Hot Management - Part 2
By Bruce Tulgan
HOT Management™ is not a 100% solution (there are no 100% solutions). But according to our research(*), this approach will help you move your team toward higher productivity, higher morale, and higher retention of high performers. What exactly is it that HOT Managers do?
(#1) HOT Managers do the hard work of managing people. They commit to rolling up their sleeves, getting in there, and doing the hard work of managing people every day. They coach their people to do their best work, pushing them beyond what they think they can produce, and rewarding them appropriately in return.
(#2) HOT Managers don't hide behind rules and red tape. They get the resources they need to give each person more of what she wants in order to gain that special leverage necessary to drive performance. They build allies in HR, legal, and anywhere else they need allies. They jump through hoops, dot "I"s, cross "T"s, go to bat, and navigate through the bureaucracy.
(#3) HOT Managers talk with their employees about the work---all the time. They spend time talking with employees openly and directly about their work, engaging them in tackling ambitious goals and providing them with the resources they need to pull them off. They help employees think through assignments up front, so that they can anticipate resource needs, avoid potential problems, and create realistic timetables for results.
(#4) HOT Managers send the message that high performance is the only option on their team. They know that no one likes to work with low performers. So they set high standards for performance and hold their people accountable for achieving those standards. And they remove low performers from the team immediately.
(#5) HOT Managers find the "needle in the haystack" that motivates each team player. One person at a time, one day at a time, HOT Managers create unique value propositions for every person.
(#6) HOT Managers negotiate custom deals in exchange for high performance. They engage in an ongoing dialogue: "What do you want from me? Good. Here's what I need from you." Then they spell out all the conditions of the custom deal, and keep that deal on the table all the time.
(#7) HOT Managers engage in difficult conversations. They hold people accountable for high performance every step of the way. They address performance problems immediately. They quickly move to the "deal breaker" conversation with recalcitrant low performers and remove them from the team.
(*) NOTE: HOT Management™ is based on nearly ten years of workplace research conducted by Bruce Tulgan and RainmakerThinking (since October 1993), including more than 10,000 interviews, focus groups, quantitative polls, management practices questionnaires, and seminars; as well as an ongoing review of leading data and literature.
