Managing is helping people grow

Something out of the blue (Jack Welch's book) today reminded me about an aspect of management that I place a great deal of personal value on; growing people. It's something I picked up on from an influential manager earlier during my days at EDS, Dave Kaiser. I learned a lot from Dave and also from another mentor of mine, Jim Young, assistant to the president at EDS. Both had very different and valuable things to offer and I'm very thankful I had the opportunity to work with them for a few years.

I've worked with many very talented people during my career, and I've had the privilege of being a manager for many of them too. I've always believed that it's your responsibility to manage your own career (it's not your boss's job) but I do believe it's my responsibility as a manager to help in the growth and development of each person.

I measure this by taking my own stock of what the person was able to do when we began working together, what they've contributed and accomplished, and what they are able to do today or at the time they move on to something else. That person's ability to do new things, take on new challenges, or handle increased responsibilities are some of the ways to examine growth. This one of the ways I try to informally measure an aspect of my own performance. It's only one aspect because obviously a person's growth is ultimately up to them. What a manager can do is offer coaching, create opportunities to take on new things or increased responsibilities, sometimes help with blind spots or areas that will strengthen a skill, or just support them in their own individual goals. Ultimately I'm there to help them succeed and helping each individual grow stacks the deck to everyone's benefit.

In my own company, BoldTech Systems, I also handled HR and spent a great deal of time establishing the company culture. In our performance management system (a.k.a. performance reviews), we placed a great deal of emphasis on growth during the review by talking about and recognizing the areas each person had grown. Many times individuals didn't even realize all of the new things they could do since coming to the company, or since their last performance review. I personally believe it was one of the reasons we had such a high retention rate and our hires were a strong cultural fit. It also resulted in many people who ended up doing things they never dreamed they could do. It's a huge kick seeing people exceed their own expectations. Not many things are more satisfying than that.   

Sometimes something causes me to reflect on stuff like this so I thought it might make for an interesting blog post. If it has been interesting to you then I've again achieved my goal of helping someone else. The least I can do is pass along the lessons that Dave and Jim gave to me.

Comments

[Don Jones]

Great post.

One of my favorite lines from an old manager of mine is "We're here to learn." Whether in my business or personal life, it is a comment that I return to often.

[Mitchell Ashley]

Don - Thanks for your comment. Your thoughts about 'we're here to learn' is very much something I believe in too.

I was fortunate enough to get some training at MIT at Peter Senge's learning center which he described in his mid-90's book, The Fifth Discipline. That really influenced not only how I manage but also how to creating learning organizations and how valuable that is. Another book I've found extremely valuable recently is Covey's book on The Speed of Trust. Those were big influences on me too.

I'm honored you'd take to time to read my blog and post about it. Thanks!

[Madeleine Van Hecke]

Excellent post! It portrays what I consider to be the crucial element in being able to help other people grow - they must see that you are truly in their corner. It's hard to overcome our own blind spots about ourselves; it's the rare person who can take in criticism without getting defensive about it. All of us find it hard to hear "bad news" about ourselves, but we can take it in when its offered to us as feedback by someone we know is truly in our corner, wanting us to succeed. It's this attitude that comes across so clearly in your post. I think your staff are lucky to have you as a manager/coach.