[MUSIC] Hello again, in the first module we discussed how the manager's role has become much more complex in recent years. In this lesson, I will list the top ten reasons why the manager's role is changing so much. And we will discuss how each of those reasons impacts and influences you as a manager. The first influence on the manager role is Globalization, which means that companies now don't just exist in their own small town. Even private small businesses are affected by what's happening in the global economy, we are no longer limited by the city we work in, the state we work in, the country we work in, the province we work in. We are touched by what's happening everywhere, and as a result it impacts our work. Technology impacts our work. Think about it, my goodness if you've been around at all for the last five years, you've seen how technology is influencing, right? Now we have cloud services and people can access documents in a heartbeat, that they never could have before. So as managers, we have to recognize that not just our own company, and how we are available to others, but what people expect of our employees in terms of technology. And rapid pace of response and availability of information. Which leads me to number three, which is access and speed of information. People know they can get their hands on anything at any time. Right? All it takes is being out to dinner with some friends and someone's wondering what was the name of that movie, or if so and so married to so and so, just pop culture kind of stuff. Everybody whips out their phone. They Google it and they find out. We can access information so readily now. And so what are the implications that has on us as managers? Well it means that everybody expects they can get what they need to know quickly. And that means your customers are expected, your employer expects it, and your employees expect it [LAUGH]. They expect you to know, right? It's just we're building this perception of availability of information and as managers, we have to be able to adjust to that because it's fast. The fourth one I want to talk about is something that I call Transparency. And that means that there is an expectation now that people should, employees, workers, people who work in organizations, should understand why things are happening. I think in the past, which we'll talk about in a minute here, that wasn't so much the case. It was pretty much, hey this is how we are running our business, get it done. Now people want more involvement, they want to understand more. The reason why, they have access to information and so when they come to work and things are not explained well to them they don't understand. Because they can get information from so many other places. Why can't they get it from their boss? [LAUGH] Right? So Transparency is extremely important. How well do you communicate and share information with your team? The fifth one I want to talk about is work environment and options related to Work Space. Now, this hasn't touched every work environment, but it is touching every work environment just because it exists, right? People being able to work from home, people being able to work in halfway work spaces, rentable work spaces, people travelling all the time, people not having an office at all. Or some jobs still require that people come to work. But it is an interesting conversation that I've had with a lot of managers of late. Because some managers come from sort of that belief system that you come to work at eight you go home at five. Right? Regardless of the job. But now, what we're finding is jobs, there's so much fluidity in the work that we do. I appreciate there are a lot of jobs that are shift work and you come in and you go home and then you're done. But a lot of jobs, that's not the case. You're on your email at five in the morning, then you come to work by eight, then you go home at five. Then you're on email again till ten. Right? But when managers are really locked in to the perception that people need to work from eight to five, then there can be some rigidity to what may not be necessary any more. We may not need people to be in the office from eight to five. Is that just an expectation because that's how it was when you were a manager, or when you were an employee? So those options are influencing everything, right, so even if your company doesn't create those options, other people know other people. Your employees know people. Who have that kind of flexibility and they want to know, why don't they have it? The next one I want to talk about is Employee Motivations behind the work they do. We're finding that people are becoming more and more inclined to choose work that is fulfilling. That helps them feel good about what they do every day. What we're learning about even the younger sort of millennial generation, which is in the workforce pretty heavily now is that they want to contribute. They want their work to have meaning. That is influencing how you as a manager need to connect with them. That's the piece about really understanding why what they do is important, regardless of what the role is. Can you connect, as a manager, anyone from a call center rep, to a technical adviser, to an analyst, to a project manager to a front desk attendant, to a janitor. Can you connect what they do to the goals and the contribution of the organization? If you can, it really can be very powerful for people because then they believe and they understand why what they do matters. Right? Which leads me to why work is becoming more connected to Life Purpose. I want to, people believe that they want to do in the world should serves why they're here. That big sort of question, right? Why are we all here? So that's a big thing to think about as a manager, right? I don't really think that's your job to help them figure out what their life purpose is, but I do think it's important you understand. As a manager that more and more people are thinking that way. And so how you connect the work to meaning is powerful. We're also seeing a tremendous influx of workforce education and training. Right? Leadership development is a billion dollar industry, and there's so many other kinds of training available. And so as a manager, again, think about how does that influence you every day? What it does is it makes employees believe they can be taught how to do things, that there will be resources to teach them. And as their manager you're the keyholder for that. Do you help employees improve? Do you help them learn? This course is an excellent example. This is a free massive open online course. This is available to anyone who wants to take it. How powerful is that? That didn't exist five years ago. So there's so much opportunity for people to learn. So as a manager, how do you help your people develop? Are you enlisting that kind of thinking for them and are you a resource for them? And lastly, we've just seen a huge influx in professional skill sets, right? Helping people develop those professional skills, a lot of what I talked about in the first module round behaviors, communication, listening, professionalism, managing time, deadlines, prioritization, right? These are skills that we are seeing an ever-increasing need to develop in people because they're not well taught. Across the board and so that again, falls on the manager and that's affecting how you go about your business. Because if your job before was just to make sure 10 widgets got made every hour, now we're looking at the widgets, we're looking at, do people communicate well about the widgets? Because most people are working as teams and not independently, do people understand how the widget impacts what they do in the world and with the company? So there are a lot of things here that influence how you have to show up as a manager, and that's why all those different roles were so important to talk about. So let's do a little comparison here and a little compare contrast. So then and now, right? When we can make then me 50 years because it's just been an evolution and like I said in the introduction to this module depending on where you are in the world we're at different levels, we're at different places with these perceptions of the manager roll and these influences. But this is kind of the general compare contrast, right. So then, the perspective of a manager was, do as I say. [LAUGH] Just do what I tell you to do. Now, its more collaborative. Before, there was limited employee involvement. Now, we know that engagement drives success. So we were working harder to engage our employees and involve them. Then, there was very limited if any focus on employee well being or growth. Now, training and development is a huge part of what employees expect from their employer. Then, things were very paternalistic, just sort of top down. Not a lot of opinions, not a lot of explanations, just get it done. Now, we have much more open and expansive work environments. And lastly, then, things were very industrial. There was very industrial skill sets. And now, we're managing people with much more professional and complex skills where you have to develop or work with these folks who have much more sophisticated skill sets than we may have had 20 years ago. So in summary, the influences on our role have really, really impacted who we are as managers. I gave you the ten influences that managers are really dealing with and, like I said, you could probably add ten more. And despite all of those influences, here's something to remember. People still want to be heard and they still want to be seen. People still want to connect. So let's not forget that as managers. Connection with your team is always available to you. So even if you're working across countries and time zones. And you manage multiple types of technology and you have all sorts of influences on your work. You can always take time to connect with the people that you work with. And because of all of these influences, the expectations of you as a manager are changing, which is why I guess you're in this course, right, because you know that, and you want to gain and sharpen your skills to be better, right? So in our next lesson we're going to talk about why we even need managers int he first place. [LAUGH] Why do we need managers? That's coming up next.
