Manager development becomes more useful when feedback names observable behaviours and leads to practice.
01 · The picture
Manager development becomes more useful when feedback names observable behaviours and leads to practice.
Follow the decisions
01Observe
02Give feedback
03Practise
04Review
02 · The idea
How I understand it.
Translate the idea of good management into behaviours that employees can describe. These might include useful feedback, clear priorities, career conversations and help with difficult work. Gather evidence from several directions, including team feedback, examples of day-to-day practice and the context in which a manager operates. Then choose a specific development need and connect it to coaching, practice and a later review. Google's Project Oxygen provides a case of combining internal research with feedback, training and recognition. Its findings arose within one company, so copying its list requires judgement about your own work and culture. Survey scores also need interpretation: team circumstances and response patterns can influence them. The practical lesson is to build a repeatable way to identify helpful behaviour, develop it and check whether employees experience an improvement.
03 · A fictional example
Put it into a business.
Employees say their manager changes priorities without explaining why. The manager starts a weekly discussion of current priorities and the reasons for any changes. A colleague observes two sessions and gives feedback. After six weeks, the team reviews whether work is clearer, using examples of recent decisions alongside a short anonymous survey. The next development step follows that evidence.
04 · Bring it into the room
Which management behaviour could your team observe and help you improve over the next six weeks?
One decisionOne next actionOne way to check
Where this note comes from
An original explanation drawn from my saved learning material. The worked example is fictional.
Harvard OPM · Unit 3Course reading or session material
Google's Project Oxygen - Do Managers Matter
PDF pp. 5–9; research, action plan, feedback surveys and training; Unit 3 Leadership overview p. 2
These notes collect my interpretations and applications. The schools and authors retain their original teaching materials.