The Magical Simplicity of the One-Minute Manager

“Feed­back is the break­fast of cham­pi­ons.” — Ken Blan­chard, PhD, One-Minute Manager

Our in-com­pa­ny lead­er­ship devel­op­ment pro­grams, based on the prin­ci­ples in my book, have a num­ber of mod­ules to grow and strength­en teams, and help peo­ple improve their abil­i­ties as man­agers and leaders.

In a recent ses­sion, we shared prin­ci­ples of The One-Minute Man­ag­er, by Ken Blan­chard PhD and Spencer John­son MD. These are some of sim­plest and most pow­er­ful skills that some peo­ple, after many years of prac­tice, still aren’t that great at.

To be a great man­ag­er of peo­ple there are three sim­ple things you need to do:

1. One-minute goal set­ting to make sure your peo­ple have clear goals to focus on
2. One-minute praise when they achieve those goals or make sol­id steps toward them
3. One-minute rep­ri­mands when they fail to deliv­er on the goals and need calibration.

If you are effec­tive, all your peo­ple have clear goals, and receive spe­cif­ic praise when they achieve.

Not ​“Hey, good job!”.

Rather ​“Well done on that report because you found a way to make a com­plex prob­lem very sim­ple, and you kept the reports easy to under­stand and present to the board.”

A rep­ri­mand, when some­one doesn’t deliv­er, includes how the work is not meet­ing expec­ta­tions and what they need to do specif­i­cal­ly to improve. It’s impor­tant that they know you believe in them and their capa­bil­i­ty, and that you make sure they have what they need to suc­ceed next time.

Give lots of lit­tle feed­back when it’s fresh in your mind. Don’t wait until an annu­al feed­back ses­sion when you’ve for­got­ten the details.

Get in the habit of con­stant­ly shar­ing the things that work for you, and what doesn’t. Peo­ple want to do a good job and they want to know how to improve.

Prac­tice makes perfect

When we broke into role-play­ing groups of three – one man­ag­er giv­ing feed­back, one receiv­ing it, and one observ­ing — it was incred­i­bly valu­able for even expe­ri­enced man­agers to prac­tice. Some were rusty while oth­ers were very good at gen­er­al pos­i­tive praise but not spe­cif­ic praise. Some man­agers were good at rep­ri­mands but not at mak­ing it pos­i­tive — and more than a few were uncomfortable.

“If you want to know why your peo­ple are not per­form­ing well, step up to the mir­ror and take a peek.”

Our jobs, as man­agers and lead­ers of peo­ple, is to remove our­selves as the vari­able for someone’s lack of per­for­mance. If some­one is not meet­ing per­for­mance expec­ta­tions, they have no clear goals, and no feed­back, you are part of the prob­lem — and you allow them to be less than high performers.

Make sure you are part of the solu­tion, have reg­u­lar con­ver­sa­tions, give pos­i­tive feed­back and reprimands.

If you’re not doing the basics, you are doing your peo­ple a disservice.

The Chal­lenge

• Make sure you are liv­ing with the prin­ci­ples of The One-Minute Man­ag­er, for all your people
• If you haven’t read it recent­ly, pick it up and read it.