Conversing and MAP Action 2 (management by walking around)
by Miki SaxonIn order to get the most out of management by walking around, you must sort the wheat from the chaff. The questions and comments you hear will come from a diverse workforce, so you must make allowances for the differences in education, experience, philosophy, etc., between yourself and your people. You manage people who
- may not fit your definition of “people like me;”
- are different from your friends and neighbors;
- were raised in a different culture; or
- hold vastly different views of corporations and/or society.
These differences, however, do not diminish the value of their question or information, and you’ll do yourself irreparable harm if you react with scorn or boredom. Even if the employee has a highly distorted or meaningless question on some trivial management matter, you must listen with apparent concern or he will shut down the process and you will miss something very important later on.
If management has followed the policy of complete truthfulness toward employees, then the actual answer to most questions is straightforward; if it hasn’t, you may find yourself being forced to prevaricate and even rethinking your desire to be in the company! You may have to clarify or explain what an employee heard second, third, or fourth-hand in order to correct the perspective, but you should be able to answer almost all questions without reservation, even if they seem absurd to you.
When responding, don’t roll your virtual eyes or give curt answers that appear dismissive or demeaning, and whatever style you use, be consistent. One approach, used successfully by several of quasi Spock-like managers I know, is to use a slightly professorial air, without being patronizing, and teach your people a little about management and business as you go. This approach, or variations of it, pay off handsomely over time because your people will take more ownership when they understand why something is done and they’ll brag about what they learn—which makes recruiting easier, too.
Tomorrow, in the final (for now) installment on management by walking around, you’ll learn what to do about the negatives you’re bound to hear when you’re walking.
