Yes, we do deliver the Effective Manager Conference on-site to organizational clients. Here are the basics:

Content: We deliver the 2-day Effective Manager Conference. We teach and then lead practice in the Management Trinity: One on Ones, Feedback, Coaching, and Delegation. We also cover Performance Management and Rolling Out The Trinity.

Customization: We will discuss your company’s culture, industry, structure, and attendees’ needs with you in advance. This allows us to spend more time on some areas of the Trinity than others. We stick to the Trinity 95% of the time.

Cost: $30,000 plus reasonable travel expenses. (see more in Cost/Benefit below)

Scope: We limit the 2 days to 25 managers, to maintain the personal attention of the conferences.

Scheduling: We need 60 days notice (though there are exceptions). Our schedules are usually the limiting factor.

Cost/Benefit: We generally start recommending the on-site option when companies have 15 or more managers to send to one or more EMC’s - that’s about break-even. Consider the savings for 20 managers: At $1,600 early registration fee, that’s $32,000. If you assume $300 airfare, and $300 hotel, that’s $600 travel costs per attendee, totaling $12,000 more. Total CASH costs for 20 managers to attend a scheduled EMC is $44,000, versus the $30,000 on-site investment. And 25 managers attending a scheduled EMC would be $55,000. And of course none of this math takes into account the opportunity costs of travel.

To start the process, just send us an email.

“I have attended Dale Carnegie, American Management Association, etc
conferences and the MT conference blew them away!”
- Jeff Vose, 2007 Conference Attendee

Mark and I are pleased to announce our Effective Manager Conference, November 11 - 12, at the Renaissance Concourse Hotel, Atlanta, Georgia.

We guarantee it will be the best 2 days of your professional life spent learning about management. And our previous attendees agree. You can find their comments in the Effective Manager Conference Discussion Forums.

What: Manager Tools Effective Manager Conference

Who: ONLY 100 ATTENDEES. Our previous attendees loved the personal attention with detailed practice sessions and coaching. We won’t change that.

When: November 11 - 12, 2008. 2 Full Days!

Where: Renaissance Concourse Hotel, Atlanta

How: You can register now on our registration page

How Much: $1,800 Regular Registration. Early Registration, available until September 21, is only $1,600. Your registration fee includes ALL your meals. We don’t want you worrying about your meal schedule, or filing expense reports. The focus will be on your management skills. We’re sorry, but unfortunately we can’t cover your travel costs as well.

Why: To become a more effective manager. This 2 day training conference is an ideal way for you to grow your managerial, leadership, and communication skills. If you need another reason, this conference isn’t for you.

Go to our registration page to sign-up now!

“Simply the best, most exciting and informative conference ever.
The personal feel to and for individuals set it apart.”
- Stephen Hay, January 2008 Attendee

More about our agenda:

Day 1: Where else would we start but with the Management Trinity?

One on Ones - The basics, and taking them to the next level.

Feedback - An overview, your questions, and — practice, practice, practice!

Day 1 Evening: We’re hosting you for dinner. We’ll talk about management and leadership, have plenty of time for Questions and Answers, and get to know each other better. You’ll leave this conference with 100 managers added to your personal network, ready to call in an instant.

Day 2: We’ll start by practicing the new Effective Coaching Model - you’ll love it. Also:

Rolling out the Trinity: Now that you know what to do, how do you roll it out to your organization. We’ll cover the roll-out in detail!

Effective Performance Management: How an Effective Manger connects day to day to annual goals. Like everything else we do, it’s simple and powerful.

Both Days:

Practice: You will practice feedback and coaching and other skills repeatedly. Individual Attention: When you practice, one of our coaching staff will be watching and providing feedback.

Open Q&A: At our meals, and at the end of both days, we’ll throw it open to questions. Come ready to have your questions answered . . . all of them!

We promise, when you’re done — you’ll be spent! And somehow, still energized to go back to work even more excited about managing and leading — and living.

“This was the best management course I have ever taken!”
- Alberto Magano, January 2008 Attendee

Please join us in Atlanta!

Go to our registration page to sign-up now!

If you have questions, you can leave comments here or in the Manager Tools Effective Manager Conference forum.

best regards,

Mike and Mark
Founders, Manager Tools

“The podcasts are brilliant but being there,
hearing it from you guys just makes it perfect.”
- Martin Harvey, January 2008 Attendee

Hotel and Travel Notes:

Contemporary Travel Inc is the official travel agency for the New York, 2008 Effective Managers Conference. If you have any questions relative to hotel arrangements or travel, please contact either Gail Weiss (gweiss@contemporarytvl.webmail.com) or Judy Barth (judyb@contemporarytvl.webmail.com) as quickly as possible. Late reservations may not be afforded the group rate.

You can find the show here.

The interview is about Building Your Network. Stan agrees with us on the value of giving and the selfless approach to building relationships with others. He’s a great guy, too, surely in part because he’s an Aussie!

Please note that the three day date ranges are the Tues-Wed-Thurs of that week. For each week, then, that gives us two options: either a Tues-Wed conference or a Wed-Thurs conference. (We don’t like the idea of folks having to travel away from their families on the weekends.) We’ve listed two weeks for each city, so that gives us 4 possible 2-day sets for each city, which is usually sufficient.

London: January 20-22 or 27-29
Dallas: March 17-19 or 24-26
Washington DC: May 12-14 or 19-21
Los Angeles: July 21-23 or 28-30
Chicago: September 15-17 or 22-24
Newark: November 10-12 or 17-19

These dates are only 90% certain. It’s possible we’ve picked a certain city at a certain time (imagine if we had picked Denver for this week). We have to wait to hear back from our travel planner about hotels that can accommodate us on those dates. We try to keep room rates down for attendees, and our costs down too - sometimes that’s a factor.

We are trying to get to new places while balancing what we know of member densities and stated demand. Yes, stated demand matters to some degree.

If we are not coming to your area, please consider asking us to come directly to you. We don’t talk about our client work a lot, but we do a lot of it nonetheless. If you have around 15 folks, it’s almost cheaper for us to come to you, and on-site client conferences are tailored to your culture and the group we’re working with. Seriously - it only takes about 15 folks (and we do limit attendance to 25).

The Chicago and Newark conferences will be in the same hotels as this year. They did well. We will not return to the Dulles Airport Marriott for the Wash DC effort.

We really blew it last year promising to come to Sydney and not following through. We’re still working on a solution for Australia.

There’s risk in this process. We know some of you might could have been enticed to come to earlier conferences if we had delayed announcing later cities. But this is just the better way. We hope you’ll agree by signing up as soon as you can.

We hope to see you at a conference in ‘09!

We’ve been asked a thousand questions about what to do and when to do it when it comes to the Management Trinity, and we’ve finally gotten frustrated enough to do something about it. We assumed that a lot of the ideas we’re going to share here just made sense, and managers were taking the parts of the Trinity step by step, mastering each one, and adding new parts as they were able.

And then we got an email complaining that putting ALL FOUR of the Trinity in place all at once was “JUST TOO HARD”.

And, that listener was right – it was too hard – and we weren’t helping by not sharing our guidance. We’ve shared these ideas with hundreds of corporate client managers…and now it’s time to share it with everyone.

Step by step, here’s how you do it. If you ask us, if there WERE a Manager Tools Hall of Fame (HOF), this cast would be in it.

Moving away from the apology, we know that many will ask why. The simple answer is cost. Airline flight costs have risen enormously for long-haul flights. We’re still a small company, and we couldn’t justify the cost-benefit outcomes relative to opportunity costs.

We hope to be able to make it happen at some point in the future.

Sorry mates.

Our intent is to add more and more video this year, and this was one of our first “added value” efforts relative to a cast. We think it’s pretty helpful - we’ve already gotten plenty of questions about details of the packing, and we think this will make things even more clear.

There IS a small glitch in the video. Mark thinks that he inadvertently paused rather than recorded for about 30 seconds, when he intended to show the packing of socks and toiletries. (It goes right from undershirts and boxers to folding trousers). You should be able to tell, though, from the pictures in the premium content slides, how those steps go. (Yes, all the toiletries go in!).

Let us know what you think!

We get asked all the time, “how big a group have you ever used the Meeting Introduction Tool with?” The answer is 110.

It is Mark’s favorite Manager Tool because everyone can use it, it works so darn well, and it’s TOTALLY against his natural inclination to “take up SO much time on fluff”. And yet, when he has tried to NOT use it, trainings and meetings inevitably are less effective – sometimes enormously so. So, we don’t use it because it makes natural sense, we use it because it’s so incredibly effective. The definition of a professional executive is someone who does what is effective whether they like to or not.

So, if you want to use the Introduction Tool for a big group, we explain how in this cast.

A San Francisco conference attendee agrees:

I just wanted to send you guys a note and tell you how much the SF
conference has changed me. It may not have been necessarily the information covered in the conference, but it was the spirit. It was the experience.

And most importantly it was what you guys are trying (and succeeding in)
when it comes to management. It inspired me to see people do what their
passion is, and be able to make such a difference in a world that puts
little into the profession.

Since I have been back I have been re-energized in the business, and
implementing your techniques on calendar management have allowed me to get so much accomplished. And when you add the thought of the
Horstman Curve to what i am doing, it helps me keep pushing through
knowing that soon enough I will top over and then get to the ’sweet
spot’!

Really, thank you for everything you have given me. Keep it up, and
keep inspiring others (and me too).

Thanks

We’d love for you to join us at a conference…and we’d REALLY love for you to be a better manager.

And getting on an airplane means packing a bag. And based on what Mark sees in his travels, no one seems to have gotten the memo about the right way to do it.

How easy is it? How about a 23 day, 5 country trip without checking a bag? Yep, you read that right.

For premium subscribers, we have the normal shownotes (though the notes have a bonus in them) and slides, PLUS a special set of slides showing How Mark Packs for a Week Long Trip. Step by step pictures: what he packs, how he uses dry cleaning bags, how it all fits (easily). If you’re not premium, this is a cast that might make it worth it!

New! For Premium Members only, we’ve posted a video of Mark going through his packing routine. One of many more videos to come!

This cast describes how to increase your chances of re-hiring someone who has left your organization. They’re called Boomerangs!

There really IS a war for talent going on today. Demographics are in many ways working against us, reducing the labor pool, as well as changing the nature of work and the relationships “employees” have with their “employers”. Frankly, it’s harder than ever - and will KEEP GETTING HARDER - to find and hire high caliber associates.

One effective technique is hiring former employees, or “Boomerangs”. 20 or 30 years ago, it was unheard of. The reasons then seemed to make sense … but now?

This cast will tell you what to do with Boomerangs.

Starting with the July 2008 shows, we’ve made an enhanced version of the podcast feed available.

The Manager Tools Enhanced podcast includes chapter marks (so you can easily skip to portions of the podcast you’re specifically interested in) and photos of the premium content slides timed to the audio content. When you play an enhanced podcast in iTunes, a “Chapters” menu option appears to assist you in navigating through the podcast.

Similarly, when listening to the podcast on your iPod, chapter marks (and slides, if you have an iPhone or Video iPod) are available.

On an iPhone or Video iPod, premium content slides are available as well!

The Enhanced Podcast feed is: http://www.manager-tools.com/premium/manager-tools-premium.rss

Add the Enhanced Podcast feed to iTunes

Premium Content Documents Feed

Although the Premium Content Documents has existed for some time, we thought it might be useful to remind you. We don’t like having to do the “right-click, Save as ..” a hundred times or so to download the Premium documents to our hard drive either! So, to resolve this, we created a couple of special RSS feeds for Premium Content. Add these feeds to iTunes and you’ll have all the Premium documents right there in iTunes waiting for you immediately after the documents are published. It doesn’t get any easier than that!

The Premium Content documents feed is: http://www.manager-tools.com/premium/premium_docs_rss.xml

Add the Premium Content documents feed to iTunes

If you’re one of our younger listeners, members, or premium subscribers, with less than 5 years in the workforce, chances are you have a MySpace or a FaceBook page. You stay in touch with friends, let people know what you’re doing, share photos, put yourself out there.

And you may have trouble, too.

OR … you’re a manager with one of those people working for you.

And you may have trouble too.

Learn how to get out of trouble in this cast.

Even though “References Available Upon Request” is no longer a good idea, reference CHECKING is on the rise and will only increase in the coming years. It seems like since resumes don’t include the age-old line — the why of which we’ll share — somehow far too many job seekers are caught off-guard by reference requests. Ahh, Horstman’s Christmas Rule!

We’ll tell you how to manage and share your references in this cast. And hey, if you’re maintaining your network, this one is EASY!

Of course, if you haven’t listened to last week’s cast, you may want to start there.

Soft Skills!

How many times have you heard, “hired for technical skills, fired for (lack of) people skills”? It may be common wisdom (an oxymoron if there ever was one), but it’s still true. The path to greater success in most organizations, big and small, is more quickly achieved by improving one’s relationships and communication skills than it is by learning more technical knowledge.

Yes, results trump everything; but the higher you go, the more your results hinge on your abilities to get along and to get others to go along.

And yet, far too few managers are willing to coach directs on interpersonal skills: how they speak, how they create and maintain relationships, how they listen.

In this first of a series of casts, we lay out the basics of interpersonal skill coaching, and tell you which of the skills to start with.

Can you guess which it is?

So, for those who asked, here you go. For those who would rather not hear about it, feel free to skip it … you won’t hurt our feelings and you won’t miss any of our normal material.

By now, you know why matrix organizations exist (and why we don’t like them). In today’s cast, we talk about what you DO to be effective in matrix organizations.

“Communication is What The Listener Does”
- Peter Drucker

We are pleased to announced our first ever Effective Communications Conference!

Communication is so critical to every manager, and yet so few seem to do it well. Join us in San Antonio to learn how to be an effective communicator as a manager.

What: Manager Tools Effective Communications Conference

Who: Only 75 Attendees! We’re narrowing our focus and scope to insure everyone gets personal attention and practice.

When: September 9-10, 2008. 2 FULL Days, with our signature practices and Open Q&A

Every attendee will have a 10-15 minute presentation reviewed by professional speakers and executive communications coaches.

Where: Hilton Palacio Del Rio, San Antonio, TX

How: Go to our Registration Page. Prior attendance at out Effective Manager Conference is NOT required to attend the Communication Conference.

How Much: $1,600 early registration until July 12. $1,850 normal registration thereafter. Your registration fee includes ALL your meals. We don’t want you worrying about your meal schedule, or filing expense reports.

“I spend more time teaching effective communication to executive coaching clients than ALL OTHER SKILLS COMBINED.”
- Mark Horstman

Why: To become a better communicator. If you’re a manager now, your communication skills are what carry your ideas to your team, and your value to the rest of the organization. We bet every “great manager” you know is a great communicator. THEY KNOW THIS STUFF ALREADY!

For more details, our agenda, and logistics, please go to the Effective Communications Conference page.

If you’re ready now, go to our conference registration page to register now.

Please join us for this first ever Effective Communications Conference!

Being 6 weeks from the conference, and only having a few slots left, we felt that we would be willing to handle a few more attendees. We always have a waiting list, and we always turn some folks away, and we don’t like doing that.

And, this is is our last scheduled Effective Manager Conference in the US this year. Our September conference is on Communications, and we’re looking at Australia in November.

So, if you’ve been thinking about it, we’ve made some slots available. We hope to see you there.

We’ve finally succumbed to the steady drumbeat of requests for “The Manager Tools Way” of dealing with how to survive and thrive in a matrix organization. A couple of years ago, Mark said he’d never do these casts. His rationale? “We’ve never done a cast about managing in an organization that employs corporal punishment [physical beatings] – why start down that path by talking about matrices?”

He was joking.

Mostly.

But he’s come around, and he’s come around fiercely. The fact is, as misguided as they are, matrix organizations are not only here and here to stay, they’re likely to increase in number over the next 30 years. The fact that we disagree with them doesn’t make them suddenly cease to exist.

We’ve got a lot of ground to cover, and some of it is background. But we start right out with our recommendations, and then spend some time building our case.

Welcome to the Matrix. We can’t make you Neo…but we can help.

We believe that behavioral interviewing is the best systemic form of interviewing evaluation a manager can use. There’s nothing that even comes CLOSE. Sure, there are those who think testing is important, and we don’t disagree. But we also think that a professional manager can, with time and an effective interview process, approximate what amounts to a “test” of any candidate that ‘is reasonably certain to be an accurate predictor of future success’. Those quote marks indicate that that is a claim that a popular screening test makes.

The question, of course, is: HOW?

There are two ways. One is to use the Manager Tools Interview Creation Tool, which we’re due to roll out shortly for premium members. Answering about a hundred questions on a scale of 1-5, in about 45 minutes, and you get an interview printed out immediately afterwards that is so good some managers will cry about it.

The other way is to use this simple model described in this cast. It works, and it’s free.

We shared - 3 years ago - our recommendations on how to RUN an Effective Meeting. What about our recommendations for how to behave when you’re NOT running the meeting?

We have a series of recommendations, because meetings take up so much of our professional lives. In this cast, #5 in a series we’ll build up over time, we talk about how to be a participant once the meeting gets started.

If you’d like to watch Mark describe the Feedback Model on video, you can find it here.

Enjoy!

Many of our casts address specific problems that managers face. It’s easy to forget that management is an inherently human endeavor. And when it comes to our humanity, all the technology in our modern world doesn’t take the place of respect, dignity, giving and forgiving.

Despite so much modern focus on technology, and speed, and time, all us humans are still breathing at about the same rate we were 10,000 years ago, our hearts are still beating at about the same rate.

Human kindness does have a place in effective management. Here’s how.

Whether we like it or not, other people are part of our professional lives. And, as Dale Carnegie sagely noted, “A person’s name, to that person, is the sweetest and most important sound in any language.”

But how to remember them? It vexes the best of us.

And one of the keys: you really don’t have to.

PLEASE NOTE: If you downloaded this show and got part 2 of the Meal Interviews series, I’m sorry. I’ve since corrected the problem. You should now get the correct show.

May 12, 2008 13:48 GMT Update: iTunes has now refreshed the feed. If you downloaded the wrong show (sorry), you may delete the show within iTunes, refresh the podcast list (alt/option click the disclosure triangle next to the Manager Tools podcast), then download the podcast again by selecting the “Get” button next to the latest show. Sorry for the troubles!

We have NO EXCUSE for why we didn’t do this podcast 2 years ago. We get this question all the time, so much so that we’re making it part of the standard weekly show rather than restricting it to the interview tool. Meal interviews are becoming more and more common, even as they become ever less intelligent as a tool.

The cast is really just a long list of small tips – there is very little overarching strategy to share. The STRATEGY is clear, though, right? It’s an INTERVIEW!

And, in this cast, we make a very exciting New Product Announcement!

The Link: Manager Tools Resume Service Description

I like quotes, but I failed to validate the provenance of this one. I won’t use it again.

I regret my error.

Many managers mistakenly fail to connect the process of hiring with the later successes and failures of the organization. When someone doesn’t work out, particularly if it’s 3-5 years after they were hired, very few managers think that the problem started when they were being interviewed. But the fact is, just like our elected leaders in a democracy, we get the people we deserve. If we hired them, we MUST have wanted them? Right?

Somehow, though, this kind of analysis is never done. While it’s probably not terribly helpful for those who leave the company after 20 years, there ought to be a way to evaluate managers’ abilities to find and hire good, talented people (”talent”) for the company.

And now there is: The Manager Tools Talent Scouting Average.

One of the things we have learned over the years is that bad hiring is easy, and good hiring is hard. It’s easy to hire someone who isn’t going to work out – just do one interview, don’t dig for details, don’t listen to the doubts you’re feeling, don’t interview for the soft skills.

Of course, this is what happens far too often…and then when there are culture or discipline problems, everyone starts talking about changing the culture, or doing exit interviews. But the answer lies in smarter — and harder — hiring.

In this cast, we share a simple way for a hiring manager to make a decision about a candidate. You’ll probably hear a surprise or two, so listen in … and you’ll also hear Horstman’s Law of Bad Hiring!

This cast is one in a series to be called How to Hire, which is part of our larger set of series on Managing Talent.

Date: 16 May
Time: 7:30 - 9:30 pm
Where: Pizza Express, Hounslow Link To Map
Address Details:
Closest Tube is Hounslow East (zoom out one click on the map above)
About 35 mins from the West End on the Piccadilly Line.
About 20 mins from Heathrow Terminal 3 on the Piccadilly Line.

The plan is for all of us to chat from 7:30 to 8:30, and then Mark and Mike will answer questions in the second hour.

Please RSVP to this thread in the forums so we can plan the right amount of seats.

Hope you can make it!

Mark once was asked to adjudicate a discussion between two managers (one new, one experienced). The issue? “Should a manager give feedback about the clothes an employee is wearing?”

Mark sided with the manager who said no, you shouldn’t.

If you’re surprised, listen in!

We have been asked hundreds of times for guidance on what to do as a new manager, and we’re finally ready to start rolling out this series of casts. This first cast will probably surprise some of our listeners, because it’s pretty counterintuitive. On the other hand, we have alluded to it in a few casts before. It’s just not what most people think it should be.

We’ll tell you as well what most managers do…and why they’re wrong.

The first in a series: The Manager Tools Guidelines For New Managers

I am a Manager in a [European] IT company and for 6 months I slogged with my 8 member team unknown and unrecognized in a small corner of the office.

Then last month our clients started reviewing all the teams that were servicing their account and were quite disappointed with the people management systems in place. Or rather the lack of them.

Until they reviewed our team.

They saw strange terms bandies about,like O3, Coaching, employee engagement surveys,constant feedback systems.

Guess what?

My VP promoted me to ‘Process Excellence Manager’ to ensure ALL teams followed the lead of the ‘Center of Excellence’ that my team is now recognized as.

All it is all because of 2 people in a distant country. You make a difference and maybe in the end that is all that matters.

A fan

Ah, the FOURTH member of the Trinity. We did this for two reasons – one, to make it easier to remember. Two, because you simply cannot grow an organization profitably without Delegation. You can grow the profitability of a company without new products, without new distribution – think Tiffany’s, or coal mines. But not without delegation. (Delegation is ESPECIALLY important if you don’t have new products or distribution, and we don’t recommend either!)

Effective Managers know how to consciously and effectively delegate. Good delegation leads to more growth at less cost. How can we call ourselves professional managers unless we do something that we KNOW leads to profitable growth?

First, we got our first confessional email from a member who admitted to paying for premium content, downloading it all, and then unsubscribing.

Second, I re-read a column discussing how work is no longer fulfilling for knowledge workers because they don’t produce measurable/visible/knowable output. One guy said that because he resells energy futures, he envies electricians the fact that they can see their accomplishments, which may last a long time.

But then a management consultant said that she envied her clients celebrating a clear accomplishment, and, “‘That must be a tremendous feeling […]one I will never know.’”

While I generally don’t like to define things in terms of negatives, these two items reminded me why Manager Tools exists.

First, Mike and I do spend time talking about how to protect our work, and we do try to be careful. We have a great IP lawyer. And, we generally refuse to work on protecting our stuff when it gets technically complicated OR when we think our best users are going to stumble over the protections. I am SURE that our biases here made it easy for the confessor to do so.

We’re sticking to our plan.

Some people are going to steal Manager Tools’ stuff. We think it’s wrong and reprehensible. We think our honor system rightly mirrors the honor system of managers. If you work for us, we’ll forgive you for cheating…and we will fire you. We believe in redemption AND trustworthiness.

But we’re not going to make it hard for the vast majority of folks to grow and develop because of a few who don’t share our view of honor.

Thanks to all of you, we can’t imagine not feeling a sense of accomplishment. We feel accomplishments every day, all the time! We love getting notes about how you’re doing and how we played a role. (And yes, we still think YOU deserve all the credit).

As we grow, we get more notes thanking us every day. I read each one multiple times. On bad days, I re-read many of them.

We want everyone to get better as managers, so much so we know we’re going to get cheated. And we know it’s working, because we feel it every day.

We would do this for free.

For you.

That’s why we do this.

For you.

This week, we cover the Coaching Model’s inclusion in the Management Trinity. It’s BY FAR the least used of the Trinity. That’s too bad, because it only takes 5 minutes a week per direct to coach them. FIVE MINUTES A WEEK! Who would want to go to their boss and say, “I didn’t coach my people this YEAR, because over the course of the year it would have taken me 4 hours, and I didn’t want to spend that much time on it.”

Not if you worked for us. At least, not for long.

I told him I got that question a lot [for the wrong reasons, but whatever.] I told him that “feedback” started in the early 20th century, with the advent of microphones. Since inputs into the mics were “feeds”, and they were designed to only work with inputs, if there were “feeds” that came back through the system [usually from being too close to speakers], you’d get an awful noise. That awful noise was named “feedback”, because it was a “feed” that came “back” into the system.

Well, you’d have thought that he’d been handed the talking points of an opposing debating team. He attacked our model for using a term whose origins were legitimately associated with an awful noise. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that feedback was even then useful, and managers who don’t give feedback because they think it’s an awful noise just don’t realize how awful a noise their silence makes.

What I should have said, rather than taking his question literally (no, he did not use the word etymology), was that we use the word NOT because of its earliest origins, but rather because we’re engineers, and all good systems are built with feedback mechanisms built in. The word feedback is NOT inherently negative today, even though that’s how it began, and how managers who don’t want to do it define it themselves. The word usage has CHANGED, to incorporate the value of feedback into systems that touch all aspects of our lives.

Word usage DOES change. It used to be that Bethlehem hospital in London was a mental institution. It was initially derogatory slang to describe a completely chaotic situation as “bedlam”, but it got that name because that was how Bethlehem Hospital was pronounced.

Maybe you as a manager think of feedback as an awful noise, but you’re glad there’s feedback in other systems, we’re sure of that. When your automatic car window STOPS going up because the system has a new force put on it - FEEDBACK - your child’s hand doesn’t get crushed. When your automatic garage door STOPS going down because something interrupts the safety circuit, well, your child’s hand doesn’t get crushed. When someone says, “WHAT?!?!?” when you use a word they don’t understand, or they just don’t hear you, or YOU MISPRONOUNCE it, or you’re not using the language they’re most familiar…that TOO, is feedback.

When you do something, the world responds. That’s feedback, and we’re usually happy to have it.

And so are your directs.

So stop worrying about the WORD - or heaven forbid its HISTORY, and add a feedback mechanism to your directs’ performance.

Just like you want YOUR BOSS to do.

We continue here our recent theme of revisiting the high level rationale and actions involved in the Management Trinity. In our discussion of feedback, we talk about the basics, of course: What the Feedback Model gives the effective manager, and how the effective manager actually puts it into action.

This theme came out of many conversations we have had with managers about the value they were getting from our high level discussion of the Trinity at both Effective Manager Conferences and at onsite corporate client work.

We’re careful to make every cast actionable. This one IS. We make a specific recommendation regarding feedback delivery you don’t want to miss.

We’ve talked about the Management Trinity for nearly three years, but we’ve never really laid out specifically how and why it works. The best managers we know use these basic principles all the time to make themselves, their teams, and their organizations more effective.

All of the behaviors and habits in the Management Trinity are simple to understand, relatively easy to do, and give exceptional returns on a manager’s investment.

And that’s why we recommend them.

How can you get the the most out of the most valuable recurring communication investment you make? This is an important question … and it seems that a lot of managers DO NOT ask it. Some of the managers who are quite good at running their OWN O3s aren’t very good at getting the most out of their time with their boss. Frankly, we think that if they reported to themselves, they’d be disappointed in their direct.

We’ve been watching managers for years, and we have some recommendations for how you can be most effective when you’re the direct.

(But to be clear: We never recommend managing your boss. Never.)

One additional note here: If you are NEW to Manager Tools, the concept of the One on One may not be completely familiar. If so, we recommend you go back and listen to those casts first. While you’re at it, you may want to reference the Manager Tools “Basics” series for the core podcasts outlining our basic thoughts and fundamental practices of effective management.

We surprised some of our members a couple of years ago when we included podcasts on how to attend a party, and how to introduce oneself to someone else. Some saw this as “etiquette”, which the modern business world had, in a sense, done away with. And certainly the world of commerce has changed how people interact, making much of our lives less formal than perhaps they were before.

But at the same time, we’ve also noticed that the blurring of work and family time means more of us are exposed, AT WORK, to situations that call on basic rules of social courtesy. Those managers who do well in these situations are seen as more polished and as better communicators - in short, better future executives.

So, don’t think of this cast as one about “etiquette”. It’s not. It’s about courtesy … and getting promoted.

Our MT Goals 3-part cast generated a great deal of enthusiasm. A lot of managers are thinking right now about what their goals are or will be for this calendar year. And, a lot of managers struggle with the dreaded “SMART” goal standard, which hopefully we successfully put paid to in the previous casts.

MT Goals are much more clear, and frankly just plain EASIER than “SMART” goals. Managers spend too much time making bad goals into ones that pass a misguided test, while other managers are told that goals that are impressive and well-targeted aren’t of the right format. It’s silly and terribly counterproductive.

But after our last three casts, some managers have asked for examples. If you need help turning your goals into MT goals, this is the cast for you.

Even better than two great American conferences?

Yep, even better.

Our European members and listeners