Set Your People Free Part 2

Most conversations about the development, performance and learning of another happen or should happen within the work place between managers and team members. 

Gaining the competitive edge, in Mike Taylor’s (an Alumnus of the School) experience, the most exciting benefit comes from leaders across the business becoming internal coaches and mentors. Open, trusting conversations are rare in corporate life. Google thinks so too!

The New York Times reports on a project carried out by Google called Project Oxygen. The aim of the project was to find out what the best managers at Google do, to have teams with individuals that perform better, are retained better, and are happier. The project team gathered more than 10,000 observations about managers — across more than 100 variables, from various performance reviews, feedback surveys and other reports. They then looked for some preliminary patterns in the data and formed hypotheses. 

They then gathered additional data by systematically interviewing managers to test these hypotheses. Finally, they analysed the data and drew conclusions. The conclusions were summarised in 'Google's Rules' which consists of a set of eight good behaviours and three pitfalls of managers. They bring many wider benefits for the business including more effective decision-making, positive and earlier resolution of different views, difficult issues and conflicts, higher confidence levels and even faster budget setting. 

>To Read Google’s Rules: Eight Good Behaviours and Three Pitfalls of Managers