Today we are going to briefly review three of the five key things you can do to further your development as a manager, wherever in your career you may currently be. These are the more or less passive activities on the list – but they are nevertheless essential. In order to activate them, you must remember to engage in them reflectively. Here they are:
Study. This can range from formal academic programs, such as an MBA, to informal presentations like workshops, seminars, or conferences. Much of this kind of teaching is provided by an employer either on or off site. Many companies will also underwrite part of all of an outside formal program.
These can be helpful for you in all three of the areas discussed yesterday. Just bear in mind that however accessible, or even inexpensive due to company-provided tuition support, they suffer two handicaps: 1) they consume a large amount of your time and can be inflexible for scheduling, and 2) they teach, but they don’t train.
Organizational programs. Many companies provide their own professionally-designed and specially-tailored management development programs. These are a very good choice where available, as they are less academic, and more directed at producing results in the workplace. However, they are still largely a teaching, rather than a training, device.
Of special interest is mentoring programs, which pair young managers with senior executives who provide both advice in specific situations and general career guidance. You can learn a great deal from the “others’ experience” category, including how to assess the products of the other two (again, please see yesterday’s article for these references).
Maintain your personal boundaries in such relationships; you want to be more of a student of your mentor than an acolyte. As in other management development methods, be open-minded and objective, and then compare what you learn with your own thinking and experience.
Reading. There are four key things to bear in mind regarding your reading program:
- Read constantly. You should always be reading something, and have something lined up to read next.
- Don’t be overawed by an author’s credentials or a book’s sales ranking. The truth is that a vast amount of business and management writing is awful. As in everything else, it is up to you not only to find the wheat among all the chaff, but to learn to recognize both for what they are.
- Read business and management books anyway. Your bosses are reading them. Your mentors and other sources of information are reading them.
- Read outside of your field. This is important. Absolutely do not restrict your reading to business and management. Read everything: history, science, biography, travel, fiction. You will find you learn more about management from this aspect of your reading than from the business and management books on your list. But read from both broad categories.
If you do these things alone, you likely will be well along the path toward building a brilliant and rewarding career. In particular, though, if you do all of these things as actively as possible – putting yourself into the situations presented, or mentally picturing them unfolding in your workplace – you will gain the most from them.
These are essentially passive activities, but don’t be passive about them. Be reflective, and make them your own. Tomorrow, we will complete the adaptation of this piece here with a look at the two main ways you can do that. See you then!
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Today’s tip: Speaking of observing, reflecting, and making applicable connections, please see this interesting piece from Physorg.com on the question of whether bullying or sexual harassment is the more harmful influence in the workplace; you’ll find the answer and analysis intriguing. (You may also want to see here and here for more about bullying.)
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Just a quick post signing on to the value of reading. Among the supervisors and managers I’ve coached, the tendency to read is a strong indicator for success at managing people. Some of them weren’t big “early” readers in school, but developed the habit as they made their way through their careers.
Curiosity is the obvious quality, of course. Wanting to know about what’s going on in their field, business in general, and the world reflects well in so many ways.
The more subtle quality is humility. I find that people who are interested in what other voices have to say are not afraid to find out that he or she might be barking up the wrong tree. Employees and colleagues notice, and are more relaxed around someone who doesn’t always need to be agreed with, and who’d rather get it right.
What a great and helpful post and series, Jim. Let me make some suggestions on reading.
Read to broaden your perspective. If you’re an American you need to read something from outside the US. The US market and the US impact on management thought is so big, that it’s easy to be parochial and read only American stuff. For the world from today on, you need to read what people from elsewhere have to say. I recommend the Economist or some of the BBC Business material.
Help to separate wheat from chaff (great phrase, Jim) in business books, by reading book reviews. Top publications all publish such reviews. Many bloggers do so as well. A good review may be all you need to know about a book’s content. A good review can help you decide which of thousands of books is your best investment of time.
Be careful when reading Amazon reviews. Many of the reviewers have an agenda of their own. Authors often get friends and colleagues to review their books, so it pays to discount any five star review from an early reviewer who has never reviewed another book on Amazon.
Some reviewers are paid by authors and publicity firms. Be skeptical of any reviewer who only gives five star ratings. Note that those reviewers can be helpful in describing the content of the book, even if they’re going to trumpet its value.
Finally, consider listening to business books. Audible.com has a great selection of current business books that you can download to your iPod or other mp3 player. This is good for getting the gist of a book where you don’t need to take detailed notes. Abridged versions of audio books can also give you an idea of whether you want to buy the physical book.
Hello Shaun,
You offer a really insightful observation! The tendency to read widely may be a sign of curiosity and, especially, of humility – that’s very good. Perhaps there is a corollary that those who simply aren’t inclined to read (or things analogous to that) don’t possess and are unlikely to develop those qualities. Although I suppose that exposure to reading may encourage their growth, if they are there latently; curiosity leading to reading which may lead to humility leading to greater curiosity . . .
Reading of this sort is something that can be observed and even screened for, also. It’s worth looking at for potential value as a predictor. This is an excellent angle for considering the issue – thanks!
And thanks for your visit and your work, as well!
Hello Wally,
Your advice to read out of your national culture is excellent. Because of the prevalence of American writing in business and management, many non-Americans are exposed to it – but Americans should definitely take the trouble to seek out non-American sources for the terrific insight they can provide – new contexts, new solutions, even more powerful frameworks for comprehending under-appreciated methods and ideas. I agree, that’s very important.
Since I live overseas, the Economist has become one of my main sources for scouting out reading ideas, with the great benefit that it points to numbers of non-US authors. The idea of reading online reviews is excellent (may I suggest those periodically offered at Three Star Leadership, also a principal source of mine?).
Major search engines will point to such sources if you just include “review” and your topic of interest in the search keywords. I also want to heartily endorse your caution about many of these reviews’ hidden agendas with respect to their recommendations, but as you say they can still be valuable regarding content.
One thing I found helpful when I lived in the States was to subscribe to a business book summary service. These periodically send 8-page condensations of the main themes of currently popular business books. They can be an excellent way to choose what to buy, and to learn all you need to know about what you decide isn’t worth buying. Soundview Executive Book Summaries (www.summary.com) is probably the best known of these, and the one I subscribed to for years.
Audio books are a wonderful approach, and I know a lot of people who use them. Let me suggest also ebooks. I use various ebook readers on my pocket computer – although principally mobipocket and MS reader – and do almost all of my reading on it. This enables me to read almost any time I have an otherwise and unpredictable hour or few minutes available no matter when that happens or where I am, and it also allows me to highlight and make notes in the text. Plus, I can listen to music at the same time, or even do an internet search prompted by the reading if a WiFi connection is nearby.
Books purchased this way can also be read on a laptop or desktop, of course, and they are usually less expensive than printed books. Of course, your reading material in this case also takes up no additional weight or space. Amazon.com’s Kindle is another option.
Thanks for some great advice, Wally!