more and more tuned in; and as circumstances and people change, expect to revisit these questions and answers again and again. If you have a lot of people to manage, the process will be time consuming. But no matter how many people you manage, this is where you begin to appreciate the challenge ahead of you, to tune in to your employees, and to customize your approach to managing each of them.

Revise your manager’s landscape often. It’s going to be an important tool for the rest of your management career.

Make a Preliminary Schedule for Managing People

Based on your manager’s landscape, you should be able to make a preliminary schedule to begin your one-on-one management sessions.

Start thinking about when you are going to meet with whom and for how long. If you’ve been using one hour a day to prepare for this change in your management practices, then you are well on your way to making that “hour-a-day management” a habit. Now you need to decide how you are going to divide that time among your employees. During the initial meetings, you may have to dedicate more time than one hour a day, perhaps even an hour and a half per day, until your one-on-one meetings become routine and brief. At first, plan to schedule two or three one-on-one meetings per day. Can you get to every employee on your team in one week? Is that a feasible time commitment? If so, create a preliminary schedule.

Your schedule will take shape gradually as you start managing closely. Thereafter, you will probably negotiate times with each person on an ongoing basis. What’s critical is that you schedule time with every person every week, if possible. What’s even more critical is that they become your number one time commitment. Once you schedule one-on-one management meetings, they are sacrosanct.

But you’re not quite ready to start holding one-on-one meetings just yet. Put that schedule on the back burner for a little while longer…

Set Up a Performance Tracking System

Before you can plunge in to one-on-one management conversations, you need to have a practical system for tracking employees’ performance. It doesn’t have to be the best tracking system in the world. You are going to revise and adjust it with use over time until it becomes first-rate. But on day one, you need to have something in place. How are you going to monitor, measure, and document each employee’s performance? What kind of approach seems to fit each person you manage? Will you need a separate tracking system for each employee, or will the same tracking system work for everyone? Will it be on paper or electronic? Will it be a notebook you carry around in your back pocket or a big binder that you carry around under your arm? What format are you going to use?

The most important thing about your tracking system is that you come up with a system that you will actually use, a system that works for you, that you can stick to. The sooner you figure that out, the better.

Go Public

Now that you’ve prepared mentally and have a schedule and a tracking system in place, it’s time to go public and start discussing the impending management changes with the key people you depend on at work.

You don’t want to act as if you’ve been failing as a manager until now. Instead adopt a more simple message: “I’m going to be a better manager, and here’s what that means.” Before you announce your intentions to your employees, you need to reach out to some key players. As you have these initial conversations, remember that this is good news. You are not announcing that you are going to start acting like a jerk. You are announcing that you are going to be on the path to becoming a great boss. You are going to be spending more time setting people up for success. You are going to provide more guidance and direction and support. You are going to help your employees do better, work smarter and faster, suffer fewer problems, and earn more rewards. That is good news! Make sure you feel that so it guides your tone in these initial conversations.

First, Talk to Your Boss

Most bosses will be delighted to hear that you want to work hard to become a better manager and will be happy to help you in your efforts. If your boss is going to be an obstacle, you’d better find out immediately.

First, spell out for your boss exactly what you are trying to accomplish. Second, ask your boss if she supports your efforts. Explain that you need her help and guidance. Third, be honest with her and talk about coming up with some standard operating procedures to guide you and your boss as you work on this together. Does your boss have different standards and requirements for your employees than you do? If so, decide with your boss which standards are going to be required of employees. Whatever standards you decide on, you and your boss should be requiring the same ones.

Does your boss go around you to interact directly with your employees? If so, decide together whether that is going to continue. Agree on ground rules for when and where and how each of you will meet with the employees who report to you. Agree on what you will discuss with those employees and what your boss will handle. If you plan on discussing similar things with your employees, agree to talk regularly to ensure you are both conveying the same messages to your direct report.

Do your employees go around you to your boss when they should be dealing directly with you? If so, decide with your boss exactly how the two of you are going to deal with this. In some cases, if employees try to end-run you, your boss can walk the employee back to your office so the three of you can discuss the matter together. Your boss can let you handle the matter and chime in to support you.

You don’t need permission from your boss to be strong, talk like a coach, spend an hour a day managing, customize your approach to each person, tell people what to do and how to do it, track performance every step of the way, or identify and solve small problems before they turn into big problems. But you could definitely use your boss’s help when it comes to holding employees accountable, imposing negative consequences on low performers, and helping high performers earn special rewards.

If your boss doesn’t believe in hands-on management, buy her a copy of this book. At least persuade her to accept and support what you are trying to do—even just some of it. If you are not able to persuade her, smile and be strong anyway. If your boss is as hands-off as she’s telling you to be, she will have a hard time holding you accountable for her poorly conceived directions. Meanwhile, the results on your team will likely improve, the disgruntled low performers will go away, and the rest of your team will likely be much happier. The results will speak volumes and might cause your boss to reconsider. At the same time, you’ll be honing your management skills and building a strong track record in case you have to go shopping for a new boss who understands and accepts strong hands-on management.

After you talk to your boss, consider other key partners and colleagues you need to apprise of any coming changes. Think about how the changes are going to affect the people with whom you interact routinely and who interact routinely with your employees. Whomever you need to prepare or enlist, sit down and talk with them, one by one. Tell them your plan. Ask for their support.

Once you’ve had these preliminary conversations with your boss and other key people, you should be pretty warmed up.

With any luck, you are even more committed already as a result of these conversations.

Talk to Your Team

If you already have a regular team meeting, at some point you need to announce to your team, “I’m going to be a better manager, and here’s what that means.” What if you don’t have a regular team meeting? Are you going to call people together for the sole purpose of announcing this big change in your management style and practices? Is it really that big of a deal? I think it is.

Get everybody together, and in the full light of public disclosure make a commitment to yourself and your team. Even if you decide that a team meeting is not a good idea, and instead talk to each of your employees separately about the impending changes, the message should be the same: “I am going to be a better manager. Here’s what that means: I’m going to work more closely with you. I’m going to spend an hour every day meeting with you all in one-on-one meetings for fifteen minutes or so—at least once a week. I’m going to try really hard to set every one of you up for success every step of the way. I will spell out expectations more clearly and provide more planning tools and checklists. I will track performance more closely so that I can provide more guidance, direction, and support. I will work hard to help you solve small problems before they turn into big ones. And I will work hard to help every one of you earn more of what you need and want. Are you with me?”

Be prepared for your employees to be concerned, to ask lots of questions, to second-guess you, and to doubt that you will follow through. It will take them a while to get used to it. A good way to end the team meeting is to schedule your initial one-on-one meeting with each person on the team.

There’s Nothing Left to Do but Start Managing…One Person at a Time, One Day at a Time

If you’ve done all the necessary preparations, you are ready to start a regular schedule of ongoing one-on-one management conversations with every person you manage.

Before each initial meeting, prepare by going over your manager’s landscape.

Write a script that reiterates your commitment to becoming a better manager and emphasizes what your new management relationship will look like. Explain that this is a learning process for you and that you will make mistakes. Explain that you plan to revise and adjust your approach as you go forward. Let the person know that you understand this is a big change for her, too, and that you expect her to go through a learning process. Explain that you need her help in making this change work for both of you. Explain that you know you will get better and better at this new relationship, and so will she.

After you’ve talked about why you are making this big change, the most important thing to discuss is the parameters of your regular management conversation. How often will you meet with this person? Exactly when and for how long? Where? Make sure the person understands that you are 100 percent committed to this new approach, but that you are also flexible. The best way to end this initial meeting is to reiterate your plans for the next meeting: When? Where? How long? What will you talk about? The first meetings are likely to be awkward. That’s okay. Over time, you and the people you manage will get better and better at using the meetings to get what you need from each other. Remember, this will be a moving target. Keep revisiting the questions in your manager’s landscape. And keep talking about the work. Talk like a performance coach. Describe, describe, describe. Break it down. Focus on next steps. Describe, describe, describe. Break it down some more. In future meetings, prepare before each meeting by reviewing your notes from the last meeting in your tracking system. Take notes during the meeting and transcribe them into your tracking system after the meeting.

Remember the old rule of schoolteachers? Start off very strict and then, after the students come to expect, accept, and adapt to the strict regime, you can relax a bit. As long as the students continue to act as if they are still in the strict regime, you don’t have to be quite as strict. The same basic rule applies to managing employees, but you have to do it one person at a time.

Start out intensely hands-on and you’ll figure out immediately how closely each person needs to be managed and how you need to calibrate your management approach. Alert the employee that you have high expectations and, as she delivers on those expectations, you can gradually back off. If the employee keeps delivering, back off some more. But keep meeting regularly to review priorities, clarify expectations, and monitor, measure, and document that person’s performance.

If an employee’s performance falters in any way, tighten the reins for a while. If an employee slows down, starts missing details or deadlines, or engages in unacceptable behavior, be more hands-on for a while. If there is a big change in circumstances, such as the employee is assigned a new role, task, or responsibility, be more hands-on for a while. Be more hands-on until you have things under control. Then you can back off just a little bit again.

“How Am I Supposed to Respond to That?” Employee Push-backs and Strong Manager Responses

During your first one-one-one management meetings, or whenever you start managing employees hands-on, some of them are likely to push back. As soon as you try to hold employees accountable for their actions, some will surely come back with excuses. In fact, when you ask employees to “account for” their actions, some employees seem to come up with every retort under the sun. What are managers to say? Here are a few ways to respond to the classic employee push-backs.

Stay Flexible: Revise and Adjust Every Step of the Way

After you start managing people closely for six weeks or so, the nuances of your management challenge will become increasingly clear. You will have a better idea of who is doing what, where, why, when, and how. You’ve gotten over the surprises. You’ve done a lot of adjusting. Your meetings with each person will start to feel like standard operating procedure. If you’ve been monitoring, measuring, and documenting each person’s performance in your tracking system, then you will have accumulated a written record of patterns for each person.

Once you’ve had a chance to digest what’s going on and given your new management style a chance to work its wonders (usually six weeks is enough time to see some big results), you will naturally get to a point where some decisions are obvious: You need to fire Sam. You need to make sure you don’t lose Chris. You need to shift around certain tasks and responsibilities from Pat to Bobby. And you should probably meet with Pat every day for a while, but you need to meet with Bobby only once a week.

Whatever those decisions may be, you have to trust the process. Take action. Don’t slow down. Don’t get stuck. Stay flexible. Be prepared to revise and adjust every step of the way as circumstances and people change. Keep meeting regularly with every person. Keep monitoring and measuring and documenting. Continue to revisit your manager’s landscape regularly. Keep asking yourself:

• Who needs to be managed more closely? Who needs a little more space?
• Who is likely to improve? Who is not?
• Who should be developed? Who should be fired?
• Who are your best people? Who are your real performance problems?
• Who requires special accommodations and rewards? Who deserves them?

How to Manage Employees Who Manage

How many of the employees whom you manage are responsible for managing others? Where are the managers you manage going to fit in your new approach? If you expect them to become as hands-on as you, you have to spend some time up front talking with each of them to prepare them. You are about to radically upgrade each manager’s style and practices. Focus on your managers intensely until they are up to speed and playing the new highly engaged management role you need them to play.

Lend them your copy of It’s Okay to Be the Boss. Explain to each manager that just as you are working hard to be a better boss, she needs to do the same. Just as you are learning to talk like a performance coach, to customize your approach to every person, to meet with the employees who report to you every day, to spell out expectations more clearly, to track performance, to help employees earn what they need, your managers must do the same with their people.

From now on, you’ll need to manage how they manage, every step of the way. In your regular one-on-one management meetings with them, focus on exactly how each manager is doing the hard work of managing. Ask probing questions about each employee your manager is supposed to be managing: “When did you last meet with employee #1? What did you hope to accomplish? What did you talk about? What is #2 working on? What did #3 do last week? What guidance and direction did you give #4? What are #5’s current goals and deadlines? What notes did you take down in your manager’s notebook? May I take a look?” If you want your managers to focus on something in particular with one or more of their employees, spell that out. If you want your managers to carry a specific message to their employees, hammer away at that message. Write it down. Put it on cards for your manager to hand out to employees. Talk it through. Role-play it.

In the early stages of teaching your managers to be hands-on, you may even want to sit in on some of your managers’ one-on-one meetings with their employees to monitor and track their performance. But let the manager do the managing; don’t step on the manager’s toes or undermine or contradict the manager. You should simply listen and take notes, so that you can give your manager feedback after the meeting. That doesn’t mean you can’t give feedback directly to your manager’s employee while you are there. Just make sure to keep your comments brief and turn things right back over to the manager you are managing. Sitting in on the one-on-ones will give you an up-close reality check.

Of course, you’ll also need to talk to your managers about their nonmanagement tasks, projects, and responsibilities. But remember, every manager’s first responsibility is managing. So that should be a huge area of focus as you manage managers.

How to Manage Your Boss

Once you’re in the habit of managing yourself and your employees, you’ll need to assess whether you need to also manage your boss. Sometimes you’ll need to help her be as strong as you need her to be.

First, make sure you are bringing your very best to work. Arrive a little early. Stay a little late. And while you are at work, be all about the work. Your work, that is. Focus on playing the role assigned to you before you ever try to reach beyond that role. Focus on your tasks, your management responsibilities, your projects. Focus on doing them very well, very fast, all day long. If you really want to carry weight with your boss, this should be your primary focus every step of the way.

Second, make time every day or every week to be managed. Whether your boss realizes it or not, you need to build a regular management dialogue in the same way that you are building a management dialogue with your employees. So take the initiative to schedule regular one-on-one meetings with your boss. When trying to get more hands-on treatment from a hands-off boss, follow these rules: Meet with your boss only when you need to. When you meet, be prepared. Have a clear agenda with a small number of points you want to cover. And do your homework. If you want guidance, go in with a preliminary plan. If you have questions, try to have a few suggested answers for each question.

Third, over time, teach your boss how to manage you. Teach your boss to focus on your performance; insist that she spell out expectations, and beg for deadlines on every assignment. Help her tune in to your needs and customize her approach to you. Also make sure to customize your approach to your boss. And, of course, take detailed notes in every one of your one-on-one meetings and offer to share your notes with your boss.

Fourth, when you need something from your boss, ask in the form of a proposal. Don’t make requests lightly, and they won’t be taken lightly. Always include the following information: What is the benefit of what you are proposing? What’s in it for your boss? What’s in it for the team? What’s in it for the organization? What’s in it for the customer? If you are asking for something for yourself, you should always frame it as a quid pro quo: “I am willing to do A, B, and C to earn X, Y, or Z.” Remember, if you are asking for something above and beyond, you need to offer to go above and beyond in exchange.

Fifth, always be the kind of self-starting high performer you want in your superstar employees.

It’s Okay to Be the Boss. Be a Great One!

You are the boss. You are the most important person in that workplace. What kind of boss are you going to be?

Fight the undermanagement epidemic! Create real accountability. Be the boss who says, “Great news, I’m the boss! I consider that a sacred responsibility. I’m going to make sure everything goes well around here. I’m going to help you get a bunch of work done very well, very fast, all day long. I’m going to set you up for success every step of the way. When you need something, I’m going to help you find it. When you want something, I’m going to help you earn it.”

Accept your authority, take charge, and become a strong manager. You owe it to your employer. You owe it to your employees. You owe it to yourself.

It’s okay to be the boss. Be a great one!