Authoritarian managers? Sure, they get things done. They get results.

But as they grind away for results from a position of power, there's a dirty little secret. At some point, the talent that works for them is going to walk away. For a better, or even lateral, job. For hope that there's something better out there.

The managers who get the best results over time aren't authoritarian. They look and feel like career agents for the people who work for them. They approach everything related to performance from the lens of the employee's career.  Like this:

"I'm not here to just grind on you to get results. I'm here to make you better, so you're going to have fun, make more $$ over time and accomplish your career goals while we get results for the company."

"I'm willing to do that even if it means you promote yourself by taking a better job with another company because we made you better."

Think about that last statement for a second. Powerful. Only a handful of managers out of 100 make their employees feel that way.  And they're the ones employees are most loyal to - no coincidence, my friends.

It's called the manager as a career agent.  Do you buy it? 

If you want to buy the concept but really don't know how to guide your managers to become career agents for their employees, send them to the webinar I'm doing with Halogen software entitled “Get My Agent On The Phone: How Smart Managers Position Themselves as Career Agents Via Performance Management” (click to register).  Join us next Tuesday, May 21st at 1pm EST, and we’ll hit you with the following ways you can help your managers become career agents for employees:

• By making sure the goals they set represent the Five Most Important Things (5MIT) for the employee in question. Smart managers skip discussing the busy work and get to what’s going to change the game – for the company and the employee. We’ll give you the 411 on how to do that as an agent for your employees.
• Offering up ways each of the Five Most Important Things might be measured in the months that follow. You want measurements – we get it. We’ll show you how to set the expectation your direct reports are going to be measured on, without actually taking performance or development off the table. PS – They’ll love you for this if you deliver it in the right way.  Think “employee portfolio”…
• Having Thoughts on what “Good” and “Great” performance looks like in each area. That’s right – we’re going through a goal setting process not because HR told us we had to, but because it can set us up to be a great performance coach for the rest of the year, and help us get the employee where they want to go with their career.
• Including a section that details “What’s In It for Me?” for each area of focus. Being an agent is about talking about how chasing great performance in the area in question could be great for the employee’s career. We’ll show you how to frame this as the agent/coach. It’s the most important thing you can do.
• Putting it all in an easy to follow, informal format. If you go beyond one page, you’re making goal setting too complex. List everything we’ve described to this point in one page, and make the headers conversational in nature, and you win. We’ve even got some formats we'll share with you.
• Having a plan that screams "career agent" when you coach on a daily basis and maybe even start having 1-on-1s on a regular basis that you don't dominate, you authoritarian #$#$!

You can be viewed as a career agent for your employees rather than a run of the mill corporate bureaucrat. Join us for “Get My Agent on the Phone“ and we’ll show how the secret sauce to goal setting and follow-up conversations can dramatically change the positioning of what you do in performance management.

See you next Tuesday!

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER!