Today, we continue our conversation on “Managing Your Boss” or, better yet, “Creating a Good Relationship with Your Boss”. Last week we discussed Boss Goals and Boss Communications; today we cover Boss Schedule/Time Management, Boss Work Style, and Boss Relationships.

I received feedback from two listeners, Ward and Kevin, that they were having issues subscribing to Manager Tools via iTunes. After some research, it turns out that indeed iTunes version 6.0.2 has a problem accepting what should be valid XML in the RSS feed. Apple is working on fixing the problem, but in the meantime, I’ve modified our feed to work properly with iTunes 6.0.2.

So, if you’ve tried recently to subscribe via iTunes and were unable, please give it another try!

Ward and Kevin, thanks for taking the time to bring this to our attention!

best regards,
Mike

We had intended to cover Managing Upwards back in December, during our sessions on writing reviews. As it turned out, while we barely scratched the surface on how to do reviews, it nevertheless took us FOUR casts. We didn’t want to delay those casts, obviously, in light of their time sensitivity. So, we delayed this topic until now.

Managing Upwards for the most part boils down to Creating a Good Relationship with Your Boss. “Managing Your Boss” is somewhat of a misnomer in our world view; tell your boss that you’re managing them and see what kind of look you get. There is a lot to be said about politics in organizations, and whom you should know and whom you should stay in touch with. We’ve found that those topics don’t lend themselves easily to a simple cast if we want to give you actionable guidance. That IS what we’re about, after all.

So, we’re going to focus on some things you can do that will help you improve your relationship with your boss.

There are FIVE areas that we recommend you focus on in your relationship with your boss.

• Boss Goals
• Boss Communications
• Boss Schedule/Time Management
• Boss Work style
• Boss Relationships

Today, we give a brief example of what negative consequences can occur as a result of NOT paying attention to these. We then discuss Boss Goals and Boss Communications. We’ll cover the other three areas on our next podcast.

This week we recur to a theme we started a while ago, management communications. If you don’t remember, we won’t be surprised - it was September, and we barely scratched the surface of presenting with PowerPoint.

There are so many topics to cover, we’re just now getting back to management communications. One of the reasons was our just concluded FOUR part series on performance reviews. We hope that the timing of that helped you be HIGHLY effective this month.

While we ARE going to talk about communications this week, we’re going to discuss a topic that most of you give almost no thought to: communication plans.

What do we mean by communications plans? What we mean is, how do you, as a manager, intend to have your organization understand your team’s plans, strategies and operations? If you immediately jump to “email and a meeting”, you’re not thinking effectively. Have you ever even THOUGHT about having a PLAN or PROCESS for thinking about HOW to communicate with your team?

Here’s what we bet. We bet that you communicate on autopilot. You don’t think AT ALL about HOW to communicate… you think about WHAT you’re going to communicate, and then use the most basic defaults to get your message across.

In fact, we would argue that you NEVER think about communicating other than presentations with PowerPoint. You don’t THINK about communicating… you just DO communicating. The problem with that is, if you don’t ever think about it, you WILL NEVER GET BETTER.

How do you know if you’re on autopilot? Let’s say you want everyone on your team to know something. If you think pretty quickly, email! You’re on autopilot. If you say, well, wait. If I have a meeting coming up, I might put it on the agenda, you’re STILL on autopilot. If, on the other hand, you have something to tell an individual, whether it comes from your boss or not, you think, one on one or poke your head into their cube, you’re on autopilot.

By the way, “telling everybody something” is called, in the communications planning world, “broadcasting”… and telling just one person something is “narrowcasting.”

Now look, we’re not saying these defaults don’t work pretty well most of the time. They do. But there are two dangers with them. First, if something unique or special requires communicating, and you’re operating on autopilot without even a hint of being most effective in your communications, you run the risk of the WAY you’re communicating affecting the quality of your message. Putting it in systems language, your poor PROCESS is affecting your CONTENT. What today’s cast about is the PROCESS of communicating, versus the content.

The second danger is that if you don’t think about communicating as a PROCESS, your ability to communicate as you gain managerial responsibilities will break down. If you just take communicating for granted, when you become a director or junior Vice President, and now have to rely on managers and others to carry your messages to your entire organization, you WILL NOT BE ABLE TO DO IT. You’ve got to have more tricks in your bag as you climb the org structure.

This inability to communicate is one of the biggest frustrations of senior executives we know. They often describe their jobs as “swimming” or “running in oatmeal”, because it takes so long to get the word out, and then “people still don’t get it”.

During the podcast, we make reference to a Sample Communications Plan to assist you in planning your communications more effectively. Use this tool to immediately increase the effectiveness of your managerial communications. You may download it here.

Surprised to get this?? It’s not Monday! Well, this month, we’re opening up our registered users podcast to all our listeners. We’re doing this for several reasons. First, to say thanks to ALL of you who are listening. We appreciate that you’re taking the time to think about your management lives, and that you feel we’re adding value. Also, when we started talking about this show, we realized there were some ideas in here that were just TOO GOOD to limit. What’s that old saying, “information wants to be free?”

Finally, we want to encourage non-registered users to BECOME registered. Each month, registered users get an extra podcast made available only to them. Previously, we’ve addressed topics such as what books and periodicals we’re reading, as well as additional tools like the Meeting Introduction Tool. This month, though, we’re initiating a recurring theme, asking our registered users to stretch themselves a bit.

We’re introducing 6 development ideas in this podcast, and we’re going to revisit them throughout the year on our registered users casts. We’ll delve into some of the topics more deeply, and we’re seriously considering asking those of you who engage in these efforts to be a part of the show and tell everyone else about your experience.

So, join us for the first Special Podcast of the year, “Manager Tools Development Challenge 2006″!

We make reference to the One-on-One Reinitiation Note in the podcast. Here’s a link to that sample note.

As far as I can tell, everything is back up and running correctly. However, over the past 48 hours, it is possible that one or both of the following could have occurred:

• You either registered or tried to retrieve your userid/password (you lost it and asked that it be resent) and then you didn’t get it sent to you. This harkens back to issues we had a few months ago. The fix from months ago wasn’t applied to the new server until yesterday afternoon, but all should be well now.
• You sent us an email and we didn’t get it. There was a short period of time during the transition where there may have had email issues. Now, we’re generally pretty good at returning emails, so if you sent us one within the last day or two and don’t get a response within 48 hours, please be kind and resend it.

So, all that aside, the transition went fairly well. As far as I can tell from the server logs, we haven’t lost any posts or comments. However, at this point, it is clear that there are at least a couple of listeners who haven’t had the new IP address propagated to them yet and are therefore looking at the old server. Let’s hope that gets corrected soon.

Also, thanks for the support and patience while we worked this all out. As a matter of fact, several folks offered to help with the cost of the server upgrade … and one kind listener even suggested that the community would look kindly upon putting some sort of “tip jar” on the website to help collect funds to defray the costs of hosting/etc. That touched us greatly … thank you! However, this is a labor of love. There are certainly aspects of what we do that are “revenue driven” and we may discuss those now and then, but the Manager Tools podcast is our opportunity to give back to the community in some small way. But, thank you very much for the great gesture!

Please let me know if you run into any issues with our podcasts or the site … I’ll be right on top of it!

best regards,
Mike

We’ve had some problems today with the website and wanted to give everyone a quick update …

Unfortunately, we’ve experienced some outages today as a result of server loads. Good news is that we’re getting a lot of traffic on the site; bad news is that it’s overloading the server.

Bottom line, time to upgrade the servers again (3rd time!). Over the next couple of days, we’ll be migrating to our own dedicated server … so please be patient with us while we get this upgrade accomplished!

We’ve been told by our hosting provider that now that we’ve committed to upgrading (and spending more money with them), they’ll keep the website up while the migration is taking place. My fingers are crossed!

regards,
Mike

P.S. During the migration, until your DNS server gets updated with the new IP address, you may be looking at the OLD server. This should clear up within 48 hours or so.

If you’re seeing THIS, you’re looking at the NEW server … and all is good!

Today, we conclude our conversation on Delivering the Review. As a brief review, here’s are the items we’ve covered over this show and last:

• The Pre-Meeting E-Mail - You’ll send this about a week in advance of the delivery meeting. In this mail, you begin to set the groundwork for the meeting by telling them what’s going to happen and why.
• In addition, in part 2 we provide a Sample Self-Appraisal Email - Text for an email you can send to all of your ratees to ask for their input SEVERAL weeks in advance of the review.
• Develop The Core Message - This is perhaps the most important, most overlooked, and initially the HARDEST part of your discussion preparation. If you want the ratee to remember ANYTHING, you need to boild down your message to two or three core items. The core message has three parts: Rating, Result, and Ramifications.
• Logistical Preparation - Things you need to do before the meeting around the physical set-up, etc.
• The Day Before - There’s one thing that MUST happen the day before you meet with a ratee. The ONE THING you MUST DO on the day before any review meeting is give the ratee a copy (without pay information) of their review form.
• What To Bring - There is a list of stuff you need to bring with you.
• How To Structure Your Delivery - There is an effective ORDER to your delivery. Our delivery will have three components: behavior, results, and confirmation.
• How To Start - We recommend scripting your opening, with three parts: the agenda, the ground rules, and the core message.
• How To Behave During the Meeting - Some simple tips on being perceived as a good listener and communicator.

Happy New Year! Please accept our thanks for helping make 2005 a great year for us. We had a wonderful year and a lot of it is a direct result of meeting a number of great folks through Manager Tools. We’re both looking forward to any even better 2006 and hope each of you will stick around and share the upcoming year with us.

Over the next two weeks we’ll be concluding our discussions on Performance Reviews, focusing on actually DELIVERING the review.

The sample of the memo we suggest sending to your employees before their performance review meeting is located here.

In addition, as we discussed on a previous show, we suggest you send to each ratee SEVERAL weeks in advance of the review, an email or memo soliciting input from the ratee. As promised, a sample email/memo is available here.