How Not to Manage People

The Leadership Mistakes Keeping Your Team from Greatness

Mike Wicks

• Publisher: HarperCollins Leadership
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9781400218523
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Management
• Index: Business

This book shows you the leadership mistakes you’re making that are keeping your team from achieving greatness.

To any outsider looking in, you’re doing everything right in your management role. However, your employees still want nothing to do with you. They scoff when you tell them what to do and suddenly get quiet when you walk into the room. You know you must get your team behind you if you’re going to stay on the management team. Chances are it’s not about what you’re doing right--it’s about what you’re doing wrong.

How Not to Manage People is filled with interviews and stories of people who were being held back by the things they didn’t realize were working against them. The workplace is a minefield filled with politics and unspoken rules. This book is here to teach you:

• How you’re screwing it up and what to do about it
• How other people screwed it up before figuring it out
• What you should stop doing immediately
• What you should be doing more of

Now, stop panicking and letting frustration hold you back. How Not to Manage People is the tool you need to get your team on your side and rock the manager title!

Section 1

It’s All about the Team

One certain way not to get nominated for manager of the year, let alone win the award, is to begin to believe your own press. Managers who think they know it all—and who fail to understand that they don’t have to be the most knowledgeable person in the room, just the best manager and leader—can be a real danger to their department or their company. A little humility goes a long way when it comes to managing people. In this chapter, we’ll take a look at some people who mistakenly thought it was all about them.

ONE

It’s All about You, Not the Team

DAWSON WAS PROMOTED above other, more worthy, candidates, in part at least because he had attended an Ivy League school. His feeling of entitlement was well ingrained by the time he became head of sales. His first priority when he took over as sales director was to complain about his office chair; he headed down to purchasing to order one that was bigger, better, and more ergonomically fitting to his new stature—or at least his large ego! His second priority was to see if there was a better office with a nicer view that he might relocate to before he moved in his business awards and the large number of business books he owned (but had only ever skimmed). Dawson was also proud of how fit he was and would cycle into work each day, propping his bike against the wall of his office. Unfortunately, he would also change out of his designer, figure-hugging cycling clothes in a tiny closet (with no real door) in his glass-walled office, in full view of several staff members . . . but that’s another story.

It was a full week before he managed to get around to meeting his sales team. In the meeting room sat five eager, optimistic faces and several others, who after taking one look at the preppy way their new boss dressed and his smug look, were significantly less hopeful. Dawson didn’t disappoint the latter group. He spent twenty minutes telling his team how perfect he was for the job, how well he had done in his previous job, and how he was going to turn this “ramshackle sales department” into the shining star of the company. All this before he had formally introduced himself and discovered anything about the people he was supposed to be leading—even their names.

By the end of the meeting, Dawson had failed to create a connection between himself and his team. He either didn’t know or couldn’t remember everyone’s names and didn’t bother to learn which territories they represented. Dawson, however, was oblivious to his shortcomings and patted himself on the back for what he felt was a good initial meeting. He was sure that his team members were all highly motivated to have such an experienced person leading the department and that increased sales would quickly follow.

Unfortunately for Dawson, sales did not increase. What did increase, however, was employee turnover, and after two short weeks in his new role, Dawson received his first letter of resignation (the first of many, as it happens). To Dawson’s dismay, it was one of the senior salespeople, Jodie, and she was the company’s number one performer. Jodie had often been approached by the company’s competitors but had never been interested in leaving. That was, until the new head of sales was hired. Now, leaving the company seemed much more appealing than coming in to work each day and watching Dawson strut around and preen himself like some rooster in a hen house. He was arrogant and self-serving to say the least, and it was apparent to Jodie that he didn’t actually care about the team. She had seen his type before: Managers like Dawson who used the team to make themselves look better. Managers who were solely interested in their own success, and who didn’t realize the importance and value of their team.

Dawson made the common mistake of getting wrapped up in his own immediate success; he felt good about his promotion and wanted to shout it from the rooftops. One of the first things he did was announce it on Facebook and LinkedIn and then eagerly awaited the congratulations that followed. He bought champagne, the real stuff, and took it home to his wife. He called his brother and sister and his mom and dad and reveled in the glory of achievement. Not once, in the early days, did he consider the team he was about to manage.

Less than two weeks later he was fighting his first fire—Jodie’s resignation. His boss wanted to know why the devil their best sales rep was leaving and demanded to know what Dawson had said to her to make her leave.

Dawson, of course, was dumbfounded; he was a great boss, why would she leave? He could have understood if that short guy with the unruly hair—what was his name—had left, the one that worked the Southwest . . . or was it the Southeast?

THAT IS THE challenge; sometimes bad managers don’t know they are bad managers. That’s because they see the word manage, not lead in their title. How could Dawson have handled things a little better? First, he could have shown a little humility when he got the promotion rather than thinking, “Well, it’s about time.” Thinking you are entitled to a job, a promotion, or almost anything in life is going to get you into trouble at some point. Rather than think only about what it meant to him to become the head of a department, he should have thought about what it meant to the team he was about to lead, and the company. The hiring team had entrusted him with a ton of responsibility and talent, but all he could see was the current and potential glory.

Let’s go back to that first meeting and see how he could have handled things better. In fact, we should go way back to when he first accepted the job; at that point he should have gone to the HR department and requested his team’s employment files and studied them. After all, he was being entrusted with their future success. Who were these people? Where did they come from? What jobs had they held in the past? How long had they been with the company? Had any of them had any issues with his predecessor? What did their last performance review reveal?

At the same time, he should have been studying his predecessor’s files and discovering which team member managed which territory, what their sales targets were and whether they were reaching them, and whether they had received any training, either in-house, external, or out in the field. Dawson had been more interested in thinking about whether he’d get a corner office with a view and what bottle of champagne would most impress his wife.

If Dawson had been half the manager he thought he was, he would have walked into that first meeting with his sales team and told them that he was there for them and that his job was to support them in achieving their best potential; that this was a team effort and together they could achieve great things. He would have already known their names and their territories and would have made a point of going around the table and letting each person talk a little about their territory, their challenges, and their aspirations. He would have then followed up by asking everyone to tell him one thing that he could do to help them be more successful. In this way, the meeting would have become about them, not him.

If you are thinking, it’s tough to put ten names to ten faces, here’s a trick. At your first team meeting draw a rectangle depicting the table and a square for each chair. Then, during the roundtable introductions, write each name into the relevant square. Later, you will be able to imagine the faces around the table and refer to the name in the appropriate seat on your drawing.

If you are thinking, it’s tough to put ten names to ten

faces, here’s a trick. At your first team meeting draw a

rectangle depicting the table and a square for each

chair. Then, during the roundtable introductions, write

each name into the relevant square. Later, you will be

able to imagine the faces around the table and refer to

the name in the appropriate seat on your drawing.

You may have noted that in the second (and much improved) scenario above, Dawson never talks about himself. When you take over a team, unless it is an abnormally fast appointment or replacement, you can bet the team knows all about you; they will have discussed you, Facebooked you, asked other managers about you—they’ll know you by your reputation. The only question is, can you gain their respect because of, or in spite of, that knowledge?

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How Not to Manage People

• Humility is for the undeserving; revel in your success.

• Status is important; negotiate, or take, that corner office, you earned it.

• Hang and place your awards and certificates prominently. That marathon certificate will be sure to impress, and it’ll look good next to your degreesonline.com graduation certificate.

• Ensure every member of your team knows how well-qualified you are and how lucky they are to have you as their leader.

• Ignore any dissent among the ranks, they’ll get over it. A few naysayers are irrelevant.

• Don’t go to all the hassle of learning your team’s names or anything about them in advance, you’ll get to know them over time. The important thing is for them to know your name.

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TWO

Your Number One Priority Is to Ensure the Team Makes You Look Good

It’s surprising how many managers fail to recognize the value of their team and simply use their employees to further their own agenda. If only they could see that they would climb the corporate ladder far faster by basing their own success on that of their team.

CATHY WORKS AT an international advertising agency and is proud to be the youngest person ever to be promoted to vice president. She is certain that all she needs to do to become the first female senior vice president is to make her division the most successful in the company. Her rise to vice president had been quick and was based on her handling of—maybe taming is a better word—a particularly difficult major client that the company had be...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• Section 1: It’s All about the Team
• Section 2: It’s All about Communication
• Section 3. It’s All about Leadership
• Notes
• Acknowledgments