How New Managers Can Strengthen as Decision Makers

How New Managers Can Strengthen as Decision MakersHow New Managers Can Strengthen as Decision MakersCongratulations on your new role as a manager While your skills as an individual contributor helped you earn this job, it will be your effectiveness as a decision-maker that propels you to success in this and future roles. This article offers eight ideas for the new manager to strengthen his or her decision-making muscles. 8 Tips to Help New Managers Strengthen Decision-Making Recognize that decisions promote actions. Your team is dependent upon you for critical choices on policies, programs, budgets or pursuing new ideas. Respect their need for a decision and work diligently every day to help team members move forward with their initiatives.Balance the need to help people move forward on their initiatives with your obligation to your firm and anfhrer to manage risk. If you assess an issue as potentially risky, you are within your rights to engage others, including your boss, to he lp you evaluate your options. Your team members may momentarily be placed on hold, but your job is to first do no harm with your decisions. Vow to follow-up quickly and then do it. Help team members learn to make their own decisions for well-established policies. Decisions governed by policies are considered programmed decisions. These might include budgetary limits or policies on handling customer returns or complaints. Work diligently to ensure that team members understand these established policies and reinforce their responsibility to make their decisions without requiring consultation. It is essential that you avoid conditioning everyone to come to you for every single decision. Draw your firms values into your decision-making processes. If the values are clearly defined and visible in your workplace, they offer invaluable support for some of the most difficult decisions. Values describe expectations for behavior, including navigating conflicts, pursuing innovation, engaging wi th coworkers and serving customers. Strive to draw your firms values into your daily decision-making activities and be certain to educate your team members on how the values apply to each situation. Learn to frame issues in various ways. Psychologists show that we develop different solutions for the same situation, depending upon whether it is framed as a positive or a negative. When faced with a negative frame, we tend to take mora risks. When evaluating the same issue as a potential positive outcome, we make more conservative decisions. Learn to frame issues from multiple perspectives and encourage others to help you develop and explore various decision options based on the positive or negative frame. This exercise will uncover new ideas and help you and others consider a complete picture of the issues and opportunities. Use data extensively and carefully. A great exercise when facing a difficult issue is to ask and answer the question What data do we need to make this decision? T his effort forces you to go beyond the data at hand and ensure you are developing a complete picture of the evidence. Too often, we focus solely on the information that supports our case, while ignoring or suppressing contradictory information. And remember, data often shows a correlation between two issues, but correlation is not causation. Dont fall into the correlation trap Learn to facilitate effective group discussions. For the many instances where you will be working with a team on making a decision, it is essential to cultivate effective facilitation skills. Practice guiding your team through the steps of problem definition, framing, data analysis, options development, risk assessment and ultimately making the final choice. Learn to keep people focused on a single topic at a time.Start journaling your decisions. Leonardo Da Vinci did it. Thomas Jefferson did it. The late management guru, Peter Drucker did it too. They all learned to notenzeichen their decisions and then look back at them to assess outcomes and identify where they might have gone wrong. The process of documenting and reviewing decisions and outcomes is integral to strengthening and improving over time. The Bottom Line As you grow in your career and gain added responsibilities, decisions become increasingly more challenging. Senior managers and executives grapple with difficult decisions including where to invest and how to deploy resources to grow the business and beat competitors. Every manager will eventually be involved in decisions on talent, including hiring, firing, and promotion. You will encounter ethical dilemmas where the decision-choice is gray, and not black or white.Strengthening your decision-making skills is an essential part of developing as a manager. Make it a key part of your continuous improvement program.

How Modest People Say Theyre Good at Their Job - The Muse

How Modest People Say Theyre Good at Their Job - The MuseHow Modest People Say Theyre Good at Their JobWhen promoting your professional capabilities- whether thats through an active job search or as an ongoing effort to affirm your personal brand- its ridiculously important that you toot your horn, and toot it well.Simply put, the easier you make it for people to quickly understand what youre all about, and why they (sure as heck) should care about you, the better the odds are that theyre going to want to know you, interview you, or drop everything to hire you.Most people, however, when faced with the task of shouting out whats so great about themselves sort of freeze. Or, they go about it in a way that comes out all wrong and leaves those on the receiving end with the wrong impression.Walking that line is truly challenging for most of us. Were taught from an early age to not boast or brag. To not be cocky or arrogant. No one likes the peacock, my grandmother used to say. (I will arg ue that peacocks are cool as heck, but thats beside the point here.)And so, we err on the side of caution and- more often than not- end up underselling ourselves. We water down our amazingness in a way that makes us look like one of many. Another fish in the sea. A commodity.You are not corn. You dont want to come across as a commodity.So, how do you make it abundantly clear that youre great at what you do (and even more great to spend time with) without coming off like youre full of yourself? Here are four quick ways1. Make the Accomplishments Easy to See (and Understand)So many of us are great at rattling off the things that we do or have done. In fact, nearly every before resume that comes through the doors of my resume writing business focuses solidly on the duties and responsibilities that person holds. However, telling someone what you do doesnt necessarily help them see right off the bat that you truly rock at what you do.This is why its so important to share accomplishments on your resume, in your LinkedIn profile, and in conversations- both the quantitative results (saved the company 42% on office supplies) and the more qualitative ones (became a trusted resource for the companys most difficult client). Theres a saying thats perfectly apt here Dont tell them how great you are, show them. And you can do this by making your accomplishments easy to find, and easy to understand.2. Make the I Obvious by Showcasing the WeYou know whats coming- theres no I in team. (Sorry, I couldnt resist.) But seriously, framing your wins in the context of we is a great way to demonstrate how impressive you are without giving off so much as a whiff that youve got a giant ego. So, maybe you played a key role in taking your company through a complex technology integration. In fact, you may have been the linchpin to the entire project. However, you probably had teammates working side by side with you. Consider including them as you describe to someone how you nailed the assig nment, even if you were totally the hero. Its a simple shift thatll demonstrate humility while making your impressive performance clear. 3. Let the Others Speak for YouIts one thing for you to rattle on about how great you are (and, dont get me wrong, you should get comfortable promoting yourself). But it takes on a whole different level of power when someone else sings your praises. Ah, yes. The magic of third-party testimonials. When theyre good, they can be incredibly useful tools for branding yourself and helping you land your next role.Certainly, one of the most obvious places you can display a testimonial is on LinkedIn (as a recommendation). The trick here is this Ask with specificity. Instead of simply presenting a generic request, Hi. Will you please recommend me? consider asking the person to directly validate the things you most want to showcase about yourself. For instanceHi Mary, I hope youre doing well. Im working to better present my project management skills on Linke dIn. Since you and I worked on the XYZ project together, I thought you might be a great person to highlight these strengths. Would you be willing to share some feedback here?Bonus If you get a great prozentzahl back, you can pull out an excerpt and plug it into your resume.4. When Appropriate, Use HumorCertainly, Im not advocating that you attempt to be a stand-up comedian as means of affirming your professional expertise (unless, of course, you are one). But being funny goes a long way, not only in establishing your humanness, but also in engaging others.And while it may not necessarily showcase your hard skills, it can help people see pretty quickly that youre genuine, likable, and someone they want to be around. Self-deprecating jokes are probably the easiest way to go about this. Try it at a networking event, as you work to break the ice with a stranger youve just met (I can manage massive spreadsheets, but have yet to figure out how to hold a cocktail and a plate full of appeti zers at these events). Or, plug in a relevant story about yourself in your cover letter (If youd have told me on the day I caused that fire in science lab that Id grow up to be a chemist, Id never have believed you).Always remember that were all just people. And people like to be entertained, to smile, and to spend time with others who make them laugh. So, if you can weave that part of your personality into your professional conversations and your personal branding efforts, it could go a long way in demonstrating that youre someone special.Because, without a doubt, you are. Now, go make the world clear on this.

Psychoanalytic Study Shows what Truly Leads to Workplace Happiness

Psychoanalytic Study Shows what Truly Leads to Workplace Happiness Psychoanalytic Study Shows what Truly Leads to Workplace Happiness When asked How much of a persons job satisfaction does each job characteristic account for? nearly 600 participants responded Intellectual stimulation (18.5 percent) Achievement and prestige (18.4 percent) Power and influence (14.9 percent) Job security (8.8 percent) Work-life balance (8 percent) Affiliation and friendship (5.9 percent) Money (5.4 percent)These findings are quite surprising, because employers often assume things like income are the strongest drivers of happiness on the workplace. In fact our research shows that it may be the weakest, said Steve Lehr, Cangrades Chief Science Officer.The results of the survey led Cangrade to make the following recommendations for developing happy employees Ensure task variety and intellectual stimulation through autonomy, influence, and opportunities to gain prestige and recognition. Provide breaks for employees whether they explicitly ask for them or not. Offer additional financial incentives, security, and social opportunities in moderation.Research of this sort will change how things are done, said Lehr. If there is a major takeaway here, its that we can finally prove that money doesnt buy happiness, and that happiness isnt as elusive as we might think.