Big Takeaways & Key Ideas
 

People who feel good about themselves produce good results (pg. 9)

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Our manager works with us to make it clear what our responsibilities are and what we are being held accountable for. For example, instead of setting our goals for us, he listens to our goals for us, he listens to our input and works side-by-side with us to develop them. After we agree on our most important goals, each is described on one page. He feels that a goal and its performance standard - what needs to be done and by what due date - should take no more than a paragraph or two to express, so it can be read and reviewed in about a minute. Once we've written the goals out concisely, it's easy to look at them often and stay focused on what's important. Finally, I email my goals to him and keep copies, so everything is clear and we can both periodically check my progress. (pg. 17)

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One minute goals work well when you: 1) Plan the goals together and describe them briefly and clearly; 2) Have people write out each of their goals with due dates on a single page; 3) Ask them to review their most important goals each day, which takes only a few minutes to do; 4) Encourage people to take a minute to look at what they're doing, and see if their behavior matches their goals; and 5) If it doesn't, encourage them to rethink what they're doing so they can realize their goals sooner. (pg. 23)

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When my boss gives me a redirect, he reminds me that I'm better than my mistake and that he has confidence and trust in me. He says he doesn't expect a repeat of that mistake and looks forward to working with me. The redirect only takes about a minute, and when it's over, it's over. But you remember it, and since it ends in a supportive way, you want to get back on track. (pg. 42)

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The best minute I spend is the one I invest in people. It's ironic that most companies spend so much of their money on people's salaries, and they spend only a small fraction of their budget to develop people. In fact, most companies spend more time and more money maintaining their buildings, technology, and equipment than they do on developing their people. (pg. 51)

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The most important thing to do to help people become winners is to catch them doing something approximately right in the beginning. Then you move on toward the desired result. Unfortunately, most managers wait until people do something exactly right before they praise them. As a result, many people never get to become high performers because their managers concentrate on catching them doing things wrong - that is, anything that falls short of the final desired performance. Sadly, that is what too many organizations do with new, inexperienced people. They welcome them aboard, take them around to meet everybody, and then leave them alone. Not only do they not catch the new people doing anything approximately right, but periodically they zap them just to keep them moving. (pg. 65)

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Many managers store up observations of poor behavior until frustration builds. When performance review time comes, these managers are angry in general because they have so much to share. They charge in and dump it all at one time. They tell people every single thing they have done wrong for the last several weeks or months or more. It's not fair to people to save up negative feelings about their poor performance, and it's not effective. (pg. 71)