Sunday, November 22, 2009

All you need to know about Leadership and Management in one blog post!

Ken Blanchard wrote the famous book The One Minute Manager.  He has since gone on to write many more.  
The most useful Ken Blanchard book to me was The One Minute Manager meets the Monkey - which he co wrote with a guy called William Oncken.  



I recommend you read this book if you are new to management or just need a refresher. You will need an hour or so to digest it.

Or you can use these notes from an interview we recently heard when Blanchard was asked to summarise his thoughts on leadership and management (not the same things - but I think you need to be a good leader to be a good manager).

Blanchard said there were only 4 things to remember:
  1. Set down your goals and objectives (what you want to achieve with your team). and then tell your team. This is a top down process and must be done. You need to let your team know your vision, mission and strategy. You also need to clearly let them know what the deliverables are (some people call them targets or key performance indicators), and also what behaviours you will expect from your team.
  2. Then ask you team to develop an implementation plan. This is a bottom up process and must also be done. You are asking your team to "tell me how you are going to do this". Once you and your team area happy with the plan - get into it!
  3. Then - for your experienced staff - you support them, remove roadblocks and get out the way!
  4. For your inexperienced staff - you watch and guide them and redirect them before they get into too much trouble. You need to make time to teach them. This is the real sign of a good leader - over time you will bring your inexperienced staff up to the level of your good operators and yourself!
Only 4 things to remember and you will become a better leader.

1 comment:

  1. Great summary - so is the above about leadership or management? I think a lot of people can learn management techniques, but leadership seems to be harder to develop in people.

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