It’s been 35 years since “The One Minute Manager” by Ken Blanchard and Spencer Johnson, M.D. was first published. Once in a while authors and researchers get what I call an “unusual inspiration” to write a book that changes the way we do things in a particular field. This book is a product of such “unusual inspirations” and has changed the face of management. There are key lessons from The One Minute Manager which show how line leaders become better at managing, supervising and engaging teams at work.

The book is about a young man who in his search for an effective manager, meets three kinds of managers:

– The autocratic manager whose only concern is getting result so their organisations gain while their people lose

– The democratic manager whose primary concern is people so their people gain while their organisations lose

– The one minute manager who is effective because he’s interested in both people and results which enables the people and organisation gain from his management style.

3 success secrets connected to the one-minute employee engagement

– Set clear one minute goals: Be clear about your expectation on the performance of tasks you want employees to undertake.  On a daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual basis, decide on the desired goals and performance standards you expect from your employees and ensure it is clearly recorded, typed and printed out on a single sheet of paper such that it would take only one minute to read it. This helps you and your team be exact on what is required of them from the very beginning and to measure performance at the end of the day.  Rather than giving vague “clean the room” tasks, give specific “sweep and mop the floor” tasks.

– Don’t miss the opportunity to give one-minute praise when you catch people doing something right: Never pass on telling your employees that they did a good job, how you feel about it and encourage them to do more of the same.

– Give balanced one-minute reprimands: Don’t put off giving balanced reprimands when an employee does something wrong. One minute reprimands have 2 parts: in 30 seconds tell the employee(s) what was done wrong, how you feel about it and let it sink in with a few seconds of uncomfortable silence. In the final 30 seconds, tell the employee how much you think they are capable of and how much you value them. And when you are done, let it go. One-minute reprimands are highly effective because the feedback is immediate and it’s focused on the work done and not the doer.

Utilise this one-minute employee engagement technique to become a one-minute manager and get your people engaged and excited about producing results at work.

This article was first published on September 1, 2015 via LinkedIn