Are you engaged? Or vacant?

Are you familiar with the "you're all doing very well" speech? You know the one...it happens towards the end of a breeze-though visit the boss makes once every six months. It normally occurs sometime after lunch and coincides with an awkward deadline you'd really rather not miss. It is preceeded by a lot of nodding and includes two frowns, a decisive clap of the hands and a four broad smiles. Oh, and the words: "You're all doing very well."

Perhaps you are one of the bosses who breezes around, nodding, frowning, clapping, smiling broadly and letting people know you think that they are doing very well. And perhaps you, like your staff, will know how these exercises invariably clash with an awkward deadline you'd really rather not miss. And perhaps the rigmarole feels as ludicrously false to you as it does to your resignedly patient audience.

There is one thing to be said in defence of the "you are all doing very well" approach to management. It is better than nothing. It is, if you'll excuse the nauseating buzzword, a form of engagement...and as any half-witted management consultant will tell you engagement is what running a good business is all about these days.

Yes, there is the big hairy stuff involving strategic vision and balance-sheet capability. Bigtime management is about challenging the competition and marching, or skipping, through regulatory minefields. Yes, you have to make the big presentations to clients and investors. How else are you going justify your inflated salary?

But really good leaders do more than coerce staff into agreement about action. Good leaders get people to act.

So far, so obvious (perhaps) to all but the most bullet-headed exec. Everyone knows that one volunteer is worth more than 10 pressed men. But how do you get other people to act? There is, according to David Macleod, one of the co-authors of a new book, no one single solution. Good and effective management comes from the combination of a thousand tiny things. But you will get a long way if you show employees respect, give them fair rewards (financial and otherwise) and the opportunity to learn. You must also make their immediate personal working environment comfortable.

No, it is not that complicated. But it is not that easy either. It is also a good deal more effective than blithely telling people they are all doing very well.

The Extra Mile: How to Engange Your People to Win, by David Macleod and Chris Brady, is published by FT Prentice Hall.

Comments

[Jon Williams]

Of course, "you're all doing very well" is only the first half of the speech, inevitably followed by "but you need to do even better in the next few months if we're to hit our challenging targets." (That'd be challenging targets as in "the things that'll get me a whopping end-of-year bonus").