Confident and Humble

If you are going to succeed as a manager then you clearly need be seen to be confident and sure in your thoughts and actions (even if you do not feel super confident inside).

Your strength in tough times gives a crutch to your team when they need to know they are on the right path.

However, take caution in ensuring that your confidence does not become overbearing and turn into perceived arrogance.

One way to do this is by ensuring that you constantly challenge yourself to be humble.  Taking the word's definition from the Oxford Dictionary, "offered with or affected by a modest estimate of one's importance"

What a great way to lead.  The strength that the team looks for will simply come from your character rather than how you try and 'show' yourself to be.

I believe that confidence is demonstrating that you respect yourself and coupling this with a humble nature in which you respect others as equals is a powerful leadership combination.

Those that think they are important and act as such, seldom are.

Those that don't seem to be the more content, relaxed, self assured, interested and ultimately more genuine managers and leaders.

How do you want to portray yourself?

Please see my website at www.managingforthefirsttime.com for more techniques, tips and advice on this topic and others.

(Photo by Wonderlane via flickr used under a creative Commons Licence)

Inheriting a Team

You'll always be told to recruit well; matching the skills of the person to the job.  But what about the real world where you 'inherit a team' and the people within it. 

Matching the required skills to the people might not cover all the bases required. The backgrounds of the team members might be varied and in some cases a little "out there". You need to embrace the fact that that diversity is in fact healthy rather than something to fix or change. Don't necessarily try and mould the team, why not try and mould the team's output (as much as possible) to match their skills.

Get to know your staff so that when you need to make that hard call to get them doing something they might find hard or uncomfortable, they trust that you have understood them and have taken that into account the best you can.

You've got to earn trust so you need to start now to build it for when you really need it.

What do you really know about your employees?  Why don't you try and find out something new about each one of them today.


Please see my website at www.managingforthefirsttime.com for more techniques, tips and advice on this topic and others.

Do you play the game?

We were awaiting the outcome of a big decision today which wasn't within our control. We couldn't control the outcome, we could just play the game to the best of our abilities; (or not at all).

The outcome today was no, negative, sorry, not this time (insert any rejection wording here). We played and didn't win.

We were afraid this might happen but we played anyway. We feel pretty disappointed about the outcome which wasn't the one we wanted.

Despite the disappointment, I'm glad we gave it our best shot rather than considering what might have been.

How would you feel if you didn't play?

#Trust30

Will you take the Trust Yourself (#Trust30) Writing Challenge?

I started his blog because I wanted to share my learning and ideas; the ones I had gathered and analysed and made decisions upon for myself.

Its fun to be creative in this way and actually not as difficult as you fear it will be.  And I think that is why many people do hide from their creative side - fear.  Usually fear of failure.

I try and follow Seth Godin having read his excellent book, Linchpin.  His most recent project is The Domino Project which in itself has provided me with 3 more thought provoking kindle reads (all for free, check out how this is possible at their Web site).

Today they launched a 30 day initiative entitled Trust Yourself (#Trust30) based on the spirit within their last ebook launch, Self-Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson.  Using their words: "It’s an opportunity to reflect on your now and create direction for your future."

That kind of sounds like why I started doing this a few months ago.  I needed reminding of that and this challenge has given me back that focus.  I've pledged on their Web site.  I might fail, hey, I might succeed but at very least I will have acted and that might well take me somewhere new.

Where will the next 30 days take you?

Checklists and OmniOutliner

A few weeks ago I talked about the use of checklists in the post Managing Standard Work and the use of them came to mind again yesterday with the release of OmniOutliner for iPad.

It occurred to me just how useful this new software is on the iPad.  Ignore its functionality, its integration with the desktop version and its simply great design that makes you want to pick it up and create something (any software that makes you want to work is great in my mind).

What struck me was that I now have the ability to have all my checklists with me at all times now with the 3G iPad.  Simply put all your checklists in an online folder using MobileMe iDisk or WebDAV and they are accessible to you wherever you are.

So next time you find yourself with some unexpected Standard Routine Work, no need to put it off, deal with it then knowing that you have the checklist at your fingertips to get it right first time.

Note: Although I am a huge fan of the Omni group and their products, I am not affiliated to them in any way.  I started using their products with OmniFocus, then the excellent OmniGraffle, OmniGraphSketcher and now OmniOutliner.  With their free trials and educational discounts on offer, its easy to give them a go.

Organising your work & OmniFocus

A few posts ago, I talked about the idea of organising your work in order to have clarity over what you need to do.  One such way is the simple paper and pen.  To be honest, I still revert back to that when I need to be free of distraction and get an idea, sketch, text or mind map out of my head and recorded somewhere.  Give me a yellow legal pad and pen and I'm happy.

On a side note, people always ask my why I use the more expensive yellow pads rather than cheaper white; its so that I can find my written notes amongst printed materials (which are practically always on white paper) when I'm working with hard copies. Call it a simple visual management system.

However when you need to organise this material, things get a little more complex and I really need a system to help me control it all. An online system gives one simple benefit; it's ability to edit the data within it and always show a 'clean' version. This is the downside of pen and paper, when you edit something, you can't clean up with original. A piece of paper fast becomes a clutter of ideas, scored out notes and modified sketches.

This clean data is what you want to see when you are in a position to act and do your work.

I use the excellent software programme OmniFocus (http://www.omnigroup.com/products/omnifocus) across my Mac, iPhone and iPad.  It allows you to filter it all down into your next actions organised into categories that are relevant to you, giving you the prompts to act in the right place at the right time.

And the other advantage of it being on the computer, it is transferrable between all of your devices.  If you are like me, the phone never leaves your side so you'll always have the data to hand.

So do yourself a favour, have a system and most importantly, use it.

Please see my website at www.managingforthefirsttime.com for more techniques, tips and advice on this topic and others.

Its not what you know, its who you know

A new take on the phrase "it's not what you know it's who you know".  It's who you know used to be about social classes, rich and poor, nowadays it is still about who you know rather than what you know.  The difference is that who you know is based on your networking and relationship building. It's about the opportunity you create and develop.

Furthermore, you can't know everything, it's what you know implies power and hold over others. That's not the way to work. You need others; you won't realise your full potential unless you engage with others and utilise them to reach the bigger goal.

And don't think this only works for teams. Think about the lone artist, the individual. Who is their muse, their support network, their encouragement and reminder of their goals?

Everyone needs someone else, figure out who you need to know and get to know them.

Please see my website at www.managingforthefirsttime.com for more techniques, tips and advice on this topic and others.