Part of my job is to read the latest management books, and scan the media for important literature that could be of some use to managers. Some stuff is certainly better written than others, but lately I’m getting downright cranky with some of the “wisdom” the alleged management gurus and pumping out to maintain their publishing revenue. As a result, this week we’ll address some of these guru-myths.
Myth #1: You need to treat everybody the same.
Treating everybody the same is a management slogan that gets trotted out as good leadership behaviour when exactly the opposite is true. People are individuals and need to be treated as such. Here’s something else the management gurus won’t tell you – sometimes, some of your people will desperately need a kick in the ass.
The reason management gurus won’t tell you this, is because they don’t know. They don’t know, because they’ve never actually been a manager. Yes, they may have sold enough books to own their very own Caribbean island, but many of them have never actually had direct reports.
I won’t disagree that people should be always treated with equal amounts of respect. But respect necessarily means that a good leader will deal with a poor performing team member (sometimes via that kick in the ass, mentioned above) out of respect for the higher performing team members.
Myth #2: Managers need to delegate everything
Another guru-myth is that every manager needs to, “delegate, delegate, delegate!” There is no doubt that effective delegation can help a leader push some teams to outstanding performance. But there are other teams, where relentless delegation can be a catastrophic mistake.
In teams with members that are lower skilled for the tasks they are performing, the last thing you want to do is delegate. These people need to be carefully directed and managed – some people might even call it micro-managing. Delegating too much, too soon is probably a larger management issue than failing to delegate.
Myth #3: Training solves all performance problems
More than once we’ve gotten a call from someone who asks us to come in and do some change management training with his people. Our very first question is, “why do you think they need training?”
Sometimes, they do. In other cases, people are fully capable of making the change being asked of them, they just don’t want to do so. (See: ass-kicking, above)
Myth #4: People don’t resist change. You just need to give them all the information
This myth is particularly offensive. People DO resist change even when they know the benefits, and have all the information required. Case in point: the metric system. It’s vastly superior, and far easier to understand. Nearly 7 billion people use it every day, yet the few who still choose not to use it hang on to the old imperial system like Linus protects his blanket.
I could go on and on, but I’m working on a change-management training course for managers who want to better delegate to the people they want to treat all the same.