Posted on February 17, 2011
The Harvard Business Review has many great articles and the one titled, “Measuring Yourself on Three Imperatives” is no exception. The article poses great questions to ask yourself so that you can assess how you manage yourself, your network, and your team. The questions which are all great to ask ourselves are as follows:
Manage Yourself
1) Do you use your formal authority effectively?
2) Do you create thoughtful but not overly personal relationships?
3) Do others trust you as a manager?
4) Do you exercise your influence ethically?
Manage Your Network
5) Do you systematically identify those who should be in your network?
6) Do you proactively build and maintain your network?
7) Do you use your network to provide the protection and resources your team needs?
8) Do you use your network to accomplish your team’s goals?
Manage Your Team
9) Do you define and constantly refine your team’s vision for the future?
10) Do you clarify roles, work rules, team culture, and feedback about performance for your team?
11) Do you know and manage your people
Now that we have all asked ourselves these questions is there anything we can do right now to better ourselves? The Harvard Business Review says that by choosing to 1) prep 2) do and 3) review we can all improve! Prepare how you will handle a situation or event that is going on during the day, planning for various struggles along the way. Secondly, do as you planned and try and help others with their activities when needed etc. Thirdly, reviewing how you acted when it counted is important to seeing if you followed through with your plan and what worked or did not. “Compare what you did with you might have done if you were the manager you aspire to be. Where did you disappoint yourself, and how did that happened? Did you practice any new behaviors or otherwise make progress on your journey?” The article also suggests keeping notes about your progress which can be done as a weekly review at the end of every work week. We can all improve at things in everyday life and with coworkers as well as with our community. How can we all better improve ourselves? What do you want to work on? Chesed? Donating to charities? Being a better leader? We can all get to where we want to be as long as we keep on top of ourselves and make sure we are on the right track on a regular basis. May we all have the guidance we need on our own particular journeys forward.
