Managing and Dealing with People

Admin Posts : 193 Join date : 2011-01-09

Managing and Dealing with People
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. Get people to cooperate with you... but also learn from
the reluctant ones and if justified, accommodate them
Effective management makes use of all skills that can be
learned at an MBA program. Still, the skill of managing
people is the most important one. Obviously this is because to
be effective, a manager needs the cooperation of other people.
It is relatively easy to obtain cooperation from some
people. But sometimes this is not the case, and it can create
serious problems if the reluctant person has very valuable
skills.
Nora K. is in charge of an Information Systems (IS)
department which develops complex computerized projects.
One of her subordinates, Peter P., has key technical
knowledge but is reluctant to fully cooperate. He frequently
disagrees with Nora on technical matters.
What to do? Threatened disciplinary action, or any
other kind of pressure would probably make matters worse.
When confronted with this situation, Nora did what a
good manager does in such cases. She tried to learn as much
as she could from Peter, and gave in to some of Peter's
requests, which were not that unreasonable after all, as Nora
realized after better understanding his reasons.
Make a solid diagnosis before acting...
And first of all, do no harm
A good medical doctor would never write a prescription or
perform a procedure without first making a careful diagnosis.
Good doctors also have a basic rule: first of all, never do harm.

Many managers ignore these principles. At Nora's
company, the Personnel manager noticed that some computer
programmers frequently arrived a few minutes late. Without
consulting with Nora, he sent them a memo "chewing them
out" for their alleged lack of discipline.
What the Personnel manager did not know or did not
take into consideration was that these people were working
late hours without being paid overtime. They obviously took
offense, and two of them resigned. Good IS technical people
are in strong demand, another fact the Personnel manager did
not consider. As a result of his blunder, one of Nora's key
projects was delayed for several weeks.

The two elements of a good diagnosis are personality and
situation analysis. In the western culture, there is a tendency
to concentrate on the first of those elements.
Nora is a good manager, but one time she made this
type of mistake. A systems engineer, Robin, was transferred
to her department from another unit of the company. Robin
was not performing according to Nora's expectations.
Nora spoke to her boss and demanded that Robin be
fired or transferred, claiming that he was "lazy", "not very
intelligent", and that his work was not good enough.
Nora's boss read Robin's personal file and saw that his
previous bosses had been very satisfied with his performance.
He then told Nora to find out whether Robin's poor
performance was due to his personality, or to the situation
Robin was in.

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Managing and Dealing with People Uuou_u10

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