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have this conversation, go to There's a Cast for That™.)

      Take notes, and go back to your desk and figure out what actions you're going to take in order to deliver those results.

      A lot of managers fear this conversation. The thinking goes, “If there are no measures, they can't use them against me.” But that type of thinking is shortsighted. There are always measures. If you don't know what they are, they may be being used against you. Your boss is privately and subjectively evaluating you.

      Okay, so results come first. Managers who produce great results have more successful careers than those who produce average results. But even reading this statement probably bothers you a little, because you've likely met at least one manager who gets great results and does well whom you despise. There are managers who put results so far ahead of everything else that they justify all sorts of behaviors to achieve those results. There are even industries – Wall Street comes to mind – that are more likely to tolerate this kind of behavior from managers. When the ends justify the means for managers, bad things happen to the workers who report to them.

      A focus only on results far too often leads to abuse of workers. The worldwide labor movement – unions – traces its beginnings to soon after the beginning of…management. Managers were told, “Just get results,” and they did so, at the expense of the health and safety of their employees. So, fairly soon, the workers joined forces.

      Your Second Responsibility as a Manager Is to Retain Your People

      Effectively managed modern organizations now measure retention in addition to results when they are evaluating a manager. It's intended to be a brake against an unrelenting results focus. They want to ensure that a manager's team members don't leave the organization.

      Replacing employees is expensive. When someone leaves, there's the lost work that had been planned for, the cost of interviewing in both money and time, the likely higher salary that will be paid in the event of replacement, the time and expense of training the new employee, and the cost of less productivity by the new employee until that person can match the quality and quantity of work of the person who has left.

      For today's manager, it's not enough to get results.

      The Definition of an Effective Manager Is One Who Gets Results and Keeps Her People

      In the best companies in the world, when executives get together to review the talent of their managers, the results and retention of managers are always at the heart of the discussion. When there's a discussion about who is best, who deserves a promotion, and who is “ready now” or going to be “ready next,” these two metrics come up over and over again: How well did this manager do her job, as shown in her results? Did she retain her people?

      If you want to be an effective manager and if you want to maximize your job security (and, I would argue, your professional satisfaction), you've got to achieve these two metrics. You've got to know how your organization (for results, it's usually your boss) measures them, and you've got to choose to spend your time on things that achieve them.

      What are the things that you can DO that are most likely to achieve them?

      2

      THE FOUR CRITICAL BEHAVIORS

      [Author's Note: If you don't want to learn the fundamental principles that underlie my recommendations, and you think you're ready to dive right in to what to do and how to do it, you can skip this chapter and the next one, and go directly to Chapter 4, “Know Your People – One On Ones.” I don't recommend it, but if you're impatient to get going, go.]

      When my Manager Tools cofounder Mike Auzenne and I started our management careers, we had been taught very little about managing others. We struggled to learn what to do and how to do it, probably just the way you have struggled, and are doing so now. We didn't know that there are basically four things that great managers do a lot better than average and poor managers do. Once we understood these four things, we decided to start Manager Tools so that managers wouldn't have to learn the hard way, as we did.

      The four critical behaviors that an effective manager engages in to produce results and retain team members are the following:

      1. Get to Know Your People.

      2. Communicate about Performance.

      3. Ask for More.

      4. Push Work Down.

      Managers who get results and keep their people almost always do these four things much better than other managers do. (I say, “almost always” because there are exceptions. If you're incredibly smart – on the level of a Bill Gates, Andy Bechtolsheim, Warren Buffett, or Mike Morrisroe – you can probably get by just being smarter than everyone else. But, hey, you're probably not that smart. Mike and I sure aren't.)

      The First Critical Behavior: Get to Know Your People

      All of our data over the years show that the single most important (and efficient) thing that you can do as a manager to improve your performance and increase retention is to spend time getting to know the strengths and weaknesses of your direct reports. Managers who know how to get the most out of each individual member of the team achieve noticeably better results than managers who don't. The most efficient way to get to know your team is to spend time regularly communicating with them.

      Despite the fact that your primary responsibility is getting results, the most important thing you can do isn't strategizing, task assignment, resource planning, or priority analysis. It's getting to know the people who have the skills and who are going to get the work done.

      For the record, a manager can increase performance in the short term very effectively by using the power of his or her role as manager and threatening – and expecting – compliance. But if retention is thrown in as a required goal, that technique quickly sours.

      Our data over the years suggest that, generally, a manager who knows his or her team members one standard deviation better than the average manager produces results that are two standard deviations better than the average manager's results.

      Why is this, do you think? Think about your own relationship with your manager for a second. Do you want your boss to “treat you like everyone else”? Then, maybe you don't need to learn about your directs. However, I would guess that's not what you want. If you're a top performer, how would it feel to know that you were being managed just like your boss's weakest team member? If you were a weak performer, would you want the extra assignments that the top performer received on top of normal duties? Probably not.

      Every person on the earth expects and deserves to be treated as an individual. Sadly, what most of us as managers do (I know I did early in my career) is manage others the way we would like to be managed. This is sort of the Golden Rule of nonexperienced managers. You do to your directs what would make sense if you were one of those directs.

      The problem with this type of managing is that it only works (a little bit) with people a lot like you. Perhaps you're now a software development manager managing other developers. There's a pretty good chance that a good portion of your team is a lot like you. If you used to be a sales rep and are now a sales manager managing other sales reps, there's a lesser chance, but still a good one, that some members of your team are a lot like you. The problem with this is that it only works at the lowest levels and only for a little while. If you aspire to more, your Golden Rule is going to fail you.

      People and their behaviors are what deliver results to your organization. (Not systems, not processes, not computers, not machines.) Results are your primary responsibility. We are all unique – every one of us. What makes any of us as managers think that one size could ever fit all? It might be easier, but it's not more effective. And, if you're worried that it takes a lot of work to be a good manager, this book will show you that it really doesn't.

      If you're working for a boss who's different from you – he's outwardly passionate,

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