“The best boss I ever had!” Surely most of us have heard or uttered this phrase ourselves, but what does it essentially mean? What distinguishes the best manager from the average one? A lot of literature is devoted to the qualities of managers and leaders and the difference between these concepts, but it says almost nothing about the thousands of everyday decisions that allow the former and the latter to get results from their subordinates and win their loyalty. So what do the best actually do?
I began my research on this topic with data from a Gallup Organization survey of 80,000 managers and continued over the next two years with an in-depth study of the management style of a small number of top executives. What I discovered was this: while there are as many management styles as there are managers, there is one quality that separates truly effective managers from everyone else. They find something unique in each employee and put that “something” to work for the cause. The average manager plays checkers, the best one plays chess. What is the difference? In checkers, all the pieces look and move the same; they are completely interchangeable. Of course, the player plans and coordinates their movements, but they all move at the same speed along parallel straight lines. In chess, each piece moves differently, and until you know exactly how, you can’t play. And most importantly, you’ll never win unless you think carefully about every move your pieces make! The best managers know and appreciate the unique abilities and even oddities of their subordinates and learn how best to integrate them into a unified plan of action.
The best leaders
do exactly the opposite. They discover what they have in common and make the most of it. Their job is to lead people to a better future. Leaders succeed only by breaking through racial, gender, age, national and individual differences. By telling stories and celebrating heroes, they appeal to the needs that unite us all. Managers’ job, on the other hand, is to translate each person’s special talents into effective action. They succeed only if they manage to identify and exploit the individual differences of workers, encouraging them to express themselves as much as possible in their professional field. This does not mean that a leader cannot be a manager or vice versa. But to excel in either or both types of management, you must understand how different skills are required for each.
Chess
What does the game of chess look like from the outside? Visiting Michelle Miller, the manager who opened the four-thousand dollar Walgreens store, I saw that the entire wall in her office was covered with shift schedules. Michelle’s store in Redondo Beach, California, hires employees with very different skills and potentially dangerous differences in personality. Thus, a crucial aspect of her job is to assign people roles and responsibilities that allow their best qualities to emerge – while avoiding personality clashes.
The idea in a nutshell
You’ve spent months trying to teach your employee how to properly communicate with customers, work independently, or organize their time, all to no avail.
How can you make better use of your precious time? Do what all successful managers do: instead of trying to change your employees, identify their unique abilities (and even quirks) – and help them use those qualities to distinguish themselves in their field.
You’ll need the following tactics.
- Constantly adjust employee responsibilities to identify places where their personal qualities can best manifest themselves. The manager of a Walgreens store made a taciturn but very organized employee responsible for stocking the shelves, leaving customer service to his more outgoing colleagues.
- Pull the “strings” that activate employees’ strengths. Reward them with time spent in your community, opportunities to work independently, and recognition in the way that is most valuable to each of them.
- Focus on different learning styles for employees. “Analysts” be supplied with the necessary information before giving them any task. For “Actors,” start with simple tasks and gradually raise the bar. Put “observers” in the same harness as the most experienced employees.
What will you accomplish with this approach? First, you save time. Second, you’ll let employees take responsibility for improving their own skills. Finally, you’ll teach them to value each other’s uniqueness and build a strong team spirit.
At the same time, Michelle needs to find ways to develop her subordinates.
Here, for example, is Jeffrey, a goth and a rocker at the same time. Half of his head is shaved bald, and from the other half long strands hanging down over his face. At first, Michelle didn’t want to hire him – nice an employee who can’t look you straight in the eye during an interview! But she needed employees for the night shift, which is notoriously hard to find, so she decided to give the guy a chance. After a couple of months, Michelle noticed that if you give Jeffrey a task that wasn’t too specific (like “clean up all the rows”), a job that could be done in two hours would take him all night and be done anyway. But, if you specify in a more specific way, such as: “Put up racks of Christmas merchandise,” the job would be done perfectly, with all the merchandise in its place, with the correct price tags and labels. Michelle saw that Jeffrey was most successful with tasks that required neatness and analytical ability. Like any good manager, she told the young man of his strengths and praised him for his successes.
Idea in Practice
Let us consider the two tactics in more detail.
Capitalize On Employees’ Strengths
First, identify everyone’s unique qualities. To do this, observe employees’ reactions to various events. Note what activities each of them gravitates toward. Ask, “What do you consider your best workday in the last three months?” Find out which activities give employees the most satisfaction.
Also, point out weaknesses, but don’t emphasize them in conversations. Offer training to help employees overcome a lack of skills or knowledge. Apply the following strategies.
- Match an employee with a partner so that the talents of both complement each other. A lady sales manager who could not start a task without what she thought was comprehensive related information became much more effective after her supervisor (the vice president) took on the role of her “information partner. Every day she sent her a voicemail with the latest information, and twice a week she spoke in person.
- Restructure activities to neutralize employees’ weaknesses. Get creative about assigning responsibilities and don’t be afraid to create non-traditional staffing schedules.
Activate Employee Strengths
The main trigger for activating employee strengths is recognition. But each one “plays” to a different audience, so adjust your incentive options accordingly.
Just a good manager would have stopped there. But Michelle knew she could get more out of Jeffrey. She reassigned duties in a way that emphasized the unique qualities of the new employee. Every Walgreens store has a function called “kitting and revision.” Kitting is the installation of new merchandise on the shelves. It usually coincides with predictable changes in customer behavior (e.g., late summer sunscreens and lip balms on the shelves are replaced with allergy products). Revisions are less time-consuming but more frequent. It may be, for example, replacing one type of toothpaste with a different, improved one, or placing a new line of detergents at the end of the row. Some form of revision is required at least once a week.
In most Walgreen’s stores, each employee is assigned a “different” department, where they are responsible not only for serving customers, but also for maintaining order on the shelves, arranging and labeling items, and conducting all picking and revisions. This kind of order is simple, efficient, and gives each employee a sense of personal responsibility. But Michelle decided the following: since Jeffrey doesn’t like talking to customers too much, but at the same time he is good at picking and revisions, they should become his regular duties in all departments.
The task was not an easy one. One week of revisions requires a folder three inches thick. But Michelle assumed that this redistribution was not just good for Jeffrey. Other employees, in turn, would be glad to be rid of the boring duty and be able to devote more time directly to customer service. The sales results proved her right. After the reorganization, not only sales and profits increased but also the most important indicator, customer satisfaction. In the next four months, the store received the highest score in Walgreens’ mystery shopper program.
Alas, the improvements proved to be temporary. This whole “perfect” organization was based on the assumption that Jeffrey would remain satisfied with his work. Six months later, however, after making strides in picking and revisions, he wanted to move into a managerial position. Michelle was ready for that as well. She watched Jeffrey’s professional growth closely and concluded that he could become a manager, even if not too sociable. Like any good chess player, Michelle had thought the “game” through several moves ahead.
A girl named Genoa worked in the cosmetics department. Michelle saw two particular talents in her: not only was she an excellent communicator with customers – she remembered their names, asked the right questions, answered the phone kindly and professionally – but she was also naturally very neat. In the cosmetics department, all merchandise was always perfectly arranged and kept in perfect order. It was a very “sensual” department: a visitor who happened to be in it immediately wanted to reach out and feel the goods.
Michelle redistributed the roles in the store again, based on her observations. She divided Jeffrey’s picking and revision work into two parts and gave the “revision” part to Genoa so that the entire store could take advantage of her ability to present the merchandise attractively. But Michelle didn’t want Genoa’s talent for interacting with customers to go to waste, so she asked her to do the revisions in the morning, from 8:30 to 11:30, and when the store was filling up, to shift her attention to the customers.
Michelle left the picking to Jeffrey. Junior managers don’t usually work on the sales floor, but Michelle knew that Jeffrey had learned to handle the difficult task of changing assortments in the department so quickly that he could completely disassemble the display and reassemble it in a matter of five hours. She decided that the guy was perfectly capable of combining the picking job with the manager’s duties.
Now, as you read this, the Jeffrey-Genoa configuration has probably already lost its relevance, and Michelle has come up with some new combination of duties. The ability to switch roles to capitalize on the unique talents of each employee is the essence of the best manager’s job.
The managerial approach, based on playing on differences, can very much vary from place to place. In the office of another Walgreens store manager – this time in San Jose, California – Jim Kawashima, you won’t see any shift schedules on the walls. Instead, there are sales figures (the best results are circled in red) and dozens of photos of winning salespeople, the most common of which is a photo of an employee named Manjeet.
Manjeet constantly finds herself ahead of her peers. I first heard of her as the winner of Walgreens’ Gillette deodorant of the month program. While the national average sales were 300 packs, Manjeet sold 1,600. Disposable cameras, toothpaste, batteries, you name it – Manjit would sell anything! She won contest after contest, even though she worked the worst shift, 0:30 to 8:30 a.m. when there were significantly fewer customers than her colleagues on other shifts.
But she had not always been such a successful salesperson. Manjeet became one with the arrival of Jim, who was famous for his ability to “restart” troubled stores. The new manager was quick to recognize Manjeet’s strengths and learn how to use them to get results. In her home country of India, Manjeet was a runner and a weightlifter and was used to having her results recorded. During our interview with her, almost her first words were, “On Saturday, I sold 343 low-carb bars. I sold 367 on Sunday, 110 yesterday, and another 105 today.” I asked her if she always knew how well she was doing. “Oh yes!” she replied. – I check the charts every day with Mr. K. Even on my day off, I go in to look at my numbers.”
Research
Gathering material for the book “To Hell with Flaws! How to Use Your Strengths,” from which this article is taken, I took a different approach than I did for my previous book. I was fortunate to work for 17 years with the Gallup Organization, one of the most respected international sociological services. During that period, I had the opportunity to interview world leaders: managers, teachers, salespeople, stockbrokers, lawyers, and civil servants. These interviews were part of a large-scale research program involving a diverse group of people in which we sought to find some common patterns in the data. In working on the book, I decided to conduct a more in-depth, individualized study.
In each of the areas examined in the book–management, leadership, and sustained personal success. I first singled out one or two people with different roles and areas of expertise who were measurably, consistently, and substantially superior to their peers. Among them were Myrtle Potter, commercial director of Genentech, which turned a commercially unsuccessful drug into a global sales leader; Sir Terry Leahy, president of European retail giant Tesco; Manjeet, a sales associate at a top Walgreens store in San Jose, California, who sold more than 1,600 packs of Gillette deodorant in a month; David Koepp, a prolific screenwriter who has written scripts for such blockbusters as “Jurassic Park,” “Mission Impossible” and “Spider-Man.
In all of these people, I was interested in the practical, seemingly trivial details of their actions and decisions. Why did Myrtle Potter repeatedly turn down promotions before she got involved in promoting an unpopular cure? Why did Terry Leahy rely more on his workplace background than on consumer research or focus groups to determine his company’s strategy? Manjeet works the night shift and doesn’t give up her passion for weightlifting-does that factor into her work? What is it about these special people that make them successful in their jobs?
After I documented and carefully analyzed all of these details, they gradually began to add up, revealing to me one pattern that underlies excellent management, superior leadership, and sustained personal success.
Manjeet loves to win and enjoys public recognition of his accomplishments. That’s why Jim hangs charts and numbers on his walls. Manjeet’s metrics are always circled in red and accompanied by photos documenting her successes. Another manager might have asked Manjeet to temper her ardor and give others a chance. But Jim found a way to win at the expense of her thirst for success.
How do the other store employees feel about this? They understand that Jim wants to see each of them as a unique individual and appreciates everyone’s strengths. They also know that Manjeet’s success reflects positively on the entire store and energizes the entire team. In addition to her photo, photos of other employees quickly began to appear on the walls of Jim’s office. A few months later, the San Jose store was ranked number one out of 4,000 stores in the Supplemental Sales Program.
The Elusive Pattern
Identifying a pattern is a bold step. I take the risk of stating, “There is one thing in common that all the best managers do.
I like to present the idea of “one thing” as a “guiding insight.” Guiding insights don’t explain all results or events; they only serve to explain the greatest number of events. They help you learn which of your actions will have the most far-reaching consequences for almost any situation.
For an idea to become a “guiding insight,” it must pass through three stages of testing. First, it must be applicable to a wide range of situations. Let us take leadership as an example. It has recently become very popular to think that there is no single best way to lead people and that the most effective leadership style is determined by specific circumstances. No one disputes that different situations require different actions from a leader, but it does not follow from this that the most important thing in leadership is its dependence on the situation. Having delved deeply enough into the subject, it is possible to identify one thing that is characteristic of successful leadership in all situations and manifestations.
Leadership insight must work as a multiplier. In any equation, factors have only added value: If your actions are focused solely on those factors, you will get only a small improvement. Guiding insight should be more powerful. It should lead you to exponential growth. So, for example, good management is the result of a combination of actions: selecting talented employees, setting clear goals, rewarding those who do things right, and so on-but none of these factors is the “one thing” that most successful managers do. At most, what these actions achieve, even when executed well, is not to discourage the best workers.
Finally, managerial insight should guide the activity. It must pinpoint exactly the metrics and circumstances that are necessary for sustained performance improvement. Insights that compel managers to act-not merely serve as a matter of reflection-are critical.
All Successful Managers Are Romantics
Let’s go back to Michelle. Her creative “choreography” may seem like a last desperate attempt to get decent results from “average” workers. But it isn’t. Jeffrey and Je-Noah are by no means mediocre employees, and being able to capitalize on a person’s unique personal qualities is a very powerful tool.
First, identifying unique qualities and knowing how to capitalize on them saves time. No single employee, even the most talented, can succeed at everything. Michelle could have spent endless hours coaxing Jeffrey to smile at customers, make friends with them, and remember their names, but all these attempts would probably have failed miserably. She made much better use of her time by devising an occupation in which Jeffrey’s abilities were most needed.
Second, capitalizing on people’s unique qualities makes everyone more accountable. Michelle didn’t just praise Jeffrey for his ability to excel at certain operations. She made that ability a cornerstone of his contribution, a source of pride and a tool for further professional development.
Third, capitalizing on unique qualities strengthens team spirit and creates interdependence. People learn to appreciate each other’s talents and know that colleagues can make up for what they lack. Everyone knows the saying, “There is no “I” in the word team. However, the great basketball player Michael Jordan once remarked, “There may not be a ‘I’ in the word team, but there is an achievement.”
Finally, by capitalizing on your unique personal qualities, you diversify your world. You break down the traditional hierarchy: if Jeffrey is responsible for all the kitting and revisions in the store, does he deserve more or less respect than the junior manager? You also break down traditional notions of who is allowed to do what: if Jeffrey comes up with new methods of kitting in the department, should he ask permission to use them or can he experiment on his own? And you also turn upside-down accepted views about where to look for true potential. If Genoa has developed a new way of product placement that it thinks will be more appealing than the top-down recommendations, can it be assumed that it knows the issue better than the planners at headquarters? These questions help a company become more inquisitive, more intelligent, more alive, and, despite its size, more able to maneuver and adapt to the future.
All of this means that the best managers focus on uniqueness not just because it helps the business. They simply can’t do otherwise. Like nineteenth-century Romantic poets Shelley and Keats, great managers are fascinated by individuality itself. The subtle nuances of personality, invisible to some and repellent to others, are, from the perspective of the best managers, of great value. They cannot ignore these subtleties, just as they cannot ignore their own needs and dreams. Understanding what makes people manifest is simply inherent in their nature.
Bio: Rebecca Carter is a content writer and works for a company that provides help with writing assignments for students. She has Bachelor´s Degree in Journalism and is always happy to assist students with their papers. Her main hobby is tennis and horse riding. Besides, Rebecca enjoys hiking and visiting culinary courses.
