Leadership Paper on “The One Minute Manager”

The book ¨The One Minute Manager by Kenneth Blanchard, Ph.D. and Spencer Johnson, M.D. demonstrates three practical management concepts of being a One Minute Manager ¨someone who gets good results without taking much time (p.22) by story telling. The book begins with a young man who is seeking and wanting to learn an efficient and productive way of managing people. Interviewing with the One Minute Manager and the people work in the same organization, the young man reveals that the One Minute Manager has developed three processes for building a better manager and for increasing the productivity in the workplace. After he uncovers the three precepts, he finally becomes a One Minute Manager himself. The three concepts described in the book are One Minute Goal Setting, One Minute Praisings, and One Minute Reprimands.

Refers to the book, One Minute Goal Setting is to make sure people know precisely what they are to do and what the manager expects. On the page 34, the steps of One Minute Goal Setting are to agree on your goals and see what good behavior looks like. Then, to write out each of your goals on a single sheet of paper use less than 250 words. Next, read and re-read each goal, which requires only a minute or so each time you do it. Then, take a minute every once in a while out of your day to look at your performance, and finally, see whether or not your behavior matches your goal. The reason that the goals must to be write on one sheet of paper and less than 250 words because it is easy to be reviewed frequently, and goal seeks can easily keep their goals in mind.

When the young man interviews Mr. Trenell in the company, he tells the young man that the One Minute Manager once says ¨a problem only exists if there is a difference between what is actually happening and what you desire to be happening (p. 31). Nowadays, managers presume their people understand what to do and what the performance has to be, so they donˇt check their goals with them. Then, when problem appear, those managers just blame their workers. Since the inconsistency usually brings problem among the people, the One Minute Goal Setting helps people know what has to be done, and people have agreed on what has to be done. Once the standards are made clearly, people will accurately know what to do, how to start and what should be performed.

The second concept One Minute Praisings is to observe peopleˇs behavior and give feedback when they meet the expectations from the goal setting list. According to the book, the One Minute Praising works well when you tell people up front that you are going to let them know how they are doing, and then praise people immediately. After that, tell people what they did right specifically. Next, tell people how good you feel about what they did right, and how it helps the organization and the other people who work there. Then, stop for a moment of silence to let them feel how good you feel. At that time, encourage them to do more of the same. At last, shake hands or touch people in a way that makes it clear that you support their success in the organization. ¨Not only do we not catch them doing anything approximately right, but periodically we zap them just to keep them moving (p.83). In most leadership, managers usually leave their people alone even for an inexperienced one since they are assuming they know what to do and expecting good performance from those people.

Moreover, when people only get negative feedback from their leaders, they donˇt know what to improve, and they get confused of what they are doing is right or wrong. Therefore, the efficiency and productivity will not get better. In contrast, the example of training a huge whale shows that we have to establish goals that our people can accomplish and to catch them doing something almost close to the right in the beginning until they can learn to do it exactly right. When the trainer starts to train the whale to swim over the rope, he first must set the rope at the bottom of the pool. Then, eventually raise the rope higher and higher when the trainer sees the whale swims past the rope, and, at the same time, he gets fed. Similarly, people will increase their abilities little by little when they get praised of doing something right.

In the book, the One Minute Reprimands is to give people feedback when you see their goals and expectations do not meet. The book summarizes several steps of doing the One Minute Reprimand. First of all, tell people beforehand that you are going to let them know how they are doing and in no uncertain terms. Second, reprimand people immediately and tell them what they did wrong specifically. Then, tell them how you feel about their wrong course certainly, and stop for a few seconds of uncomfortable silence to let them feel how you feel. At the moment, shake hands, or touch them in a way that lets them know you are honestly on their side. After that, remind them how much you value them, and next, reaffirm that you think well of them but not of their performance in this situation. Finally, realize that when the reprimand is over, itˇs over.

Importantly, One Minute Reprimands has to be immediate because if leaders donˇt tell the misbehavior from their works, once the observations of misbehavior piled up, those leaders will explore their anger fully. As a result, both sides get depressed and canˇt really get feedback and hardly hear feedback from others. In the sense of One Minute Reprimand, both leaders and workers have the ability and opportunity to really hear the feedback. Therefore, immediate is the most essential part. In addition, the One Minute Reprimand is only to aim directly at the specific behavior, not the feelings about the workers themselves. ¨Their behavior is not OK. They are OK (p.88). The purpose of the One Minute Reprimand is to get rid of the false behavior that people have done and keep the people who did it.

The processes of being the One Minute Manager are simple, yet powerful and effective. Throughout the book, the One Minute Manager and his employees frequently use these three concepts to clarify the problems that they have. I, as a business person, am very impressed by this book. I couldnˇt imagine how the one minute would be spent, and I did not believe it would be such a simple issue. However, after I read this book, I realize that even these concepts are common senses, yet common senses are not always common practice. I think this book is very useful for everyone who wants to hold a good leadership; especially, it will be helpful for a newer who starts dealing with a leadership.