more on the One Minute Manager
Dec. 8th, 2006 02:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
snugglekittySo, I don't have a paying job where I manage people. But I do a lot of people managing in general in my life, so I thought that this book might be interesting. The principles boil down to three things:
- Create concise goals that you both agree on, that cover major areas of responsibility. Check back consistently to see if your behavior is going in the right direction to meet those goals.
- Give positive reinforcement for specific things. Tell the person how you feel about the good thing they did. Look for the person to do things right, or close to right, and praise them for it.
- Give negative feedback immediately. Tell the person how you feel about the bad thing they did, and reassure them about their worth to you as a person/employee.
I'm basically comparing this with positive reinforcement training theory. The first two parts definitely fit with that (although some parts of the goal-setting concept are not really easy to translate for non-job situations). The third part, I agree with in part. I agree that you should tell someone right away if you're unhappy with something that they did. But, I don't agree that you should tell them how their behavior made you feel "in no uncertain terms." That seems to me like it's likely to always make the other person feel bad. Assuming good will and the desire to work, all you really need to do is to tell the other person that they made a mistake, and WHY something was the wrong choice. The book doesn't talk about why, but the corporate world is kind of like that. In the real world, knowing how a certain behavior created a problem will reinforce strongly that it's a bad idea to do it again. They will beat themselves up about it far more effectively than you ever could.
This book also suggests touching people frequently to assure them of your sincerity and caring. I don't think that's appropriate for the corporate world, especially coming from a boss to an underling, and in the rest of the world, I think using the person's love language makes more sense.
Still, an interesting read, and I imagine it was fairly radical for the time. People do better work when they feel better about themselves? Who knew?
- Create concise goals that you both agree on, that cover major areas of responsibility. Check back consistently to see if your behavior is going in the right direction to meet those goals.
- Give positive reinforcement for specific things. Tell the person how you feel about the good thing they did. Look for the person to do things right, or close to right, and praise them for it.
- Give negative feedback immediately. Tell the person how you feel about the bad thing they did, and reassure them about their worth to you as a person/employee.
I'm basically comparing this with positive reinforcement training theory. The first two parts definitely fit with that (although some parts of the goal-setting concept are not really easy to translate for non-job situations). The third part, I agree with in part. I agree that you should tell someone right away if you're unhappy with something that they did. But, I don't agree that you should tell them how their behavior made you feel "in no uncertain terms." That seems to me like it's likely to always make the other person feel bad. Assuming good will and the desire to work, all you really need to do is to tell the other person that they made a mistake, and WHY something was the wrong choice. The book doesn't talk about why, but the corporate world is kind of like that. In the real world, knowing how a certain behavior created a problem will reinforce strongly that it's a bad idea to do it again. They will beat themselves up about it far more effectively than you ever could.
This book also suggests touching people frequently to assure them of your sincerity and caring. I don't think that's appropriate for the corporate world, especially coming from a boss to an underling, and in the rest of the world, I think using the person's love language makes more sense.
Still, an interesting read, and I imagine it was fairly radical for the time. People do better work when they feel better about themselves? Who knew?