Leadership and the One Minute Manager

By: Ken Blanchard, Patricia Zigarmi, Drea Zigarni

p.30: The Four Basic Leadership Styles
cf.: Participatory Decision Making Styles
cf.: Skill vs. Will Management Matrix
c.f: Decision Making – in Organizational Behavior- an Experimental Approach

1. Directing.
   The leader provides specific direction and closely monitors task accomplishment.
   (p.46): Involves clearly telling people what to do, how to do it, when to do it, and then closely monitoring their performance.
   (p.57): for people who lack competence but are enthusiastic and committed.
2. Coaching
   The leader continues to direct and closely monitor accomplishments, but also explains decisions, solicits suggestions, and supports progress.
   (p.57): for people who have some competence but lack commitment.
3. Supporting
   The leader facilitates and supports people’s efforts toward task accomplishment and shares responsibility for decision-making with them.
   (p.46): Involves listening to people, providing support and encouragement for their efforts, and then facilitating their involvement in problem-solving and decision-making.
   (p.57): for people who have competence but lack confidence or motivation.
4. Delegating
   The leader turns over responsibility for decision-making and problem-solving to people.
   (p.57): for people who have both competence and commitment.

p.33: There is nothing so unequal as the equal treatment of unequals.

p.37: I think people lose their commitment only after they realize that good performance doesn’t make a difference.

p.38: “Leave alone – ZAP” style of management.
Also, “Seagull management”: fly in, make a lot of noise, dump on everyone, and then fly out.

p.42: Delegating is appropriate for people who ware self-reliant achievers — people who are competent and committed.  Therefore they don’t need much direction, and they are also able to provide their own support.

p.44: When I slow down I go faster.

p.49: Competence is a function of knowledge and skills, which can be gained from education, training, and/or experience.
Commitment is a combination of confidence and motivation.
Confidence is a measure or a person’s self-assuredness — a feeling of being able to do a task well without much supervision, whereas motivation is a person’s interest in and enthusiasm for doing a task well.

Hire and promote first on the basis of integrity; second, motivation; third, capacity; fourth, understanding; fifth, knowledge; and last and least, experience. Without integrity, motivation is dangerous; without motivation, capacity is impotent; without capacity, understanding is limited; without understanding, knowledge is meaningless; without knowledge, experience is blind. Experience is easy to provide and quickly put to good use by people with all the other qualities. – Dee Hock  ( https://www.fastcompany.com/online/05/dee2.html )

p.53: Everyone has peak performance potential — you just need to know where they are coming from and meet them there.

p.58: the three secrets of One Minute Management: One Minute Goal Setting, One Minute Praisings, and One Minute Reprimands.

p.60: Some people are more developed in some areas of their job than in others.  They can function independently, without supervision, on some tasks, but need lots of direction and support on other tasks.  Thus, you must always assess development level with a specific goal or task in mind.  You cannot determine a person’s competence or commitment in general, only his or her development level to accomplish a certain goal.

p.64: don’t confuse ‘abdication’ from ‘delegation’.

p.65: When you know what you’re doing, you don’t need a boss.

p.66: People do not learn skills by love alone. …
if a person doesn’t have competence on a particular task, then someone has to direct, control, and supervise that person’s behavior and if that person’s commitment is low, you also have to provide support and encouragement.

p.67: A particular leadership style, which is appropriate with a person at one moment in time, may be inappropriate with the same person later on.  … Your goal as a manager should be to gradually increase the competence and confidence of your people so that you can begin to use less time-consuming styles — supporting and delegating — and still get high-quality results.

cf.: Leadership Style and Power Grid

p.69: Leaders need to do what the people they supervise can’t do for themselves at the present moment.

p.70: Five steps you need to follow to develop a person’s competence and commitment.

1. Tell them what to do.
2. Show them what to do; model the behavior.
   Tell + Show = 1 minute goal setting
3. let them try
4. observe performance
   (Often, managers hire people, tell them what to do, and then leave them alone and assume good performance will follow.  In other words, they abdicate; they don’t delegate.)
5. Praise progress

p.72: You can expect more if you inspect more.

p.75: Even in using a delegating style some direction and support are provided.  But people who are competent and confident to perform at a high level are generally not only able to direct their own behavior but can catch themselves doing things right, too, because they’ve learned how to evaluate their own performance.

p.77: What do you do in the beginning when you’re first trying to develop someone and the performance is not even approximately right?  Do you still praise that person?
No…  You say ‘I made a mistake.  I must have given you something to do that you didn’t understand.  Let’s backtrack and start again.’ … When you are training someone, besides praising, you have to be good at admitting you made a mistake.

p.78: There are some people who cannot be trained for certain jobs.

p.79: Reprimands are not a training tool but a way to deal with motivation and attitude problems.  If you use Reprimands with D1’s [Low competence, High commitment], they will often loose their motivation and stop trying.  Instead, use Reprimands with competent subordinates who have lost interest in a task. …  Reprimands do not teach skills, but are only effective in getting good performers back in line when they’ve developed a poor attitude toward their work.

p.81: The three secrets of one minute management

• Goals start performance in the right direction and permit a manager to analyze a person’s competence and commitment (development level) to perform well.
• Praisings foster improvements in the development level of individuals and permit a manager to gradually change his/her leadership style from more direction (directing) to less direction and more support (coaching and supporting) to less direction and less support (delegating).
• Reprimands stop poor performance and may mean that a manager has to gradually move back from less direction and less support (delegating) to more support (supporting) or more direction (coaching and directing).

p.82: Partnering for Performance is very important to making the whole system work.  … One of the concerns that we’ve had with people who are learning how to be Situational Leaders is that they start using the concepts without telling anybody.  … (p.83) So what would have been a good diagnosis and an appropriate leadership style is misinterpreted because I haven’t told either individual why I am behaving the way I am.

p.84: Situational Leadership is not something you do to people but something you do with people.

p.86: There are three parts to performance review:

1. Performance planning
2. Day-to-Day Coaching
3. Performance Evaluation.

p.88: Once your people are clear on their goals (they have the final exam questions), it’s your job to do everything you can to help them accomplish those goals (learn the answers) so that when it comes to performance evaluations (the final examination), they get high ratings (A’s).

p.99: Positive assumptions about people are a given; you believe people have the potential to become high performers.  What fluctuates is the manger’s behavior, depending on his or her people’s needs for direction and support.

p,100: Everyone is a potential high performer.  Some people just need a little help along the way.

p.101: To know and not to use is not yet to know  (Buddhist saying)

p.105: These three skills — flexibility, diagnosis, and partnering — are three of the most important skills managers can use to motivate better performance on the part of the people with whom they work.