Michelangelo said “The sculpture is already complete within the marble. It is already there, I just have to chisel away the superfluous material.” As a manager, you are the artist and your employees are the stone, just waiting for the superfluous material to be chipped away by your deft hands.
The people reporting directly to you need your experience to guide them, encourage them, correct them. They yearn to be transformed into the best version of themselves. You have assigned them work; some of it was completed some wasn’t. Some of the work they did was good, some wasn’t. Some of them went above and beyond, some did the bare minimum, some didn’t even achieve that. Logic can guide the manager when it comes things such as TMT, but when it comes to employee development cold logic must yield to the warmth of the managerial arts. So grab that hammer and let’s go crack some rock!
Remember people are not robots, which is unfortunate because robots will work day and night without complaint unlike their squishy human meatbag counterparts. Also unlike robots, each person is unique so you must strike each one differently. For some, you will only need a few small taps to unveil your “David”, while others may require years of constant chipping away to release the inner “Thinker” that only you can see.
The employees that will need the most “sculpting” will be the youngest, the oldest, the inexperienced and the long term workers, the newest hires, those that have transferred from other managers, and of course everyone else. Everyone can reap benefits from you. Don’t fret if that seems like a lot of work because it is possible to chip away at more than one person at a time. Think back to all you’ve learned about meetings; like swinging a sledge hammer in a china shop a few well placed comments can knock the rough corners off of everyone in attendance with a single blow. Below are several examples of how to break off the useless parts of your employees with a minimum of your precious effort.
For years managers have been encouraged to use the “compliment sandwich” where a critique is placed between positive statements to temper any hurt feelings of the employee (unlike robots, people unfortunately have “feelings”). If you learn nothing else about employee development let it be that the compliment sandwich does not work. For your advice to sink in your employees must carry it with them forever, like shame or herpes. The most effective way to carve the superfluous from your employees use the “open faced sandwich buffet” approach. In a meeting, without warning or notice, randomly call on an employee working on a very important project and ask them for an update. Ask pointed and probing questions that show your interest, then offer up one or more ways that they should be doing things differently. Before they can respond drop a “Let’s take that offline” for a TMT tip of the hat and move on to a new topic. Do this to a few employees in each staff meeting and soon your office will be covered with needless rubble.
Just as some stone is harder to work and needs more aggressive tools to carve, occasionally even blasting, some employees will need more work to bring out their inner masterpiece. Try these more advanced techniques:
- Encourage their multi-tasking skills by assigning multiple projects one after another while never allowing them complete any. They will quickly learn how to context switch effectively.
- Create self reliance in your employees by ignoring all their work for weeks or even months on end. Out of the blue surprise them with feedback on how they went astray at the very beginning of a project. They will be forced to look at how they work in a whole new light, and thank you for it.
- Teach them that perfection is impossible by finding at least one fault with everything they do.
- Show the whole team you value each employee by always providing helpful, direct, and forceful criticism in public forums.
- Most importantly, constantly remind everyone that although they have done good work that the work isn’t over and there is even more to do.
- Frequently issue praise by reminding employees on how much more productive and nearly competent they will be in the future as you continually cleave their flaws away.
- Ask employees for a self-review listing the 3 to 5 things upon which they themselves feel they could improve. It is best to agree with ALL their self-criticisms. Sit back and relax as they apply the hammer and chisel to their own fragile ego, attempting to hew away their own perceived flaws. When they have finished, step in and show them what a true sculptor can achieve by striking one more blow, hewing the final imperfections from their soul.
Unlike sculpture, chiseling employees into perfection is a journey, not a destination. In the end, while who you are left with is most certainly reduced from their former stature be assured that while they are diminished you have released their inner “Peita”.
There you have it: You’ve given your employees all they need to be their very best and because you are the Modern Michelangelo of Managers!