Six Conversations: A Simple Guide for Managerial Success

Whether you’re a new or seasoned manager, you’ve probably been overwhelmed by unspoken employee expectations and human resources processes.

It can be easy to ignore doing what you actually need to do as a manager to develop employees and keep the best ones. In this guidebook to managerial success, you’ll learn how to answer six simple questions employees care about the most:

• What is expected of me?
• What and how should I develop?
• How am I doing?
• How did I do?
• How will I be rewarded?
• What is next for me?

While you may be blessed or cursed by a system that requires written goals, documented development plans, performance ratings, compensation rationalization, assessments of flight risks, and so on, you cannot let the performance process drive these critical conversations. Instead, let the conversations drive the performance process.

Take a giant leap forward toward improving productivity and morale at your organization. It starts with Six Conversations.

Steve King is the executive director at the Center for Professional and Executive Development with the University of Wisconsin's school of business and president of the SDK Group. He has worked as the senior vice president of human resources at Hewitt Associates and has held other leadership roles with Baxter Healthcare, the Bank of Montreal, and Harris Bank in Chicago.