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September 2015
The Seven Essentials of People Management – Part Two

Dear <<First Name>>,

In the last issue of Pep Talk, we looked at the first three of my seven essentials of People Management – the issues you need to consider when you’re developing a People Management strategy.
 
Now we’ll consider the remaining four elements that will help you to use People Management to effectively maximise the opportunity you have to develop your organisation through the people you employ. If you missed Part One or you’d like to review it, you can read it here.
 
Please feel free to send this newsletter to anyone you know who wants to get more from their people and their organisation.                         
 
Best wishes,
 
Michelle Prescott

The Seven Essentials of People Management – The Next Four


A proactive People Management strategy acknowledges that people are individuals and that a ‘one size fits all’ approach is not the most effective way to get the best out of everyone in your team. It also acknowledges that there is no magic formula or quick fix when dealing with people.
When you’re developing your people strategy, you need to consider seven essentials that I have identified. Here are the remaining essentials:
 
4.  People have lives outside of work
 
You and your team have lives outside work that at some point will impact upon it.
 
We often talk about finding a ‘work life balance’. This creates the image that we have two buckets, one marked work and one marked life, balanced at each end of a see-saw. The impression is that we can divide what we do between the two buckets to keep the see-saw balanced.  In reality we can’t split ourselves in two; we only have one bucket. There may be a point in our lives when turmoil leads to that bucket being close to or actually falling over.
 
The challenge in a difficult situation is to be supportive to one person, whilst managing the impact of their issues on the other people in the team who you are also responsible for supporting.
 
5.  Prepare to be unpopular
 
You can’t please all of the people all of the time. As a manager you can try, by aspiring to be a good boss who avoids the mistakes you have seen others make. Even so, you can’t always accurately predict how others will react to your decisions and judge your performance as a boss.
 
An inevitable aspect of People Management is that at some point you are likely to have to tackle unacceptable performance or behaviour, or tell someone in your team something they don’t want to hear. Whilst it is a small proportion of what you may need to do, it can have a significant emotional and long-term impact.
 
When dealing with a difficult issue, taking an objective, ethical, open, fair and compassionate approach to a problem will help to ensure it is handled as justly, practically and sensitively as possible.
 
6.  We want to be like…
 
I have had many meetings with clients who have read about a process or approach to People Management and want to do the same thing in their team. ‘Beware the case study’ and doing something because someone else is doing it, or wanting to do it in exactly the same way as they are.
 
You may read about an organisation that is similar to yours in respect of market and employee numbers.  However, your organisation will be different if only because you employ different people and you are a different type of manager.
 
Case studies don’t give you the perfect answer for your situation, but they can give you ideas and pointers to the best approach for your People Management.
 
7.  It’s the people, stupid…
 
Despite the fact that this is the final point, it is probably the most important. If you work in any size business, where there are people, you have to put your people first.
 
I’ve covered this essential element in more detail in a previous issue of this newsletter. Rather than trying to cram it all into this issue, take a look at the full article here.
 
 

Recommended Reading

If you’d like to read more about People Management and how it can help your business, while you’re waiting for my book to be printed, here are some others you can look at:
 
Organization Development & Change by Thomas G Cummings and Christopher G Worley
 
Organization Development – A Practitioner’s Guide for OD and HR by Mee-Yan Cheung-Judge and Linda Holbeche
 
A Handbook of Human Resource Management – Michael Armstrong
 


www.PersonaPM.co.uk
Michelle.Prescott@PersonaPM.co.uk

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