Being a manager that really takes ownership
As a manager, own the communication you have with your staff.
This was my main takeaway from Thrival System's Paul O. Radde session, "Build a Resilient Team at Your Organization," at the Great Ideas Conference.
The story he told to illustrate it was a conversation with the head of the pharmacy at Walter Reed, where so many of the injured soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan return to the U.S. It's a stressful, always on type of position, one where errors are magnified, even life threatening. The head of the pharmacy told his staff that if he has something to communicate to them, it is his responsibility to explicitly do it. He doesn't want them trying to read what he means--they don't know, for example, that he had a fight with his wife last night and is in agitated state or that traffic was terrible and he has a sense of road rage.
What this manager was telling his staff is that he was responsible for the communication between them. If it gets screwed up, and there is a mistake as a result, it is his fault. That's the manager we all want to work for.
| | Permalink |