The Damage From Overloading Managers

Managers have limits to how long and how much they should be carrying.  If it isn't properly managed, the individual and company will suffer greatly.

Companies are demanding more of their managers than ever before. They tend to pay less too by making more managers exempt or salary. In return, managers tend to work more hours as they receive more work. Their longer hours and additional stress often result in great sacrifices in their personal lives. They have less time to spend with their families, spouses, and children. This often results in marital or relationship strains, divorce and separation. They also have less time for relaxation, work at home, and hobbies.

This imbalance between work and home eventually wears the employee down and burnout takes over. Once a productive, happy employee, they are now a disillusioned employee who just tries to get through the day. Their feeling is “why should I care about a company that doesn’t care about me?”

A company that is constantly making withdrawals, but fails to put in an equal amount of deposits breeds disloyalty. It’s not easy to reinvigorate a burned out employee who now doesn’t believe in what he’s doing.

Hobbies, recreation, and vacations are necessary for a well-balanced, healthy lifestyle. We are unable to do our best work with anxiety and stressed nerves caused by constant pressure. We lose our effectiveness by living a life so tightly strung that we are always tense. A proper balance between work and rest can make us more efficient than when we constantly work without any rest.

Stress may cause a disruption in sleep and leave the manager feeling fatigued, mentally and physically. Because your mind isn’t as sharp as it usually is, you have a diminished ability to make good decisions.

Long-term success is dependent on a company's ability to get the most from an employee and maintaining that flow.  Time off and regular relaxation are key to the health of the employee and company.

The Best Performance Comes From Praising And Reprimands

Praising and reprimands do more for performance than goal setting and other factors.  Why not employee all positive factors for maximum benefit?

Consequences like praising and reprimands, says Robert Lorber Ph.D. and Kenneth Blanchard Ph. D., accounts for 75-85% of performance (Putting the One Minute Manager to Work). Goal setting and other activators influences only 15-25% of performance yet most people think it has a greater influence on performance than consequences.

Leaders know that simply paying special attention to an operation will lead to a boost in productivity. Why does this happen? It happens because people feel their work is now important and valued. It might also be that some employees need additional supervision. The employees who won’t work hard when you’re not around are the ones you need to find a way to motivate. Establish goals and expectations together, monitor his or her performance, and discuss what will happen because of their improved productivity. Of course, if they fail to improve they should face a reprimand of some kind.

Leaders must learn to instill value in each area they supervise, on a frequent basis. Post the goals and the productivity achieved. Develop a goal for every operation you can so you have a general measurement to base performance on. Specify what duties they performed well as specifically as possible. Tie performance to work habits/behaviors to reinforce the traits you desire.

Great workers take time to develop and forcing them to accomplish too much, too quick is often a design for failure. Any movement forward is good no matter how small. The ultimate objective is to teach the workers to self-motivate or self-manage through a series of steps.

Strive for the optimal balance of control and individual freedom. Employees want to feel safe, secure, and able to grow at work. Meanwhile, the organization wants its mission carried forward each day. Both are entirely possible and necessary for ultimate success.

Balance Short Term And Long Term Objectives For Lasting Effectiveness

To know where you're heading, you must see the future, and make the successive steps to stay relevant and prosperous.

The mining companies of the Iron Range in Minnesota took record profits for many years, before falling out of favor with the markets. Their costs soared as they had to dig deeper and deeper for iron ore and their machines and buildings aged. Other mining companies continued to upgrade their equipment, buildings, and processes and took over the market. If they had reinvested some of their profits during the good years, they could probably have maintained a healthy financial position for many more years. Instead, many of them experienced huge layoffs, some idled and/or closed, and many surrounding towns suffered economically.

Operating a successful business is like driving a vehicle. You keep one eye on the horizon, but you take in everything that is going on right in front of you. If you were to take your eye off the horizon, you might not see a Moose walk in front of you and be able to stop in time. The same is true of a business. When you’re looking only at what’s directly in front of you, you might miss the changing markets/trends and find yourself in financial trouble quickly. Can you imagine how Ford Motor Company might have fared if they had stuck with Model T’s, instead of evolving into more modern looking vehicles? They simply wouldn’t exist now, and wouldn’t have lasted long even then.

Without a long-term goal, you won’t know what direction you’re heading. No one goes on a vacation, or very few at least, without knowing where they are going.

Swim Instead Of Tread

“Swimmers are destined to go places, while treaders go nowhere. One uses his energy to move, while the other wastes it by staying in place. One will find shore and the other will not. In fact, the one treading water that has gone nowhere will use more energy.” Marvin Pirila

Many managers are stuck in the day-to-day struggle of getting things done. Many of the same problems exist everyday and worsen if not addressed. Managers should spend a portion of each day working to eliminate the problems plaguing operations. They should also be looking towards available equipment to make things better, safer, or more productive. Managers should always be evaluating their processes, trying new things, and re-evaluating. Most importantly, they should be monitoring the productivity and morale of their employees. If someone is performing poorly or not as well as he or she should the supervisor must take action.

Short-term easy is not long-term easy. Many managers can finagle something short-term, but few can make things successful in the long-term.

Workers tend to give each new person a honeymoon period. I call it a honeymoon period because they tend to work harder and try harder to make sure everything is initially covered. Perhaps this happens because they feel they have new life in their jobs and have another opportunity to show what they know. Everyone wants to feel appreciated, and new supervisors/managers tend to give more appreciation initially. Like a marriage, as time goes on, we tend to show less and less appreciation for our mates. Eventually, our mate feels unappreciated, lacking self-worth, and perhaps becomes depressed. When this occurs, their hierarchy of needs is disrupted and further growth opportunities drop. We need to satisfy our basic needs before climbing a level towards self-actualization.

Honeymoon periods, unfortunately, don’t last long so you have to work hard to get up to speed. If they don’t feel you’re catching on or moving things ahead, they will quit believing in you and things will deteriorate.

Positive Self-Awareness

Winners have a greater sense of awareness. This comes from various traits of winners that include:

• Eagerness to learn, constantly adding to their knowledge, through insight, experience, judgment, and feedback. They play on their strengths while avoiding errors and correcting weaknesses. They believe in the truth and having high integrity.
• Honesty with others and themselves. If something feels wrong, ask yourself why? Is it a moral, ethical, or pride issue? Realize that things that may be right also come with great pains, conflicts, and struggles. Abraham Lincoln exemplified this plight when he abolished slavery. The very act took us into civil war.
• Sensitive – more tuned-in and energized by natural highs
• Open-mindedness – all things are relative
• Mindset that all people have equal rights to fulfill their individual potential
• Recognize that individuals are unique. Each individual has a unique sound frequency (voice-print), DNA, fingerprint, and eye print. With the spike in identity thefts, biometrics has become a booming business. No other individual on this planet has the same biometric information as we do. It is a bad day to be a criminal.
• Adaptability to sensory bombardment and changes. The explosion in technology has everyone absorbing more sensory events than ever before. This includes the Internet, computers, Ipods, Palm Pilots, new software, cable T.V., streaming video, etc.
• Ability to understand their own relationship to their environments and the many events and people that interacts each day. A manager must be able to see the total scope of operations, making sure that all pieces are coming together efficiently, and that the end product is as good as it possibly can be.
• Ability to relax and cope with the trials and tribulations of everyday life, without needing drugs. Find a healthy stress level for yourself and learn to operate within it. Learn to view stresses as normal.
• Mental toughness (strength of character) when dealing with failures and adversity. Winners adapt to and view normal corrective feedback as a tool to stay on target. Their experiences with failure and adversity, when properly handled, develops a feeling of immunity in us against anxiety, apprehension, depression, and other adverse responses to stress and pressure.

Winners follow the message embedded in the serenity prayer. The serenity prayer states, “God grant me the serenity to accept things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” I grew up with a plaque of the serenity prayer hung above my bed. I read it at least once each night and it has stuck with me. It is a constant reminder and comfort to me when I’m struggling with something I can’t control. Winners remove things that are negative influences and where they can, change things for the better. Winners adapt and adjust to negative influences when they cannot be changed or removed.

Win Using Your God Given Talents!

Winning means taking all of your talent and potential and using it in pursuit of a goal or purpose that makes you happy. 

Winning is:

• Letting others have their day(s) to shine
• Picking yourself up when you fall and moving forward
• Chasing a dream even when all others doubt you
• Graciously accepting defeat
• Doing your best even in a losing cause
• Doing the right thing even when no one will see or even notice
• Winning is a way of thinking. It has often been said, “What you can conceive you can achieve.”
• Not letting success change you
• Bring others up with you
• Never forgetting the ones that help you
• Staying optimistic
• Giving yourself freely to others
• Treating the nerd, old or fat person like everyone else
• Becoming the dream of yourself that fulfills you and gives you high self-esteem
• Giving and getting in an environment of love, social concern, cooperation, and responsibility. Be the best spouse, friend, sibling, parent, and community member that you can.

Winning is all about your attitude toward your potential. Your attitude determines whether you find personal fulfillment. If you don’t believe in yourself, no one else will. You won’t pursue your dream if you don’t believe in your ability to get there. Dreams remain dreams for many who are unwilling to believe in themselves and their potential. Potential is an idle object until motivation puts it in play.

The Brain Research Institute at the University of California – Los Angeles has concluded that the ultimate creative capacity of the human brain may be unlimited. The only limits to reaching higher plateaus of mental abilities are self-imposed.

The key to greater use of this magnificent resource is to remove self-imposed barriers, such as laziness, fear, low self-image, negative attitude. A positive attitude includes healthy responses to the stimuli of life.

A change in your self-image generally precedes a permanent change in personality or behavior, reinforced by a change in lifestyle. As Dr. Denis Waitley states in his book The Psychology Of Winning the self-image can be changed since the subconscious is incapable of differentiating between a real success and a success imagined again and again vividly and in full detail. A Winner’s self-talk is “I see myself changing, growing, achieving, winning!”

Imagine walking with a mirror directly in front of you. Are you projecting self-confidence? Walk with your back straight, your shoulders upright, and your chin up.

How To Keep Your Dream Alive And Possible

A dream may seem far off in the distance but when you take daily steps, however small, the horizon will one day come into focus.

To reinforce your goals you should write them out, as detailed as possible, step-by-step. Keep your written goals close to you and take action everyday. Monitor your progress periodically and celebrate your successes, no matter how small.

Writing clarifies thought and helps break the whole into parts. Writing also helps bridge and integrates the conscious and subconscious minds. This is why so many instructors insist you write something down, possibly many times. It is the same reason many of us had to write something so many times on the chalkboard growing up. Once you have written, “I won’t hit anyone,” a hundred times on the chalkboard, you get the point.

Of course, you cannot have any goal in mind without knowing what end you desire. When I started this book, I knew I wanted to publish it. If I had gone into it without thinking of publishing it, it wouldn’t have got finished. You have to know as specifically as possible what it is that you want to achieve. You also have to believe that you can achieve your goal as well. For example, I may want to be on the best sellers list, but that isn’t really a goal as much as it is a wish. I have to publish a book to have any chance of that occurring. My primary goal would be to write a book first, then get it published second.

Ultimately, we are responsible for our own happiness, our own effectiveness, and our own circumstances. Began within yourself to find the life you really want to live.

Making and keeping small commitments to ourselves help us to establish an inner integrity that gives us the awareness of self-control. It also enhances our courage and strength to accept more of the responsibility for our own lives. One of my commitments was to write at least an hour each day while writing or researching for this book.

It doesn’t have to take a lot of time each day to act on your goal. In just a half hour each day, you will find yourself progressing a lot faster than you think. Considering that most of Americans spend far more time watching television, a half-an-hour isn’t much time. In fact, many people could do this during lunch, or before work. It’s a small price to pay to chase your dreams. Dreams only become reality through action.