In their little book One Minute Manager, Blanchard & Johnson describe three secrets of successful leadership: one minute goals, one minute praising and one minute reprimands. According to the authors, the best managers are the ones who can combine these three topics, all within a view minutes, to coach their team members.
The book itself is very short, which makes this summary even shorter. In this article, all three secrets are described in more detail.
The first secret is about ONE MINUTE GOALS. Every employee should have his or her own predefined written goal statement before a task is delegated. Each of these goals should be less than 250 words, so that it can be read within one minute.
When the goal statement is written and before the task is done, the manager and the employee discuss it to make sure both parties understand what the task is about and what the result should look like.
Every day, each employee should read his goal and reflect whether or not his work of the day is actually helping him achieving this goal.
The second secret is about ONE MINUTE PRAISING. A one minute manager walks around the company to catch people doing good work. Indeed, good work. The idea behind this principle is, that people who feel good will deliver good results.
When the one minute manager catches somebody doing good work, he praises this person, by explaining him what he sees and that impacts his mood or feelings. He then pauses a little bit to let the compliment sink in and gives the person a hand or a pat on the shoulder to congratulate the person with doing such a great job.
The third secret is about ONE MINUTE REPRIMANDS. This means, that when the manager sees somebody making a mistake, the manager will address it directly, just as the positive praising.
The one minute manager sees somebody not acting according to standard, he explains the person what he sees and how that impacts his mood or feelings. He then pauses a little bit to let the feedback sink in, and gives the person a hand or a pat on the shoulder and reminds the person that he is valued in the organization and that this instant was just an exception.
Managing has never been this easy. When you´ve read this book, you will want to be the one minute manager who manages his team by going around his team on a daily basis, shortly addressing what goes well and what is not.
Continue to:
Gung Ho! - K.Blanchard & S.Bowles (summary)
REFERENCE:
Blanchard, K., & Johnson, S., 1981, The One Minute Manager, New York: William Morrow and company Inc. (order this book)
