EL CONTROL Y LA LEY DE LA VIÑA Y EL VINO

The OB faculty, besides making students aware of their potentials and shortcomings, tried to teach us some practical interpersonal skills that would help us to succeed on the job.

Active Listening. One of the most valuable skills is to be able to re-ally listen. Active listening helps you to gain a clear perception of sit-uations so that you can effectively deal with them. It differs from conversation in three ways:

• You Respond to Information and Don’t Lead.

• You Respond to Personal Information and Don’t Give Advice.

• You Identify the Interviewee’s Feelings as Well as the Content.

An active listener cedes control of the conversation to the other party. Given enough leeway, true motivations, feelings, and beliefs can come forth. After the active listening session runs its course, you can start to talk and act like an MBA know-it-all again.

Performance Appraisals. One of the most mismanaged tools for or-ganizational improvement is the performance appraisal. Rating forms are sometimes used effectively for timely feedback and per-sonal development. However, most of the time it is a task that is de-layed until the appraisal has really lost all usefulness. Effective appraisals ought to have three types of goals:

Organizational

Feedback and Evaluation

Coaching and Development

Organizational goals aim to ensure proper conduct and levels of performance, placement, promotion, and pay. The feedback and evaluation aspects provide both employees and employers with a formal process and documentation of performance. Coaching and development should ultimately be the primary goals of an appraisal.

How can we improve, rather than punish, unsatisfactory perfor-mance? Working together, the boss and the subordinate should agree on specific targets and timetables for improvement. These plans for the future lay the groundwork for a follow-up.

The problem is that managers tend to avoid this evaluation process. Subordinates are defensive. The appraisal must be timely;

both participants must be prepared. The boss should foster an open climate of real communication (both ways) and make the purpose of the appraisal clear. As simple as the appraisal can be, it is seldom done right.

In addition to the potential for improvement, appraisals provide employers the documentation to legally fire an employee. Without documentation a disgruntled worker could sue the company for lack of just cause.

Reprimands. Sometimes an MBA will be called on to lower the boom. In line with my class discussions, the MBA should reprimand a subordinate using the following four steps.

1. Check out the facts first. Ask yourself if you caused the problem.

2. Give warning that you need to talk about the problem.

3. Pause and express your displeasure. Tell it exactly as you see it. Yelling is counterproductive.

4. Display a caring attitude. “I did not approve of your behav-ior, but you are still okay.” “Let’s learn from this and put it behind us.” The idea is to do it firmly, clearly, and move on to new business.

“A good manager can balance his reprimands with praise.”

Managing Your Boss. MBAs are not always bosses. Most start out as lowly analysts, planners, and associates. Ironically, these are the po-sitions that operations classes characterize as corporate fat, ripe for trimming. Even if MBAs find themselves in more senior managerial jobs, it’s a safe bet that they will have a boss to deal with. Even pres-idents have to deal with chairmen!

Management of the relationship upward is as important as man-aging your relationship below. That’s why I’ve included it in this book. To give the MBA an edge, the curriculum includes a session on how to manage your boss. “Managing Your Boss” appeared in the Harvard Business Review in January 1980. It was written by John Gabarro and John Kotter, and it captures the subject well.

“The first step to success on the job is to understand bosses and their context, including:

• Their stated and unstated goals and objectives

• The pressures on them

• Their strengths, weaknesses, blind spots

• Their preferred work styles

“The second step is to be introspective and assess yourself and your needs, including:

• Your own strengths and weaknesses

• Your personal style

• Your predisposition toward dependence on or resistance to authority figures

“The third step is to incorporate the first two steps and develop and maintain a relationship that:

• Fits both your needs and styles

• Is characterized by mutual expectations

• Keeps your boss informed—bosses hate surprises!

• Is based on dependability and honesty

• Selectively uses your boss’s time and resources” *

Simply by asking a few questions at the start of the relationship, you can avoid making major political blunders in the future. Some bosses like a formal relationship, memos, and meetings with agenda.

Others prefer informal notes and frequent unstructured meetings.

Smart MBAs take the initiative to ask their bosses how they would prefer to communicate rather than guess. Careers often hang in the balance. I still keep Gabarro and Kotter’s article at my desk as a re-minder to manage my boss.

Understanding Power on the Job. If MBAs want power, then they ought to know more about what they seek. There are actually five types of power:

Coercive Reward Referent Legitimate Expert

Coercive power is based on fear. Failure to comply with a re-quest could result in some form of punishment. A person with coer-cive power can influence or directly fire, demote, or transfer an employee. At a firehouse, the chief has the power to assign shifts. If you get on the chief’s bad side, it could mean you work holidays.

Reward power is based upon the expectation of receiving praise, recognition, or income. It’s the opposite of coercive power.

Referent power is derived from being a person whom other peo-ple admire regardless of formal job status. These peopeo-ple are said to

* Reprinted by permission of Harvard Business Review, “Managing Your Boss” by John J. Gabarro and John P. Kotter (January/February 1980).

Copyright © 1979 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College; all rights reserved.

have charisma to inspire and to attract followers. Star salespeople have this role in sales organizations.

Legitimate power is due to the formal status held in the orga-nizational hierarchy. Those with this type of power can use it to reward, to ax, and to influence the lives of others in the organi-zation. A shift foreman has the power to assign duties on an as-sembly line.

Expert power comes from one’s own skill, knowledge, or experi-ence. People with expert power have the ability to manipulate oth-ers. This is without regard to their position in the company. Often it is a lowly computer technician who may have the power to bring a senior executive to his cubbyhole. The boss must crawl for assis-tance. Crafty technicians fix it so that they alone have the ability to tap into the database. This preserves their expert power. It’s a manager’s job to cross-train people to prevent the birth of such little generals in their organizations.

In the political gamesmanship of corporations, it is important for MBAs to recognize all the people in the organization with the power to influence their lives.

MBO and MBWA. MBO and MBWA are frequently used abbrevia-tions in MBA babble. MBO means management by objective. It is a management style popularized by management guru Peter Drucker in the 1950s. Bosses delegate tasks by “negotiating a contract of goals” with their subordinates without dictating a detailed road map for implementation. MBO managers focus on the result, not the activity. At Frito-Lay, for example, a vice president might set a sales target for her regional sales managers. The managers decide what tactics and strategy are needed to meet the objective.

The MBO style is appropriate when your staff is competent.

Chief executives of multinational corporations (MNCs) use MBO for their country managers abroad. Their bosses in the United States often have little knowledge of what is required for success in those international markets. MBO is appropriate in situations where you wish to build employees’ management skills and tap their creativity and initiative. The drawback to MBO is the time needed to

ade-quately negotiate and document the process. Therefore, MBO should be used in appropriate situations.

MBWA, management by walking around, was a theory ex-pounded at Hewlett-Packard, the computer giant. HP executives were encouraged to be out of their offices working on building rela-tionships, motivating, and keeping in direct touch with the activities of the company. MBWA is a simple concept, but it has become part of an MBA’s portfolio of management theories.