The New One Minute Manager book by Ken Blanchard and Spencer Johnson provides managers with three straightforward tools for ensuring that employees remain motivated, are fulfilled, and produce excellent work. Each of these tools takes 60 seconds.
Three tools, each lasting one minute, that, if used correctly, may permanently improve your management style.

The One Minute Manager Summary:

• Goals. Assign your staff three to five goals you can quickly examine in under a minute.
• Praise. Give your staff good feedback in a minute of praise.
• Re-Direct. A one-minute re-direct is more than enough to explain your displeasure.

Let’s review this in more detail.

What are the 3 steps of The One Minute Manager?

Tell everyone upfront what you will do to support their success.

One Minute Manager Goal

All company challenges will go back to one simple thing: communication. As long as you communicate effectively, honestly, openly, and swiftly, you can avoid 99 per cent of issues.

Most likely, if you’ve ever started a new job, it went something like this. When you first arrive, you are shown around, shake many hands, and try to recall at least half the names of everyone you meet. As soon as your email account runs, you start working on the tasks your new employer has given you. However, no one has ever informed you of your actual responsibilities.

New employees should be given a seat and informed of their duties and objectives for the coming year. Imagine if someone had joined you at the beginning and created a list together. A manager who manages for one minute accomplishes precisely that.

Solution

• Clearly define the goals.
• Specify appropriate conduct.
• List each objective on a single page.
• Regularly and quickly review your goals.
• Motivate individuals to track their actions and determine whether they are consistent with their objectives.
• If not, remind them to adjust their approach so they can succeed.

Next Steps

• Goals Achieved (or any part of the goals): You Win! time to praise
• Goals Not Achieved. You Lose. To Help You Win: time to re-direct

One Minute Praisings

Even though it is officially their primary responsibility, managers also manage people on top of all their other tasks. Because of this, it’s simple for them to neglect to let their coworkers know when they’ve done a fantastic job. Employees tend to focus on what they haven’t done, especially when their roles are unclear, and may thus often anticipate unpleasant feedback. Given that it only takes 60 seconds, a good manager always lets her staff know when they have performed well.

Solution

• Give the acting praise.
• Do it s soon as possible.
• Be specific.
• Express your satisfaction.
• Take a moment to let others feel wonderful.
• Motivate them to continue their excellent job.

Next Step

Continue with Greater Success

One Minute Re-Directs

Expressing dissatisfaction with someone’s performance doesn’t have to be a huge issue, just like delivering favourable feedback doesn’t require much time. You may employ what Blanchard and Johnson refer to as the one-minute re-directs when individuals are accustomed to your management style and have their one-minute goals and one-minute praisings.

Similar to the one-minute praisings, it should be used immediately following the error and be very explicit. Include a brief message of gratitude with your critique to demonstrate that you have no hard feelings.

Solution

• Reaffirm and agree on goals.

• Verify what occurred.
• Describe the error.
• Affirm your level of concern.
• Take a moment to let everyone feel their own worry.
• Tell them you value them and that they are better than the error. When something is over, it’s over.

Three factors explain why this type of criticism is effective:

• Your coworkers believe that their errors are being dealt with rightfully and not unfairly.
• You avoid holding negative emotions and immediately clear the air.
• You reaffirm an employee’s value as an individual and their essential role in the company.

Next Step

Move to Better Performance.

Conclusion One Minute Manager

You could think the three rules of One Minute Manager are really elementary. But in the end, isn’t it preferable to know how to use three straightforward rules than to have no such knowledge or to never succeed in implementing another, more complicated strategy?

According to Ken Blanchard and Spencer Johnson, these three fundamental guidelines relate to the 80/20 rule: they represent 20% of the manager’s actions yet provide 80% of the outcomes. They can thus be of great use to beginning managers and business owners.

These three rules are an excellent foundation. To further develop your team and you, I recommend you to read the following:

• The Ideal Team Player
• How to form a high-performance team
• Extreme Ownership: 12 Leadership principles to learn from the Navy SEAL
• You Win in the Locker Room First
• GROW Model for Coaching

Enjoy the read. David Gousset