One-on-one meetings are your chance to lead your staff. The sessions give you an opportunity to inspire, influence, motivate, coach, listen, solve problems, make decisions together, and create an environment where employees feel energized.

But most managers fear one-on-ones. Here, courtesy of Dan McCarthy's Great Leadership blog, are some ideas on making them effective:

• Schedule them in advance for the next six to 12 months, either weekly or bi-weekly, for about an hour each. Don't wait for them to happen, because they won't. It's best to place the responsibility for scheduling them on employees, but set the expectation and hold them accountable. It's not an option. And don't cancel them (although you can reschedule if necessary).
• Always let your employee speak first. Go through and complete their agenda items first - it's their time. Then cover any matters on your list.
• Make sure you don't just discuss performance goals, metrics, quotas, or project updates. Save time to also talk about their development, job satisfaction, and yes, even a little time to get to know your employees as people.
• At least once a year set aside an entire meeting to have a career and development discussion. Review individual development plans on a quarterly basis.
• Make the sessions comfortable -- not like an interrogation under bright lights.
• Don't accumulate a to-do list for each employee, and then unload your list. You don't want them leaving beleaguered. Quite the reverse: They should leave energized, enthusiastic, motivated -- and smiling.

See: http://www.greatleadershipbydan.com/2009/03/how-to-have-effective-1-on-1.html

President Barack Obama has relied heavily on historian Doris Kearns Goodwin's 2005 best-selling account of President Abraham Lincoln's leadership during the Civil War, Team Of Rivals. In an interview with Harvard Business Review, she offers this advice from her study of Lincoln:

• Recruit the strongest people you can find to be at your side -- individuals who are leaders in their own right. Lincoln collected together his rivals for the presidency because they were the best people. At the same time, don't let such a powerful group get deadlocked on decisions. If you hit a stalemate, be prepared to say, "Like it or not, here's what we're doing."
• You need to know how to relax so you can replenish your energies for tomorrow's struggles. Lincoln often went to the theatre. Franklin Delano Roosevelt had a cocktail hour every evening during World War II in which participants couldn't talk of the war.
• Build your emotional intelligence. Lincoln, she says, "was able to acknowledge his errors and learn from his mistakes to a remarkable degree. He was careful to put past hurts behind him and never allowed wounds to fester."
• Be willing to cut people loose. Lincoln's greatest flaw, she feels, came out of his greatest strength: Liking people and not being willing to hurt them. He always wanted to give them a second or even a third chance, and in some cases -- notably with Gen. George McClellan, head of his army -- that was disastrous.

See: http://tinyurl.com/HBR-Goodwin

Marketers often talk about the importance of the elevator pitch, a brief summary of what you do designed to attract interest in the equivalent of the time it takes for an elevator to rise a few floors. But public speaking expert Nick Morgan, on his PublicWords blog, also highlights another important talk: The two-minute pitch. That can occur with clients or making a presentation to something like a civic council committee.

He notes that two minutes can allow a surprising amount of words -- about 250. But you want to be organized. Start with your main point, or headline, as he calls it, drawing attention. Then quickly deliver three supporting points. Then repeat your headline, and close by asking for the appropriate action your headline and supporting points lead to.

See: http://publicwords.typepad.com/nickmorgan/

When people send you an e-mail, they expect an immediate response. But sometimes, an immediate response is impossible.

To avoid seeming inconsiderate or snooty, on The All Amazing Articles blog Tim Berry recommends using bridging e-mails in that situation. Send an e-mail saying you have received and read their message, but don't have time to answer at the moment. If you know when you may be able to answer, provide a broad time frame.

"Taking a few seconds to acknowledge their e-mail can mean the difference between leaving a positive or a negative impression, even if you never find the time to answer. Readers appreciate that you're busy. The main thing is that they don't feel completely ignored," he says.

See: /http://www.allticles.com/10-tips-for-managing-email-effectively/

• "When you fear a client doubts your qualifications, bring the issue to the surface: "You seem a bit unsure of my qualifications to do the job, and I would like to address that. What are your concerns?" (Source: RainToday.com)
• "Consultant Seth Godin says the number one habit successful people share with him is that they read books to learn. (Source: Seth's Blog)
• "A study of 716 leaders in virtually every kind of organization -- from hospitals, to banks, to churches, to casinos -- found that nearly 70 per cent of those whom their peers, direct reports and board members rated highly in emotional intelligence also ranked amongst the most skilled decision makers. On the other hand, of those ranked as having a poor grasp of their emotions, none ranked in the top echelon of decision makers -- while 69 per cent of low EQ leaders ranked in the bottom 15 per cent of decision-makers. (Source: TalentSmart Newsletter)
• "To schedule a regular, continuing meeting in Microsoft Outlook, create a new appointment in your calendar, give the meeting a title, and plug in the time it starts and is likely to end. Then click on recurrence at the top of the appointment box, and complete the options for frequency, start date and end date. Click OK, and save the appointment. (Source: Productivity Café)
• "To improve your personal productivity, answer the following question: "I am at my best when…" Once you know the situations that allow you to be productive -- be it time of day, or work environment -- set about maximizing those situations in your work life. Repeat the exercise every so often, in case the answers have varied. (Source: Jason Womack's blog)

Links:

See: RainToday.com
See: Seth's Blog
See: TalentSmart Newsletter blog
See: Productivity Café
See: Jason Womack's blog

6. Q&A with 8020Info: Dealing With The Recession        Top

Question: The recession doesn't seem to have affected our company yet. Is it possible that we will remain unscathed, or should we prepare for a late hit?

8020Info Associate Harvey Schachter replies:

With all the dismal news about the recession -- and the reports of GNP plummeting -- it's easy to forget that the impact of a recession can be very uneven.

Hewlett-Packard got its start in the Great Depression. Walt Disney studios was born in a recession a few years earlier, and managed to come out of the Depression in reasonably good shape. Procter & Gamble was buffeted in the early years of the recession, but through heavy advertising -- and the realization people still needed soap -- picked up steam. Microsoft Corporation started in the recession of the mid-1970s.

Indeed, many firms are founded in recessions, and grow because they are an idea whose time has come. So don't be pessimistic. But do be on guard.

There is probably a reason you haven't been hurt too much. Perhaps it's geography -- Kingston, where many of our readers operate, tends to be protected somewhat by its large component of public sector jobs, and this time, so far, there haven't been significant layoffs. Perhaps it's the nature of your clients: They aren't struggling. Or perhaps it's the nature of your product or service: You are selling a necessity that isn't easy to cut back.

Of course, if this recession is prolonged and deepens further, even wealthy people may forego necessities. But for now, if you haven't been hit badly, count your lucky stars -- and understand why so far you have been OK, so you will have a better notion of what might be ahead. Then do the same thing you would do if you were hit badly. Watch your costs and cash flow, without being foolish and antagonizing employees or customers. Stay close to your customers. Look how to improve your marketing, by targeting better and spending more wisely (but not necessarily any less, as Procter & Gamble knew). Even better, revisit your value proposition, and see how you can become even more relevant in these times.

You may also want to think about those struggling, and how you can help them, by speeding up orders or easing credit terms. They'll be thankful, and probably remember you in future.

Advancing a worthy public project sometimes involves the problem of getting dragged through messy, time-consuming debates with a handful of obstructionists advancing personal agendas. Some organizations will try to keep a low profile and tiptoe around issues to avoid attack; unfortunately, they often end up looking sneaky. Other project leaders will belittle the outraged curmudgeons or tackle them head on by deriding their credibility, but that risks looking like a bully. Neither approach appeals to most strategists.

At 8020Info, we've been chewing on ideas in Clive Thompson's recent Wired magazine article, The Taming of the Trolls. He notes that moderators of online discussions have developed a number of successful tools for taming those "raging, insult-hurling trolls" who make a lifestyle of disrupting public conversations with self-indulgent rants.

One online technique involves the use of "selective invisibility" -- software ensures that no one can see the nasty comment in the discussion thread other than the person who posted it. Without a reaction, the troll goes away. (The same type of thing happens when a Letter to the Editor has a low-key headline and no one but the author notices it.)

Slashdot uses a form of crowd-voting: Rather than censoring conversations itself, this tech site empowers random groups of readers to rate comments, typically with the result that troll rants get lower scores and are therefore presented to readers less prominently. This seems equivalent to a strategy of getting lots of reasonable people to attend and speak up a public meeting. The town-hall trolls then look ridiculous by comparison or get buried by a vigorous discussion pitched at a higher level.

See: http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/17-04/st_thompson

8020Info helps teams develop, communicate and implement more effective strategies. We would be pleased to discuss your needs and welcome enquiries at (613) 542-8020, or by email at watercooler@8020info.com.

"The conventional definition of management is getting work done through people, but real management is developing people through work."

   -- Agha Hasan Abedi