Black In Business

I am happy to have been nominated as best business blog. I need more votes; I have received 9 votes which puts me in the top 20. That is cool but I have more than 9 people in my family. Will somebody help me get to double digits?10 would be cool and 19 even better. Just click on the stamp found in the upper right hand of this blog and vote for me. Thanks, I have received several other nominations, best corporate, best political, best success and best looking. Well I am joking about best looking.
Speaking of business, I read YBP and find many of the issues today are the same as when I started in business. I titled this, “Guess Who’s coming to manage,” After the movie, “Guess Who’s coming to dinner.” In the movie a young white coed fell in love with a Blackman and was bring him home to meet her parents.
As a rookie manager responsible for an all white team that included several former military officers and a third of the team much older, I was worried about being accepted. Young black professionals may have those same doubts today. I over time won the team over and we kicked butt with style and attitude. Here is what I did.
1. I met as a team and reviewed why I would be a good leader. I showed my pass success, my expectations of them, and what they would receive from me in return. I asked for their input and I listened. I listened to the group and later as individuals.
2. I shared my vision and provided a theme we all could identify with. It was an Olympic year and we decided to have a Olympics competition with gold, silver and bronze metals. We picked a goal as a team to penetrate high margin products. We had an area of focus and my team helped put the competition and help to decide the prizes.
3. I helped the team meat their territory goals by field traveling to accounts. I earned respect because I left the office and exhibited I was good with customers.
4. I provide feed back in writing and in a timely manner. I coached them to become better and more successful.
5. We celebrated a lot. Most managers are taught to find something wrong and fix it. I wanted to find a lot right first and celebrate it. Then we would build the team self esteem, so when there was something to address from an improvement standpoint, my guys would be open to listening and wanting to improve

I will have more on this in later post but these 5 helped me to establish myself as a leader and manager and get beyond the “Guess who’s coming to manage,” stress. I would love to hear how you have handled a similar situation.