As a manager, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s sometimes tough to acknowledge that you may need help with something. People are taught that when they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re put into a position of leadership, they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re supposed to show confidence and strength in front of those who report to them. <\/p>\n
Every once in awhile,the powers that be may decide to bring someone in from the outside to take a look at your operation. The person may only come in to review things, or they may come in with some authority in getting things accomplished. If you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re any kind of person with confidence in yourself, you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re going to have the hackles on the back of your neck raise up just a little bit, because you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re going to believe you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve got things fairly well under control. <\/p>\n
You should recognize that having someone else come in to look at how you do things may be a boon to you in a couple of ways. One, if you really are at the top of your game, this person\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s review will point that out, even if they come up with something you already know about, but don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have a way to address. Two, they just might find some things that will help to point you into another direction, or find something you didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know was out there.<\/p>\n
Many years ago I had a situation like this occur to me. The powers that be decided to bring an auditing firm in to look at my department. They came up with a list of 61 deficiencies that, at least initially, looked like it would crush my spirit. However, when all of them were laid out, it turned out that I knew about all of them except one, the CFO knew about all of them because I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d told him about them (in a written report also), and, based on the recommendations of this firm, we couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t follow any of them anyway. It proved that I was on top of my game, as all the deficiencies that were found were minor, and had no large impact on our daily processes. <\/p>\n
These days, I find myself on the other side; I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m now the guy who goes into places at times and finds the errors. Knowing how someone on the other side might feel about my presence, I always try to ingratiate myself towards management so that I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not seen as a threat in any way. I know that not every consultant takes the time to think of the feelings of the person they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re reviewing however. Sometimes they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve actually been told to come in and evaluate that person, and even in those cases, they won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t put the person at ease; how can you evaluate how someone really is if they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re not being themselves?<\/p>\n
The best way to keep someone from having to come in to look at your operation, or to make sure that you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re covered if they are brought in anyway, is to set up ways to monitor the performance of both you and your departments. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s always good business to track your accomplishments to begin with. When you have your job review, you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re kidding yourself if you think the person you report to is going to remember everything you did; you probably won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t remember it all. Also, you probably don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t remember everything positive or negative the people who work for you did through the year either. Documentation is always a good thing. It doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have to be fancy; writing one line items can work well as long as you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve said enough so that you remember what you meant.<\/p>\n
If you want to capture things accurately, you need to have three lists, and you need to keep them up to date and orderly. The first list is of things your department not only has to address, but things your department has accomplished. This will be a working list, because you will never have everything running perfectly, but you will complete a lot. The second list is things you personally have done, or want to do, for either yourself or your department. The final list is the most complicated one, because this is the list of events of your employees, both good and bad.<\/p>\n
Whenever something significant occurs, you should make sure it goes onto a list. Sometimes one event will show up on two or more lists; that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s fine. If someone in your department did something special that helped close an open project, they certainly deserve the recognition, as does the department for something else that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s been fixed. <\/p>\n
If you know Excel, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s best to put it on there because it offers sorting options to you; Access will do the same, but more people understand Excel. For all of your lists, you should have a date, areas for open and completed actions, and of course an area where you can write your notes. For your personal list, though, you should also make sure you have a category for things you may personally want to work on. You may want to have two lists for yourself, because you may not want to share the list of things you feel are your weaknesses with others. <\/p>\n
Are things like this time consuming? Slightly. Everything takes a little bit of time, but it certainly makes things easier if you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re consistently making changes or accomplishing things, rather than doing it once a year, during employee evaluations. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s another tool you can use to help you stay focused on the important items of the day, as well as a tracking mechanism for you throughout the year.
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As a manager, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s sometimes tough to acknowledge that you may need help with something. People are taught that when they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re put into a position of leadership, they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re supposed to show confidence and strength in front of those who report to them. Every once in awhile,the powers that be may decide to bring someone in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1006,1005],"class_list":["post-2959","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-leadership","tag-employee-recognition","tag-tracking-performance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ttmitchellconsulting.com\/Mitchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2959","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ttmitchellconsulting.com\/Mitchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ttmitchellconsulting.com\/Mitchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ttmitchellconsulting.com\/Mitchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ttmitchellconsulting.com\/Mitchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2959"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ttmitchellconsulting.com\/Mitchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2959\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ttmitchellconsulting.com\/Mitchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ttmitchellconsulting.com\/Mitchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ttmitchellconsulting.com\/Mitchblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}