Mike and Mark discuss a friend’s stalled technical career. What’s the secret to reinvigorating his career?

Mark and Mike discuss the single most effective management tool - the one-on-one.

Mark and Mike continue their discussion on the single most effective management tool available today - the weekly one-on-one.

In the podcast, we refer to both a written summary of the key points for conducting one-on-ones, as well as a form useful for documenting your one-on-ones.

In today’s show we continue our conversation on one-on-ones. In addition to a brief review (very brief — not a substitute for listening to the previous two shows!), we review a number of questions and finer points:

1. I did one, and it was extremely awkward. How long will it take to get used to them?
2. In the first one, some of my folks were scared - why?
   In my first one, they didn’t seem too open to share personal info - what can I do about that?
3. My folks didn’t like me taking notes. What do I do?
4. I don’t like taking notes - can I just chat with them?
5. How do I follow up on old items?
6. What do I do if someone keeps reporting that they haven’t done something? I’ve got a forum to talk to them, but what do I say?
7. How can I reduce my folks coming to me between O3s with stuff that is best covered in the O3?
8. What if someone doesn’t show?
9. What if my team is spread across the entire continent, or one of my folks is travelling that week … Can I do these over the phone? And if so, what should I do differently?

One of the most challenging aspects of being a manager is leading people who are remote to you. Sometimes it’s one team member being offsite; sometimes entire teams are spread across the country or even the globe, or even just across a corporate campus. All these situations are examples of “virtual” teams…and managing a virtual team is notably harder than managing a group that are co-located. And, these suggestions work well for project teams that may be in the same location but are matrixed together.

This cast addresses the special difficulties virtual teams present. First, we briefly discuss teams in general, and then we outline the three specific steps a ‘virtual’ manager can take to turn her workgroup into a team:

1. Pay special attention to hiring and interviewing,
2. Spend money to have a face to face meeting, and
3. Special rigor about team communications.

Part of being an Effective Manager is not just focusing on your day to day activities, but thinking STRATEGICALLY about your team, your role, your company, and your industry. We find that most managers are truly HORRENDOUS at this, and that’s why we address it in this week’s podcast. We understand why - there is often a great deal of pressure to get down in the weeds, and often senior managers are delegating out un-connected tasks versus giving perspective and scope.

What got us thinking this way was our recent cast on layoffs (Oct 23). Frankly, nobody likes to talk about it, but as a manager you not only need to be ready to deliver the news of a layoff for the organization, you need to be ready to be laid off yourself. Managers who are most ready to deal with being laid off are those who have good strategic vision, and they get that by regularly scanning their environment.

In this show, we’ll talk about what you should be looking at regularly. We use layoffs as a context, but strategic environmental scanning must be done irrespective of layoffs - this is a habit that highly effective managers take for granted.

Today, we continue our podcast on Strategic Thinking and Layoffs, picking right up where we left off on the November 14 Podcast.

Our focus today is on applying the “Environmental Scan” discussed last week to the particular concerns over a potential layoff and identifying specific actions you can take to both identify the potential of a layoff and, more importantly, prepare effectively in case it should actually occur.

Sites mentioned during the show:

• PubSub
• Gada.be

A better explanation of Gada.be

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.

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.

Influence: Science and Practice by Robert B. Cialdini

Why We Like This Book:

This book is fascinating. It will both intrigue you, and make you feel like you can trick anyone into doing anything. And, you would be able to. Cialdini lays out how to influence and persuade others by teaching basic principles about why we act the way we do, and why we respond to others the way we do. This is a core book for sales and marketing professionals, and any manager who has to use more than just positional power to make things happen (that would include YOU).