Minor Adjustments

For leaders, it's a perennial problem: Too much to do, too little time. Too many surveys citing poor management practices. Too many workshops aimed at learning the latest management technique, or even worse, helping leaders eliminate their weaknesses.

Often, the best outcome is incremental improvement, not the kind of jump in management effectiveness that agencies need. "If I [as a manager] don't know how to prioritize, if I don't know how to look beyond my nose . . . I end up putting out fires and being reactive. I can't get to the proactive mode of planning ahead," says Jim Trinka, assistant director of training and development at the FBI.

To help managers set priorities, Trinka compiled the results of recent studies on management. His goal: To identify which characteristics separate the best managers from the rest of the pack. His conclusions probably will come as little surprise. It all comes down to employee development, performance management and communication.

The studies Trinka analyzed, including surveys by The Gallup Organization and the Corporate Executive Board's Corporate Leadership Council and Learning and Development Roundtable, found that employees rated managers who developed these skills were more than 50 percent more effective than those who did not.

Those characteristics might seem intuitive to managers, but employees still complain that they aren't seeing enough of them from their leaders. The onus remains on managers to do better. Employees "don't go in every day and say, 'What am I going to do to fail today.' They want to succeed. It's the managers who come in and squander that attitude," Trinka says.

The good news for managers is that Trinka's findings don't necessarily mean a longer to-do list or more late nights at the office. Minor adjustments can yield large dividends. Employees thrive on clearly established expectations and positive feedback. Managers also can build development opportunities into day-to-day business.

"If I was your manager, I could give you a project and just say I wanted this on my desk next Monday morning," says Trinka. "Or I can tell you that I'm giving you this project because it's an area where you are strong and can do a great job, so in the next staff meeting could you do a 10-minute presentation so that the rest of us can learn from it." That ensures that work provides employees with a learning experience and simultaneously motivates them to perform better.

It's easy for managers to stress regular interaction with employees, but it's far more important to emphasize the quality of the interaction. "You just don't walk around [the office] now, you have pointed, particular interactions with employees, especially around employee development, performance expectations and detailed, immediate and positive feedback," Trinka says.

And this bit of advice from Trinka will knock managers' socks off: Managers will increase productivity and win undying loyalty by urging top employees to apply for upcoming promotions and by offering their support, even it means the employee might leave.

Traditional leadership development courses have focused on helping managers correct weaknesses in their leadership styles, says Trinka. Correcting weaknesses allows only for incremental improvement. The best leaders are characterized not by a lack of weaknesses, but by the possession of a few profound strengths, Trinka says. Building on these strengths is as much as eight times more effective than correcting weaknesses.

During 22 years in the Air Force flying fighter jets, more than four years heading up leadership and organization development initiatives at the Internal Revenue Service, and his five-month tenure leading training and development at the FBI, Trinka has seen some top-notch managers. But there are never enough, and he's found that agency efforts to improve the quality of management often are diffused and ineffective. He hopes his study will give managers direction. "It's when you focus your efforts, that you can really achieve breakthrough performance improvement," he says.