It’s getting that time of year again for much of the world, when you’re going to be invited to holiday parties. Many of you will choose not to go, because you don’t love your co-workers, or because you get enough of them at work. Both of these are normal feelings, but the resultant decision just proves that there are good reasons for doing dumb things all the time. (You really must go).

We have observed so much behavior at these parties - whether hosted by the boss at her home, or by the company, or by a friend at the firm - that we’ve learned that folks apparently don’t seem to know what the rules are.

And, careers often come down to small factors, two of the most powerful of which are manners and social graces. So often at work, those are not in evidence, so executives at your firm DO pay attention when they have a chance to see them on display… or, … not… on display.

Herewith, then, some guidance about handling yourself (and your career) with grace and dignity during the holiday party circuit.

We’ve been asked so many times, “what about giving feedback to peers? Or even to my boss?” It’s a great question, because our feedback model ( you’ll find the original show here), with that wonderfully necessary and challenging 4th step, just doesn’t seem to translate. It takes nothing more than asking yourself how you’d feel about being on the receiving end from a peer to know that it won’t have the same effect.

Why is that? We cover that, as well as what to do about it, in this cast on How To Give Feedback to Peers and Bosses. Yes, bosses are also covered by this method, because it’s so non-confrontational, but we don’t feel strongly about endorsing it as fully for bosses as we do for peers.

Listen in, and you’ll learn why and how.

Mike and I were recently working with a large group of very smart client managers, helping them understand how to use the DiSC model in their everyday work.  As an exercise, we had managers break into groups and work together to figure out, “How do we brief Executive X?” In this case, we posited that they were leading a project that was now seriously behind schedule and was going over budget, and they needed to inform the business unit leader and get approval on their next steps.

I’m going to create a separate post describing in more detail the exercise we used, but the short version is that a series of managers had to present to everyone else, based on what they knew of this executive, how they would brief him/her.

It’s important to note three things before we go any further.  First, we knew this person’s profile.  Second, the executive really was quite senior. She ran a fairly large global business, with tens of millions of annual revenue, perhaps even nine figures.  Clearly, an executive with a great deal of experience and responsibility. 

Third, she was in the room at the time. 

One manager was appointed by his group to present their approach, and as he finished he said:

(I don’t want to ruin the humor by talking after the punchline or explaining it - I think everyone will get it.  But I can tell you, what you are about to read brought the house down, and was the perfect segue to a break filled with laughter and ribbing of the perpetrator.)

“We’re going to present three different possible options, and recommend one of them. And, we’re going to make her feel like she made the decision.”

Now that we all know how to apologize, it just wouldn’t do to not know how to accept an apology. Thanks to the growing scarcity of genuine apologies, the art of accepting one seems to be slipping away from us. Since our imperfect nature dooms us to continued errors, faults and failures, opportunities for apologies seem to stretch to the horizon. That means someone has got to accept them, because if an apology falls in the forest and no one hears it, it wasn’t an apology.

But how? What do we say? And why do say those things? And does that end the interlude? (you might be surprised to hear us say it may NOT).

I’ve been reading The Economist for the past few months, because of its reputation, out of respect for our international listeners.

I am quite impressed.  The level of detail, and the insight, particularly regarding business and governmental intersections, are compelling.  And, it is well written, which is always a joy.

 No matter where you are, if your firm is doing business internationally - whether you are involved in that part of the business or NOT - I encourage you to pick it up or subscribe.

Ok, I new we might have a couple of issues from the recent upgrade, but guess who the first call came from? Mark, of course!

If you run into an issue where you don’t appear to be logged in on the home page (i.e., you see the “Login” link), but clicking on that link simply redirects you back to where you started, do this … go to the Discussion Forums, LOGOUT, go back to the Manager Tools home page, and try logging in again. That should resolve the issue.

Mike

Well, the upgrade of the Manager Tools site has begun. Unfortunately, given the nature of the upgrade, it’s not likely to be “perfect” … and we’ve delayed the upgrade long enough in the vain hopes of getting it “perfect”.

Although you won’t see a lot of change (yet), the infrastructure of the site has changed quite a bit which will allow us to move ahead with our plans to deliver more to you. But with change, comes both opportunity and risk.

What’s Changed?

The one thing you’ll notice immediately is that the registration/membership management system has changed quite
radically. You now have ONE place to login and get access to both the RSS feeds, the blog comment area, and the discussion forums. One login and one password! Quite the radical idea, eh?

If you were both both a registered member (you registered to get the members-only area and/or to be able to post comments on the blog) AND were signed-up on the discussion forums (which, until now, was a separate login and password) AND your usernames and emails were identical, YOUR USERNAME AND PASSWORD IS THAT WHICH YOU USED WHEN SIGNING UP FOR THE REGISTERED MEMBERS PODCASTS (YOUR BLOG/MEMBERS-ONLY AREA USERNAME AND PASSWORD).

If you only signed-up on the Discussion Forums ONLY, your username and password for the whole site is now that which you used on the discussion forums. And you will find that you now have access to the members-only area.

If you signed up as a registered member AND on the discussion forums with two distinct usernames, you now have 2 usernames on the site (with access to all features). Frankly, I’d prefer this not be the case, but there really is no way to ensure that 1) your two logins indeed belong to the same person, and 2) you don’t actually don’t want 2 logins (e.g., some of you have expressed the desire to be somewhat anonymous on the discussion forums). If you fall into this category, send me an email with the login you would like deleted.

We’ve also implemented the core infrastructure for our premium content. Once we ensure that everything is up and running smoothly, we’ll be delivering the premium content. Thanks for being patient with us on this point.

Conclusion

Although we’ve tried to make this transition as painless as possible, I know that there are some of you who will experience some difficulties in the transition. And given that our theme recently has been about apologies, let me apologize right up front … I’m sorry. If you do run into issues, please send us an email and we’ll help you work through whatever difficulties exist.

Thanks … hopefully you’ll find the changes worthwhile!

best regards,

Mike and Mark

Over this past weekend, while traveling to a client, I noted that we now have over 1,000 registered members on the Manager Tools Discussion Forums.  I feel obligated to note this in part because I failed to note (in a blog post) what seems like an even more significant number, our going over 5,000 registered members on this site (we’re over 5,700 now).  Believe me, Mike and I were watching that number climb, and we celebrated with a telephonic high five.

 We’re excited about our growth, and that means it’s time to say, yet again, thank you to all of you for your attention, your input, your feedback, your time, and your recommendations to friends and associates about Manager Tools.

 We get asked pretty often, from friends and other podcasters and bloggers as well, what it is we are doing to get such great numbers.  Mike says that there is some disbelief in some ranking sites that takes the form of, “what, a bunch of people would be interested in management?  NAAAAH.”  Us management geeks see it differently.

To be clear, we continue to do nothing unique, and surely less than most folks we know, to “market” Manager Tools.  That is, we don’t take actions that are primarily marketing driven.  We think it looks like marketing because we’re growing… but that’s not marketing per se.  We think that’s just solid content and great members telling your friends and associates.  Marketers call that word of mouth marketing, as if we were planning it.

 But we know it’s all you.

Thanks.

You’re a manager, and that makes you human. You’re human, and that makes you mess up. You mess up, and that means you apologize.

It’s really that simple. So how come no one seems to apologize anymore?

Unfortunately, for all kinds of reasons, the art of apologizing has fallen from favor. We think the primary reason is about power - most people mistakenly believe that when they apologize, they’re admitting weakness. In fact, an apology is almost considered to be an incredible show of strength. If you’re apologizing, then you and the recipient must both know that you’ve made a mistake, or created an awkward situation. You’re already in the dog house. Failing to apologize doesn’t say it didn’t happen. it says you don’t think it’s a big deal. And if your boss or associate or team member thinks it IS a big deal, you have - YOU have - just made your first mistake into a double header.

And another reason is that managers don’t know how to apologize, and that’s why Manager Tools is here.

In this cast, we share an elegant three and a half step apology, and talk about some of the misconceptions and glaring errors associated with saying one regrets one’s error. There are three parts:

• What Not To Do
• The Right Mindset
• What to Say And How To Say It

Regretlessly,

Mark and Mike

Someone asked me recently whether what we produce and present on Manager Tools is custom for Manager Tools.  The tone of the question was clearly along the lines of, “do you ever really USE this stuff, or are you creating it just for us?”

 I admit to being completely stunned - I thought everyone knew that our content comes from years and years of coaching executives and consulting to many, many organizations.

 Honest - everything you’ve seen and heard from Manager Tools is field tested.  Really.

One of the reasons for this is sheer sloth - why produce something new when what you have already works?  I speak a lot… and can’t reinvent the wheel too often out of respect for my schedule, and because mankind hasn’t changed in 10,000 years, and there’s no evidence we ever will.  Management won’t change appreciably either in terms of its underlying principles (many of which Horstman’s Laws try to address.)

One such recent example of my speaking around Manager Tools content is a talk I gave to the Austin Texas chapter of IEEE.  Steven Teleki, a member, asked me to come over as a favor, and after several reschedules because of client trips, I presented the Manager Tools “Get Out of Jail Free” Meetings presentation (we had agreed they would benefit from that talk and would enjoy it).  I gave the presentation you can find linked to to the left of this post.

 Nobody seemed to mind that I had given the talk hundreds of times, or that I used “already created stuff”.