In the process of the Management of You the start of the new year is a great time to evaluate the past year and set goals for the upcoming twelve months. The assessment should include personal growth, development and goals as well as company goals and objectives. W. Edwards Deming said: “Failure to understand people is the devastation of western management.” Understanding people takes time, experience, wisdom and commitment. The most difficult person to understand is yourself. There is a lot of emotion tied up in performing a self-evaluation and emotion clouds both the facts as well as your ability to reason. However, the process of self-examination and objective evaluation will greatly enhance your decision making skills as well as your management skills. Each person you evaluate after you is less difficult due to the severe reduction of emotion in the process. The proper management of you will enable you to grow and excel as a manager of others.

KEY ONE: Your effort should be spent in best identifying your top three strengths in order of priority.

Your strengths are the strengths you bring to your occupation. Once you have identified these three strengths evaluate your management of these strengths in the past year. Did you use them to their maximum; were they relevant to your occupation; did they grow or diminish during the year; did you work at improving them or take them for granted; and did you acknowledge that at least one of your strengths can be a weakness? Once your evaluation of the past is set your goals for improvement in the upcoming year should be clearer. Put those goals in writing. And commit to working on them. That’s step one in the management of you.

KEY TWO: Establish business goals for the year ahead.

In setting those goals be aware of the resources necessary to achieve those goals and your ability to impact and assign the necessary resources. Don’t give yourself a goal that is beyond your capability to manage and achieve. If your goals include the management of others detail what you have learned from the management of you and how you will use that knowledge to influence your behavior in the upcoming year. For example, you might discover that you did not receive clear direction from your manager during the past year and that lack of clear direction negatively impacted your performance. As a first step involving the management of you resolve that you will ask more questions to better clarify directions from your boss. That will enable you to perform better at your position. Second, resolve that you will work harder to clearly communicate your directions to your team or group and will encourage questions to insure your direction is clear. That will improve the performance of those reporting to you. The total end result will be of great value to the company, to your career and to the career of those reporting to you. Everyone wins!

KEY THREE: The main key, as always, is honesty.

It starts with being truly honest with yourself and then maintaining that same commitment to honesty in dealing with others. Being honest is a challenge. William Shakespeare wrote: “Ay sir; to be honest, as this world goes, is to be one man picked out of ten thousand.” The percentage is debatable but the point is clear: honesty is not a commodity, it is a virtue. Our first president George Washington wrote: “I consider the most enviable of titles the character of an honest man”. It is work and commitment to be honest but well worth the effort.

These three vital keys will get your year off to a superb start and contribute greatly in the management of you.