The Effective Manager. Horstman Mark

you. That means being willing to adjust depending on the person you're managing (just like you want your boss to do with you).

      At this point, if you're like a good percentage of the hundreds of thousands of managers we've trained over the years, you're probably thinking one of two things:

      1. I think I know my people very well, actually.

      2. No need – I talk to my people all the time!

      Let's take each of these ideas in turn. First, “I know my people very well.” Perhaps you do, but the vast majority of managers who claim to really don't. I'd guess you think you do, but I would bet that you don't.

      Here's a thought experiment to judge your own knowledge of your team members. First, what's more important to you: your family or your work? For most of you, the answer is family, and rightfully so.

      Now, ask yourself the same question about your directs. What's more important to them: their family or their work? Without much thought, you realize that the answer is family first for them as well. And you'd be right – we've asked.

      So, for your directs, their family is more important than work. You say that you know your directs very well. Here's a test of that knowledge.

What Are the First Names of All of the Children of the People Who Report Directly to You?

      If you're like roughly 95 percent of the managers we ask this question, you don't know all of their names. A fair portion – maybe 40 percent – don't even know how many children all of their directs have! We call this, by the way, The Direct Relationship Acid Test. [There's a Cast for That™.]

      This isn't a conclusive exercise, of course. But most people agree it's a reasonable indicator – a fair proxy. Think about it from the perspective of your personal life: your close friends all know the names of all of your children. That's part of what makes them close friends. Your friends who are not as close know some of your children. And your acquaintances probably don't know whether you have children or not.

      If you failed the test, consider this: what makes you think you can get the last full measure of devotion to work out of someone when you don't know the names of the people who are the most precious to them in the world? In our experience, you probably can't. If you're smart and you work hard, you can do okay, but you're missing the biggest leverage of all: a trusting relationship with those whom you manage.

      If you're responding to this discussion by thinking, “I'm not sure I like all the familiarity. I don't want to be friends with my directs,” then you're not alone. A lot of managers do a lot of their work with their team by e-mail, or they see themselves as leaders rather than managers, or they say to themselves, “I didn't need to be ‘managed,’ and I don't want to have to manage my team; they should know what to do.” We'll have more to say on this, but for now, our first recommendation is this: spending 30 minutes a week with each of your directs isn't likely to result in your becoming “friends” with them.

      Now let's look at the second item mentioned earlier: “No need – I talk to my people all the time!” Many managers say this to us when we recommend that they spend focused, scheduled time getting to know their directs. They're constantly in communication with their directs through e-mail, texts, and plenty of face-to-face conversations. In fact, they feel like they talk to their directs so much that they hardly have time for their own work.

      Most managers, however, have no idea how one-sided their conversations are with their team members. They have no idea how little influence those brief conversations actually have on building relationships.

      Consider this: if you're like a lot of managers, you sit close to some or all of your team members. If this is true, it's very likely that you've been at your desk, in your office (or cubicle, or space) on a given day, and you've needed to communicate with a member of your team. You thought about sending an e-mail but then realized the team member was at her desk, so you thought you'd walk over and ask her about whatever it was you needed. You thought it would be good to chat, as well, and see how she was doing.

      You walked over and asked, “Got a second?” and what did your direct almost definitely answer? “Sure!”

      Well, your direct didn't answer that way because she thinks you're awesome. She answered that way because you're her boss. She knows you're probably not there just to chat. You're there because you want something. That's not a premise of a conversation that leads to a trusting relationship. It's very likely that whatever chit-chat you engage in with her – “How was your weekend?” “How's your spouse?” “What's the latest with the kids?” – is heard by them, to some extent, as blah-blah-blah-I'm-going-to-get-to-the-real-reason-I'm-here-in-just-a-minute-blah-blah-blah.

      I'm not saying that you don't care about your direct's weekend, or their spouse, or their children. I know you do, but they have a different perception of your caring about them than you think they have if you generally only ask those questions before you're going to ask them for something.

      Further, you don't realize the extent to which your chit-chat with them is driven by you, by your agenda, and by what you want. It's unlikely that many of your directs, when you stop by to see them, will automatically feel comfortable talking to you about anything at all.

      Let me share a realization I've come to over the years after working with hundreds of thousands of managers. Your directs don't see you as a nice person. I'm not saying you're not a nice person – I believe you are, and your directs probably believe so, too. But that's not how your directs see you. They see you as their boss. It's a hard truth, but one worth remembering. Because of the power of your role, your directs don't see you the way you see yourself.

      One way to think about this disparity in perception is to imagine that, for the vast majority of us managers, we have a sign on our forehead. It's visible to all of our directs, and it says, Watch out. I'm your boss. I could fire you. When you control others' addiction to food, clothing, and shelter, they're going to see you through a different lens than you see yourself.

      If you doubt this, if you think that you're different – that you're loved and not feared at all by your team – think of it this way: do you tell your boss everything? Of course you don't.

      And neither do your directs tell you everything – because you're their boss. Even if you're the nicest person you see in the mirror every morning, even if they would admit you're a really nice guy, to them, you're still the boss, and the power of your role distorts the relationship.

      I used to show groups of managers whom our firm was training a videotape of managers interacting with their directs. It was only one minute long, comprising six 10-second video clips of two people meeting in a standard corporate hallway. The video clips were selected because they all showed a manager and a subordinate of the manager. It was a security camera video, with no sound, in black and white. The managers watching didn't know the people in the video clips, and the people in the video clips were dressed in standard corporate casual attire.