Managing by Walking Around: What's all the buzz about?

Since my early days in management, I’ve heard people reference “managing by walking around” as an effective leadership tool. I observed an interim superintendent doing this on the campus where I was principal-she would just show up periodically, ask how things were going, and move on. I appreciated these informal check-ins: it felt good to know that she cared to see what was going on day to day.

Why is this tool so important? What does managing by walking around look like, and why does it work?

First, I’ll tell you a funny story about walking around from my own experience. If folks in your workplace are not used to seeing leaders in their workspace, they may respond strangely at first. On the first day of summer school in a job where I was relatively new, I scheduled in a walk-through of one of the programs. I walked from class to class, greeting staff and students, making small talk, then moving on. I was trying to develop some kind of rapport through casual contact.

I later heard that the rumored purpose of my visit to the program had been to police for appropriate footwear. I had earlier come out against staff wearing flip flops; managing busy children and maneuvering wheelchairs did not lend themselves to flimsy shoes. My colleagues actually thought I was in their building to look for offending flip flops. My leadership was a tough sell in this particular location. The staff there was experienced and well established and didn’t really welcome “new.”

Does this mean that my attempt to manage by walking around was a bust? I don’t think so. It is a combination of volume (frequent visits) and quality (meaningful ways to casually connect) that makes MbWA work. Like so many aspects of leadership, building rapport over time is critical to trust.

MbWA was welcomed in other situations. One parent at a residential school commented that I seemed to be “everywhere,” and that she was delighted to see an administrator so involved in day to day campus life. An employee who worked nights in another school said that my presence during her shift made her feel like her behind-the-scenes work was validated by administration.

If you’re like me and a little shy, you might feel awkward in your initial communication gestures towards others. MbWA can be hard for me, and I don’t think I ever got it 100% right.

But here’s the thing: You need to keep trying. I am a naturally curious person, and I like to put together what I learn into a bigger “systems” picture. Learning by observing was also critical to my success as a leader, because it gave me information about how the organization worked. And showing genuine interest in what others are doing paves the way for future relation-building and rapport.

So here’s what I suggest to budding leaders as they learn to manage by walking around: 

1.     Schedule your walk-around time. Vary your destinations and time of day.

2.     Be true to your schedule. Don’t blow off walk around time because you have “too much to do.”

3.     Think about what you want to learn in advance. Are you touring the factory floor? Maybe there’s a process you can ask questions about. Checking in with folks working at their desks? Perhaps there’s a question you’d like to ask each of them to gain further knowledge about their work. Observing a classroom? Maybe you want to understand better how staff are encouraging independence or collaborative teaching models.

4.     In situations where your MbWA might be misperceived, consider laying the groundwork by sharing your intentions in advance.

5.     Consider sending follow-up notes. “Thanks for the pleasure of observing your class today! The activity you were doing was a great example of …”

Now here’s a controversial one: While MbWA, should you blend in or butt in? I have always had a tendency NOT to join in unless I am asked to do so. Having a relative stranger join an activity can be disconcerting for kids AND staff. But I was recently criticized for NOT joining in; it seems that I appeared disconnected or aloof. I can remember times when adults have inappropriately jumped into an activity, and I vowed that I would not do that. Do what feels right at the time, be sensitive to the environment, and be true to your personality.

People don't change. People can change. part 2

As I set out to form my thoughts around the concept that people don’t change (Part 1 of this pair of blogs), my brain was bombarded with memories where I had witnessed significant change in others. Thus, this Part 2: People can change.

When I was a young TVI, I had a boss who had great potential as a new special education director. He did some goofy things: took the cane I was holding and pretended to be blind as he negotiated the hallway of our offices. “’Give me your tired, give me your poor.’ That’s your attitude about any and every child you meet,” he said, mocking me for overcommitting. But he accepted me— not as a 20-something who didn’t have a clue but as someone who could be molded through his insights. And in turn, he listened to my thoughts and perspectives, and sometimes changed his behavior as a result.

There was one incident in particular that stands out: I was going on and on to him about a challenging situation in one of my schools. I honestly can’t remember what it was about, but I know I was asking—no, whining—for his help. “What do you expect me to do?” he finally asked, exasperated. “I expect you to act like the leader you are and manage the situation,” I said, unflinching. My words were blunt, perhaps a bit insubordinate. Instead of putting me in my place, he looked at me hard and said, “Okay. I’ll take a look at it.” And he did. It was my first experience in a job where a supervisor openly considered my call for change—and then changed. In fact, after that encounter, this leader periodically used me as a sounding board for next steps in challenging situations. And in his willingness to change, he gave me an important leadership stone: no matter who you are or where you are in your leadership journey, listening to each other, considering a different approach, and changing accordingly, is invaluable.

Let’s look at the bigger picture. For people to really change, it has to be sustainable and supported throughout the organization. Here’s an example. When I was a new interim principal at a school for the blind, I was taken back by the pervasive negativity of the staff. It was so bad, in fact, that the evening after my first faculty meeting, I cried. Not just a little tearing up—full on sobs. What had I done, leaving a job I’d enjoyed and taking on a challenge for which I was ill prepared? My careful agenda, designed to engage and inspire, had quickly gone down the tubes as teachers interrupted, talked among themselves, and refused to participate in the group activities I had planned.

Over time, however, the staff began to trust me and participated in meetings in a meaningful way. We even had some fun, and I knew I had met with some success when they started playing practical jokes on me. (That’s a leadership stone, by the way. When your staff trusts you enough to play a joke on you and you all laugh about it and no one is offended, it means you’ve built a culture of trust.) If someone made a negative comment, I was able to say, “Hey, you’re not the underdog anymore. Let’s keep it positive,” and things would turn around. The tone of our meetings and the school’s culture transformed.

After nearly five years in that position, an opportunity came up that I could not refuse. It was a dream job really, leading the country’s oldest school for the blind. I left my principal position six weeks after my interview. I thought I had positioned the school in a way where the positivity and camaraderie were sustainable. We had put so many positive things in place, we had climbed out of an IEP nightmare, and our enrollment was great.

After I had been gone for a while and revisited with colleagues, I learned that things had turned negative again. My leadership stone here: change is slow and laborious. But in order for it to “take,” it has to be nurtured every step of the way and on into the future. Nothing about leadership is “one and done.” For people to change in a meaningful way, they must understand the need to change, focus on the key item(s) that need to change, and find support from leaders and colleagues in sustaining that change.

People don't change. People can change.

One morning last fall I contemplated the blog topic, “People don’t change.” For several months, I had been enveloped in negativity about my working life, and I was convinced that this was a leadership stone that needed to be shared. As I began to write, I realized that I had plenty of experiences where people HAD changed, so I decided to write two separate blogs with seemingly contradicting theories. These leadership stones explore the assumption that sometimes people change, sometimes they don’t—and managing that fact.

Let’s start with people not changing—in this case, me. For many years I have struggled with remembering people’s names. It wasn’t that I’d blank on a name entirely; instead I’d simply call a person by the wrong name. I had other retrieval problems as well: my mother thought I was colorblind when actually I simply said “red” for “green.” I appeared directionality challenged because I switched “north” for “south.” I remember one of my students, when I corrected myself, said “I knew which direction you were talking about. I just made the switch for you.” <smile>

Fast forward to advanced adulthood: I still make these mistakes today. I’ve learned to be cautious about saying a person’s name definitively, and I sometimes remember to pause before labeling a cardinal direction. But the fact is that I’m not appreciably better at word retrieval than I was 50+ years ago.  

What do I do with that information? Sometimes I share it. I say, “Sorry I got that wrong. I’m challenged by word retrieval.” Sometimes I just laugh and move on. Sometimes I say nothing, for fear that I will make a mistake, or I use a coping strategy. “Hi, this is my husband Chris. Have you two met before?” --hoping the other person will introduce him/herself. I’ve made peace with my shortcoming.

I once worked with a team where one member’s greatest motivation was self-promotion. He did this using a variety of tools: physically positioning himself in front of the “important” people; manipulating the conversation to make others look bad; actively attacking others’ ideas without adequate information or any ideas of his own. It took me a while to understand not only that this was a driving force for this individual, but that anything I said or did to change his behavior was futile. My logical next step should have been to develop strategies to manage my behavior with him and to find other resources to get my work done.

I was often the victim of this person’s behavior, and I wasted a lot of time trying to manipulate the situation and make myself look better. I learned a lot about myself through this process, foremost that it takes a lot of energy to manipulate others and that I am not at all good at it. I suppose that’s a good thing, but the point here is that I was trying to change this individual, and I could not. His behavior was entrenched, and it had apparently served him well. And there were two byproducts of my own efforts: I wasted time and energy, and I looked bad in front of other people. Once I came to my senses, I realized I should carefully evaluate the payoff of trying to change another person. In this case, it was definitely not worth the effort.

It turns out that my motive for changing this person was off, too: I was motivated by the self-righteous idea that I was better than him, that my angle was better than his, that his behavior was bad and needed to stop. But none of these assessments made the least bit of positive difference in my own quality of work. In fact, they detracted from it. I’d like to get back some of the time and emotional energy I put into trying to get something different from this relationship.

Eventually I shifted my thinking and my behavior. I asked others to meet along with the two of us. I ignored bad behavior, and calmly redirected the conversation when this person tried to throw me under the bus. I looked for allies to help me overcome barriers this person created. While I never got it completely right, at least I wasn’t waking up at 3 am each day, my heart pounding with dread about the coming workday.

A favorite quote I return to again and again is, “you cannot enlighten the unconscious.” It’s best to recognize futility and move beyond it—to focus on oneself and others who  warrant the time and effort that relationship- and team-building requires. Whether you’re the manager, the colleague, or the subordinate, accepting, working with, or rejecting others’ strengths, limitations, and behaviors is just part of the job.