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ebonyutley 's review for:
The New One Minute Manager
by Kenneth H. Blanchard, Spencer Johnson
[SPOILER ALERT]
The New One Minute Manager came highly recommended to me. I added it to this list and a student graciously gifted it. (Note to self: invite all students to my Goodreads). I read it quickly and thought, I’m one of those results managers. How do I shift the balance to results and people mid-stream? Then my programmer messaged about a show-stopping bug that he found after an upgrade. He said he stopped his current milestone to fix it, and we were back on track. I tried the one-minute praise. I told him how panicked I felt about the show stopping bug and praised him for finding and fixing it expeditiously. Then he responded with a list of his goals for the week. And I decided this book is magic.
It starts by outlining the importance of one minute goals with deadlines that team members should ultimately be able to make themselves once their responsibilities are clear. The fact that my programmer did this without my having to ask after (I confess) a rare bit of praise from me is the buy-in the book suggests that team members need. And by team, I mean managers and employees without the hierarchy. The book also talks about team members solving problems independently which makes me feel like I’m not such a bad manager after all. The final third of the book—post the one minute goals and praise is the redirect where you describe mistakes, express your feelings about them, and praise the person as separate from the problem they contributed to. The feeling part is hard for me. I’m a business is business type, but I learned today that expressing my feelings about our work humanizes me and humanizes the work. We’re not machines after all. We’re humans pursuing goals via problem-solving which means concern and praise are always legitimate parts of our people and results driven conversations.
The New One Minute Manager came highly recommended to me. I added it to this list and a student graciously gifted it. (Note to self: invite all students to my Goodreads). I read it quickly and thought, I’m one of those results managers. How do I shift the balance to results and people mid-stream? Then my programmer messaged about a show-stopping bug that he found after an upgrade. He said he stopped his current milestone to fix it, and we were back on track. I tried the one-minute praise. I told him how panicked I felt about the show stopping bug and praised him for finding and fixing it expeditiously. Then he responded with a list of his goals for the week. And I decided this book is magic.
It starts by outlining the importance of one minute goals with deadlines that team members should ultimately be able to make themselves once their responsibilities are clear. The fact that my programmer did this without my having to ask after (I confess) a rare bit of praise from me is the buy-in the book suggests that team members need. And by team, I mean managers and employees without the hierarchy. The book also talks about team members solving problems independently which makes me feel like I’m not such a bad manager after all. The final third of the book—post the one minute goals and praise is the redirect where you describe mistakes, express your feelings about them, and praise the person as separate from the problem they contributed to. The feeling part is hard for me. I’m a business is business type, but I learned today that expressing my feelings about our work humanizes me and humanizes the work. We’re not machines after all. We’re humans pursuing goals via problem-solving which means concern and praise are always legitimate parts of our people and results driven conversations.