Do You Have the Courage to Rate Yourself as a Manager?

Progress and Management Training

One of the behaviours I have been advocating for many years for managers is that they carefully and routinely evaluate the areas where they have made progress and where they have not.

Your results as a manager are evident from the achievements you have accomplished and the challenges, failure and un-met goals that were for whatever reason not realised.

Self Evaluation

There are many benefits for this type of activity and yet many managers are either too busy, too stressed or just unwilling to take the time to conduct a thorough self-evaluation of their strengths, weaknesses, failures or self-development needs.

I have been sharing ideas, concepts and techniques with managers around the world for years on how to improve organisation performance and employee productivity and it still amazes me how few have the courage or interest in looking in periodically the mirror with an eye on getting better.

Look To Leadership

One of the fundamental principles I teach in my management training is:

If you have a problem in your organisation, look up the ladder and not down for its cause.

If you are not willing to take full responsibility for the outcomes, behaviours, attitudes or failures in your organisation then you might want to consider a job as a Wal-Mart Greeter.

Quarterly Review Process

One easy way to accomplish this activity is with my 3/3/3 Quarterly Review Process.

This simple device is used by managers as well as employees for both a top-down and bottom-up evaluation of skill and attitude development needs.

It is currently being used by dozens of organisations and hundreds of employees and managers.

It really doesn’t matter what device, system or strategy you use to determine your progress or development as a manager, executive or business owner as long as you use something that has integrity, reality, honesty and timeliness.

Self Development

You can’t just sit there in a limbo state of performance.

If you are not getting better most likely you are getting worse as a manager.

If you are getting better it is important to determine if you are improving in the right areas and in the right ways.

Show me a manager or executive who is unwilling to accept honest bottom-up feedback from employees, customers or the marketplace and I will show you a manager that is most likely sabotaging the performance and success of his or her organisation.

New Managers

If you are a new manager it is vital that you develop the right attitudes and approaches to developing yourself and your employees.

Yes, it takes time, commitment, money and energy to get better, but in the long run, it is far better to improve your people, management and leadership skills than to assume that yesterday’s knowledge, approaches and philosophy are still relevant today.

This article was contributed by Tim Connor