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A few nights ago, I was watching CNN. I
had tuned into the middle of an interview with a publisher of
management books. He was saying that the trend for next year would be
away from books about people management, and more towards the
fundamentals of process management.
I was a bit puzzled by this statement. Not because I suspected any
inaccuracy, but rather because no matter what area of management you
are in, you will always be managing people. Even if you are managing a
process, you will always be managing the people giving momentum to the
process.
So this statement had me really puzzled and to unravel this puzzle,
one has to look at exactly what management is.
For me management has always been about
coming to terms with the limitations of individual people, having the
skill to maximise those limitations and one's ability to entice a
person to extraordinary performance.
In other words, if anything will ruin your career as a manager, it is
peoples weaknesses not their strengths! Stop and think about that
statement for a moment. It is peoples weaknesses not their strengths
that can ruin your career.
So what do we do about those weaknesses?
A lot has been written and taught on the subject of coaching
weaknesses in order to minimise their effect. What I haven't yet found
is a strategy to implement, when you have done all the coaching, and
the weakness remains a weakness.
When you coach a person in order to minimise the effects of a
weakness, you need to realise that although you are going to achieve
what you set out to achieve, the weakness remains a weakness. It now
becomes a matter of degree. You still have to accommodate that
weakness, albeit the effects of it are not that dramatic any longer.
I would like to put forward two fundamental strategies after coaching
has taken place, in order to accommodate the weaknesses of individual
people:
1) Analyse the relative strengths and weaknesses of the people in your
department, group or team, and then team them up in such a way that
where one person has a weakness in one area, another team member has a
strength in that same area. This will have the effect of almost
nullifying the effects of that weakness.
2) Plan the flow of work so that the work given to each person is more
aligned with their strengths than their weaknesses. In other words, we
want to create an encouraging environment, and if we only give work in
an area in which a staff member is weak, that is not very encouraging.
Foster an environment of success.
It is one thing to make a commitment to being a career manager. It is
another thing altogether to find ways of connecting with the daily
challenges that face us and making a difference in both the work
environment and the lives of people.
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