The Mindful Manager

I have never really wanted to manage, however due to my disabilities making me less active in my chosen career which I loved (financial remuneration has never been an important factor, I was and have always worked for passion) I felt an opportunity had arisen. I could potentially see if I had the skills necessary to teach some of my principles that I have developed through life. These skills have developed not through teaching but by having a dyslexic mind, which I did not even know about until my thirties. I also do extensive reading to try and improve. The dyslexic mind for some reason or in my case cannot seem to understand that things cannot be done. It seems to always think there must be a way.

Over the years, I have led a number of large and small exercises in high pressure environments, involving a number of different organisations. I have often been told that things were not possible to do. This next step felt like a natural progression, and was primary led out of necessity due to disabilities rather than a want.

I am not a natural manager, hold on let me change that, I do not like being a typical manager. I have ideas and principles that I see as important and want to imbed. Any theory that did not work in practise is put out the door. I wanted to shift away from traditional methodologies based on theory or that is the way we do/did things/have always done things.

Luckily it was a new service responsible for dealing with consumer rights matters across the East Midlands involving 30FTE and three team leaders and later on a manager, I was initially taken on as a Senior Team Leader. Being a new service, I ave been involved since the start. I even tested some of the earlier IT systems and telephony products and advised on their developments. I was also involved in recruiting most of the staff. 

In my opinion, interviews have then and still now in my present position (managing my own care through a team of seven people) involved more than just the answering of tasks and abilities to do a job. Knowledge can be taught. Working in a team, being responsible, having a good attitude and personality are more difficult to imbue. I have always felt that it is not what you do but how you imbue the job with passion and enthusiasm that is more important.  

Personal ethics mean that I do not see the difference between a doctor and a refuse collector. They both stop illness. What I do see is how much the person wants to do his best at the job, as a service to mankind, not as a means of paying bills or seeking just personal pleasures, instead of working belonging, and participating in the human race. Life is too short  for that, you spend three quarters of your life at work, why waste that time doing something you are not enjoying.  

Questions through the interview and scenarios used even today are all about how a person feels and their core beliefs and more importantly why these are important. As an example, rather than a list of things they had to put in order which were tasks. I would ask for examples of incidents which involved feelings and how these were dealt with. I can give you the knowledge and how, but you have to give me the why you should?

Too often I have sat in interviews where employees are asked to do tasks, like a presentation on a subject, when the job will never ever involve a presentation. Also interviews are never original. Anyone can Google interview questions that will be asked and what the answers should be. I have even turned down jobs based on bad interviews. An interview should not be about whether the person can do a job, but I have always felt it should be about how that person feels, what attributes they can add to the team, and how you can help each other mutually develop and grow. I even developed a training course for future team leaders in the job, based on the actual job. 

The hardest part of the training was having to tell me with empathy and understanding where I had gone wrong on a really bad customer service practice scenario, which was prerecorded on a call and they had to listen to. This also involved making a plan for me to improve my KPIs by 10%. One of the most difficult part of anyone's job, yet hardly practised. 

Once the team was recruited, the job began. I often disagreed with my seniors, this was not because I was obstructive (yet I was seen as such) but often as I wanted to try different approaches to things that have been done the same way for years. Systems and processes used without ever seeing any actual benefits or improvements.

I took time to read as much as I could from professionals in the job, especially the successful ones. How did they get things done? One of the best series of books I read and learnt the basics from was the One Minute Manager series, short sharp, easy to understand and put into practise. These were and still to this day are on my bookshelves, which grow with new ideas and methodologies. At least an hour a day after breakfast is used to read and look through journals and articles on methodologies and improvement. To date the best ones that resonate with me are always those that have a humane element to them. These are people we are working with, not commodities. The more you put into them the more they will give back. It was the same with areas of work. If I did not know something I would reach out to fellow managers and learn from them. 

My first rule was never to expect anyone to do something I could not do myself. 

Though the management job involved running a team of civil law call handlers and ensuring KPIs were met, I did not feel that I could ask the team to sit and answer calls and meet the targets if I could not. Even though I had the knowledge and practised dealing with such calls for many years, I still did the same course with the team, sitting and passing the exams with them. Scary night before the results came in, what if I failed?

Though I had reports and other things to do, I pitched in, when I could particularly when it was busy, role your sleeves up and help out. I did early and late shifts, letting the last person go just before closing knowing it was quiet and picked up the last calls myself. The target for each call handler was thirty calls, these ranged from short easy to answer scenarios to others that may take up to forty minutes. Very few people hit the target. I tried to hit the target a number of times, only achieving it once, and I was exhausted. There was no way I was going to expect the team to keep or manage at this level, and I made it known at HQ it was impossible, and laid the challenge to any of the other managers around the country to see if they could hit that target day in day out. No-one took me up on the challenge.

When it was really busy, people would not have time for their full lunch, many of them working through at times like this, team pizzas were ordered and shared . The team were making me look good, the least I could do was make sure they were okay. I also made regular coffee runs. Being a coffee snob I had a percolator on my desk, most mornings I would go around asking people if they wanted a cup. This way I stayed in touch with all of them and knew a little bit about their lives. Every occasion, if possible, was celebrated; including as many activities as we could.

As time went on, I filled gaps in my team with appropriate people to fill specific roles. I had three team leaders each with a team, each one was brilliant yet they were all different. I chose them in that way, one had the legal knowledge background and so could support people with queries, another was an excellent administrator and the last person had people skills that seemed magical (I still to this day do not know how she managed it). Each one had the opportunity to step in and represent the team at senior managers meetings in London. Each one was used particularly to back and develop each other using the natural abilities and skills they had. 

If someone on the team had IT skills we would use these in the team to deal with minor problems, everyone did their bit. When the service was in full swing, I even employed an ex-retired advisor who the team could turn to with difficult legal problems. He was loved by all and became the work place uncle.

There was some key areas where I would disagree with senior management. These usually related to what seemed to be non-social practises or policies or those that demanded people to respect decisions when they made no sense. 

One of these was the regular 121 which was required. They were no more than paper exercises. I did not like to do them but the process was there. My Manager often confronted me on why I did not do them. The reason being, everyday I would go in and speak to people, how there day was, what was happening in their lives, anything they needed me to do. Pot of coffee in hand filling others peoples mugs, I knew more about the people I worked with this way than any one to one could. When a bad call happened or a good one. I dealt with the situation immediately. People were praised or a gentle warm push was given  to try harder, or work out methodologies that would help. As a manager, this was one of the most important things you can do. Just spend time with the team and listen to what is going on. If your are in a separate office with a door, you are too far removed from what is going on. 

A major hate of mine, meetings! Managers love meetings often to sit and look at facts and figures and preen themselves of how good they were. To me most meetings feel like a waste of time. They did not seem to have a purpose, and did not seem to achieve anything. If you are gonna meet, people should know what it is about and make quick decisions. This is after all a mangers job to make things happen, manage the service to keep it going. Make decisions quickly and ensure they are done.  We do not need to spend an afternoon discussing it, just tell me what needs doing and then let me get on with it. If you are talking to people most of the time, you will know what needs doing and can tell people as you go. 

I did not exactly manage the team, if I had chosen right people, they should be able do the job. I felt more that I was there to support and help them grow as people, as long as the job got done. One of the areas I was critiqued on was why I asked people to leave often. This was not because they could not do the job, it was because I wanted them to develop and flourish. Many had so many skills, it was fine to do the job for two or three years, after that I wanted to see them move on and progress. Happy to say many of them did just that.