Working Woes ......

Any manager who is attempting to maximise the contributions of those who work with him has two options open.

He can concentrate on the weaknesses, problems or the deficiencies and try to ammend them.

Or, to focus on building on the strenghts and assests of the people in his team.

Effective managers tend to build on the strengths of others and discount weaknesses. They ask themselves, where is my organisation strong? What are the strengths of my people? And, what are my own strengths? They can then capitalize on those strong points.

Instead of berating his employees, the effective manager encourages them. He is always reminding people of who they are and what they can do.  Thus, the orientation is towards the future and is always focused on what the employees can do.

It's been said that people should not be used. But, they want to be used! The key to achievement motivation, and the key to getting people excited at work; is to use them. Use them where they can be successful, capitalise on their strengths. Effective leaders are quick to upgrade their employee's job description and responsibilities, to give them demanding jobs.

Look for ways to increase their job enrichment potential, to increase the authority level of the jobs of your people.

In any management team you are going to have some superstar performers and you are going to have some second stringers. And, in any organisation, you are going to have two kinds of work - work that you can call 'problems' and work that you can call 'opportunities.'

If you assign your strongest player to a problem, you have just made a mistake. You have just sacrificed your future opportunities. Any opportunity is for example, a program that is developed today to help better serve the needs of tomorrow. Because it is an opportunity, it is not well-structured. It is going to take some sharp thinking to determine how to make the opportunity come to pass. So you want to assign it to a superstar?

A final thought, what are you going to do today?

One reason that you were put into a position of responsibility is because your management believes in you. They are betting on you, just as you as an effective manager, are betting on your employees. They believed that you have what it takes.

Ask yourself every morning, what one thing of significance will I accomplish today? This question will keep you focused not only on your Key Results Areas but also on the fact that you are one of the key strengths in your unit, a key strength that must be used to the utmost!