simplerich

The Daily Five Minutes (D5M) as talked about, shared, given away for free on the Internet, by Rosa Say is the single most important management tool I’ve run into. I found it on her blog, bought her book, and have built a relationship (online only – no jealous husbands coming after me please!) with her almost entirely because I fell in love with this practice of hers.

I don’t do it often enough. I intend to, but I get busy and I forget. I do it more than I used to. I need to do it more. Here’s the thing. Doing it mostly is better than doing it never. Doing it all the time… I can’t imagine how powerful that will be. She’s starting a program, this is an alpha run of the program in conjunction with Ruzuku.com (A site I’ve never heard of until now).

The shortest one-liner version of The Daily Five Minutes is to listen to your employees with active listening and find out what’s important to them. (Go read more about it here, even if you’ve done this before, bear with me. I’ve got a point to make here.) This is huge. It’s me shutting up and letting them talk. It’s me getting out of their way and letting them have the talking conch for a while. That’s hugely important at work right? It helps build relationships. It helps us their bosses find out what they’ve got going on in their lives and what they’re struggling with and gives them a chance to feel safe and ask for help without feeling like they’re whining. It allows them to bounce ideas off us.

If it’s that great for work think of how great it would be with your friends and family! Seriously. Pay attention on the next phone call to a friend or family member. How often are you planning your next thing to say or looking at the Bush’s baked beans wondering which ones to get while Aunt Mable tells the story about how her Beagle Indiana Jones (We named the DOG Indiana!) got into the garbage for the fourth time this week? How often are you talking about your day and not asking and listening to theirs? Seriously? At dinner how much time you do you spend listening, really listening, and engaging the person talking? If it’s a great idea for us and our employees it’s an amazingly super-fantastic idea for family and friends.

So, join us November 2nd, whether your manager or not, in the Alpha test of Rosa Say’s The D5M Challenge: 15 Days to Build your Daily 5 Minutes Habit online coachy thing. Rosa Say is an author, coach and speaker who has been making her living doing this stuff for a while now. She knows what she’s talking about and if you do it… I mean really do it and find at the end of the fifteen days  that you didn’t get anything out of it. I will personally return every dime of the cost of the program to you myself out of my pocketsess…

PS: If any of you say “Why Richard, this is simply Dale Carnegie with leis and words I can’t pronounce!” I’ll say it again slowly… go read the link I gave you and come back. My abbreviated version doesn’t do it justice. I’m abbreviating. There’s more to it than my thumbnail OK? OK. Mahalo, punk! (That was in my Clint Eastwood voice. I even squinted some when I said it.)

Continuing my month long on-again, off-again fire themed posting in honor of October being National Fire Prevention month is a post about fire as a gathering place for chatting, socializing, and seeking comfort.

One of my favorite management tools is the Daily 5 as talked about by Rosa Say over at Say Leadership Coaching.  The daily five minutes is, short-version, go read the long version, time for you, the manager, to take five minutes to talk with AND LISTEN TO your employee. This isn’t five minutes to tell them what to do or five minutes where you top down all over them. This isn’t five minutes of your critiquing their performance on some recent project and then ending with a “So, what’ve you got to say for yourself?” It’s five minutes of conversation with them. Yes, I said conversation which means there will be a point when we, as managers, need to shut up and listen… actively listen to our employees. Ask leading questions, repeat back to them what they’ve just said in your own words so they know you understand them. Make use of that information later to blackmail them into covering extra shifts so their HA! Didn’t think you were paying attention, that was a test. Obviously I don’t mean the last part. That was a joke.

But engaging our employees to actively talk to us about what’s important to them can only help us be better managers. It’s a great time to find out what the rumors are out there that are keeping people up nights and address them. Those little things, rumors, can be tremendously destructive. But they’re hard to bring up to a manager who an employee is nervous about talking to or with. If we build a good relationship with our employees and make sure they know it’s important to us that we communicate with each other about things that are important to each other we’ll both win.

It doesn’t just help by opening lines of communication open either. It helps all day long when you’re NOT engaged in conversation and see them. If they know they’ll have your ear at a future date they interrupt less frequently because they know they’ll get a chance to bring things to your attention, or ask questions later. If your employees think they’ll be able to talk to you once in a blue moon they’ll grab you whenever they see you or call or interrupt what you’re doing because they’re never sure when they’ll have a chance again. Once they get in the habit of talking to you, and know they’ll be able to again very soon they’ll dial back the pestering… most of the time. Some people are so needy they won’t stop pestering… those you can tell, “You know what. I’m buried right now, how ‘bout we catch up on that during our talk later OK? Thanks. Take care. Bye. Don’t let the door hit you in your codependent… See… I did it again there. Glad you’re still with me. But seriously, you can defer them if they’re not playing by the rules. Some people don’t have a filter. Some people think of something and call you on the phone immediately, afraid they’ll lose it if they don’t. Those people are in need of organization more than they’re in need of my advice or answers… typically I think they just need to read and implement a version of Getting Things Done, but that’s another topic for another time.

Fire Safety around outside fires is a big matter of being ready if it spreads. Fire’s a hungry beast and it’ll eat anything it can get to. If you’re burning brush or yard waste good on you for living somewhere that you can! Nothing says fall like the smell of burning leaves! That being said, you’ll want a fire break of some sort between your pile of leaves and your Porsche. You’ll also want something nearby in case the wind picks up and moves some embers from your fire to your front porch. Remember the fire extinguisher I suggested for the kitchen? That would work. A bucket of water would work. A garden hose turned on would work. Heck, a bucket of sand would work if you had one of those nearby but why would you? What wouldn’t work? A bucket or pan of cheap kitty litter. Some of that stuff is dusty and might explode on you if you threw it on an open flame and if you really want exploded used kitty litter on your front porch please… don’t invite me to any of YOUR fireside chats.