I’m currently reading The Effective Manager.

Chapter 2: The Four Critical Behaviors

My takeaways from chapter two:

• We don’t teach management to managers, which is why most managers struggle.

• The four critical behaviors.
  1. Get to know your people.
  2. Communicate about performance.
  3. Ask for more.
  4. Push work down.

• Getting to know your people is about building a trusting relationship and having that as a foundation, not relying on “role power”.

• Communicating about performance helps bring out the best in your directs and needs to be frequent to be effective. Infrequent or overly periodic communication reduces its effectiveness.
  • Ask yourself the question, “Do I want more feedback about my performance from my boss?” If you do, your employees probably do as well.

• Asking for more is about improving team performance.

• Managerial economics: If you and one of your directs COULD do a task, it’s better for the organization if they do it and not you. It’s a better use of resources.