Manager or Supervisor?

Give some thought to this:

• Do you ever suggest-but-not-really-because-it's-more-like-you-insist that one of your direct reports hire someone?
• Do you ever tell them that you don't want them to hire someone?

If you have ever done either of these, no matter what your direct report's title is, you have turned them into a supervisor.

A supervisor supervises daily work that is defined by someone else. A manager decides what the work is. They also have the power to hire and fire. Take that away, and they're not a manager any more. And the moment their direct reports know that - whether you want to or not - you take on being that team's manager, because they won't bother to go to the supervisor for anything any more. Why should they? You've taken all of that former manager's power away.

If you don't trust a manager to hire or fire people, you have the wrong manager. Fire them. If you don't trust anyone else to hire and fire, you've created a hierarchy with just 2 levels: you, and everyone else. There are some profound ramifications to that:

• Your managers won't own the success or failure of their team members. Why should they? They didn't even get to decide who those team members are.
• Your managers' direct reports will come to you whenever they get a 'no' from their manager. Congratulations! Mom said no, so now they go to dad. You've turned your organization into a dysfunctional family, just like you always dreamed about.
• Turnover: If your managers' direct reports aren't owned by their manager, they won't get what they need. People who don't get what they need leave. And guess what? Managers who find out that they're not really managers leave, too, to go work for organizations where they can be managers. Which is most of them.

The solution: Let go! You hired managers to do what you are either bad at or don't have the bandwidth to do. Let them be managers, for Pete's sake. And if they fail, give them some encouragement and talk it through with them. If they don't improve, replace them. If they do, congratulations - you have an hierarchy that works.

Mirror, Mirror

Today we’re going to talk about the human brain. Our brains are hard-wired to behave certain ways and to recognize and seek out certain patterns, even if we’re not conscious of it. For example, we’re automatically attracted to people who have symmetrical faces, no matter where we’re from or how we were raised. We see pictures in clouds because our brains try and force a pattern onto things that don’t have any.

One of the things that our brains are hard-wired to do is to respond favorably to someone whose accent, pace, and gestures mirror our own. A recent study found that salespeople who observed and mirrored how quickly or slowly their Customers spoke, their accents, and their hand gestures were 5 times as likely to close the sale as salespeople who did not. This is because our brains are hard-wired to trust someone who talks and acts like we do – no matter what their age, sex, or ethnic background is.

Try this when you speak with Customers – and remember that your company's employees are internal Customers. If the person that you’re talking to speaks a little slower than you do, slow down. If they cross their arms when they speak, do the same thing. Have you ever noticed that Hillary Clinton’s accent changes depending upon where she’s speaking? She does that on purpose – and many other politicians and other public figures do, too.

When Customers are tense, such as when something costs more than they were expecting or we have to deliver unhappy news, mirroring helps to ease the tension. It tells the Customer, “We’re just like you. We’re on your side. We’re going to help.”

Sales and Customer service are all about communication – learning to speak all of our Customers’ languages. The better we learn to mirror their pace, accents, and gestures, the more successful we’ll be.