On the occasion of changing career, when I review myself to prepare for next assignment (a senior management position) – I find out that one of the biggest change in the coming assignment is the responsibility of managing other individuals and being responsible for their growth. I think, not only me, but many other people who are at the beginning of management journey, they may find hard or uncertain about what to help them be successful and ensure their direct reports are successful.

There is the fact that sometime individuals are promoted to management position without ever getting any managing training. However, there are also a lot of lesson, framework, tool and material on the internet that can help. But, in my opinion, one of the basic, easiest, best way to ensure we are strong, efficient and loyal manager is defining on our own One of the best ways to ensure you are a strong, efficient, and loyal manager is to define and develop on our own a management philosophy and follow it to the best of your ability.

In the link bellow is the a great article on LinkedIn for this topic. I have read and learn a lot. So I put here for you to read and get reference.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-management-philosophy-should-i-have-one-don-hasseltine/

I quote 1 part of the article on: Why does having a philosophy work?

“

We all need to be grounded in who we are as leaders. It serves as your moral compass about how you will lead and inspire your team. The more consistently you apply these principles the greater likelihood you will build a team that will thrive and perform beyond your expectations.  In my mind, there are at least 5 benefits of having a management philosophy. These include:

  • Feeling more confident about your management style
  • Making better hiring decisions
  • Offering your team more clarity about your expectations
  • Performing at a higher level with an engaged and inspired team
  • Retaining more of your staff

“

For the next part, I will write down my management philosophy. This is to share with people and to remind myself what management is truly mean to me

My management philosophy: The most important goal of managing is to my your team member become better version of themselves everyday – to do that, I have 3 principles:

  • Commit to grow the skills of all team members via coaching:
    • Ask questions and actively listen
    • Give personalized timely feedback and recognition
    • Adjust management style for different development and performance needs
  • Create a positive and encouraging environment to make people set their own ambitious goals
    • Set high standards and align on clear stretching priorities to inspire and drive result
    • Use strengths and opportunities to motivate
    • Plan career and development conversation to help people expose their potential
  • Build a lifelong relationship, have integrity and treat all the team member with fairness/respect and humility
    • Genuinely empathize and invest time to get to know people
    • Communicate transparently to keep commitment to build trust
    • Make it safe for others to share the point of view and overcome personal bias
    • Give autonomy, remove barrier and encourage smart risk-talking to learn from failure

My management Style: I believe every individual in a team is inherently creative and can provide new ideas and solutions to difficult problems as long as they are clear on the expectation. So I try to combine between Collaborative/Delegative/Autocratic style

Beside defining a management philosophy, I also collect some notes on how to prepare for a good management position, I also share here and hope that It can help you as well as It helped me a lot:

  • Getting to know your employee – ensure that for new manager, on the first contact with direct report , we need to prepare to share about: backgrounds, values, interests and expectations for a strong working relationship
  • Use Principle-Based-Decision-Making process to handle all the things – It would help to overcome personal bias in decision making and create a fairness between all your team members
  • Always remember the ART of “Employee Moments of Truth” (EMOT) – Define: High touch, In-touch, Low touch moment of your employee, so you can build the trust with your employees (for ex: Moments of achievement, moments of transition, moments of relationships)
  • Managing day to day routines:
    • Plan for timely One-on-One connect with your report – It may happen in the office or on field, but it’s need to be timely and well prepare.
    • Motivation
    • Leveraging strengths – remember that good manager manage people like playing chess – We move each chess man base on their strengths not by by the way we want. To discover the strengths of each people, we need to really spend time and effort to observer
    • Set direction – using CLEAR model – Challenging Linked Envisionable Assessable Really-matter
    • Developing employees by stretching them from Comfort zone to Stretch zone but no much come to Panic zone
    • Coaching employees – using GROW model Goal Reality Options Will model. Beside that, remember to tailor coaching to learning style (for ex: if employee is an “analyzer” then giving him a good preparation, or a “doer” would need an on the job training or “watcher” having him a “shadow” top performer
    • Feedback – using CARS model Context Action Results Suggestions (after suggestions we can transfer to Coaching) model
    • Recognition/ Evaluate contribution: Each employee plays to a different audience – you need to find which way that employee values recognition from, then having a appropriate way to praise him to.
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