Its Tuesday Morning here in beautiful Atlanta and I got my 3rd day at the #SHRM12 conference kicked off early for a 7am session with James Robbins (@jamesrobbins97) for a session called “9 Minutes on Monday” the quick and easy way to go from manager to leader.

Getting ready for the presentation — first session of the day — and it was a packed session. Robbins playfully comments, “Its a 7am session — how many of you are from the west coast… what are you doing here?!?! Its 4am!!!”

What a great way to kick off the day! I found James Robbins to be a fantastic and inspirational! He had some of the best stories to tie back to his points — from his time in Bolivia and climbing the mountain to stories about his family (his child Sydney riding her bicycle in the snow with James to get to a client meeting had me in tears laughing!).

I want to share my 3 biggest takeaways(and trust me, I got WAY more than three of them):

It’s the little things — Its not about adding more engagement levers, its about using the ones that we have better. 

Our jobs as managers, leaders, and HR People — get results! We are paid to produce results, and our people produce the results, so you’ve got to be a good leader.

Our teams are like gauges — we have to pay attention to them and make sure that we don’t loose focus on them.

We also need to remember that our people have the need to be more than a number. As leaders we need take a genuine interest in our teams. We should take a minute to learn about each one of them– and be real about it (ixnay on the surveymonkey). It’ll take time, but as you get to know about them you’re also building trust. “Caring is a form of trust,” says James.

My third biggest take away is that people crave feedback because they want to know where they are to make an achievement. Can you give your people feedback? Can you give it timely? When you give feedback do you tie it back to a tangible effect? Many of us probably do the first two easily — but  maybe forget that third point. Its important that we can tie the feedback back to an effect (impact to you as a manager/leader, the company, clients, or other goal) to help people get that feeling of achievement.

Check out a more about Jame’s recognition codes on how to give meaningful and effective feedback to your teams.

James Robbins giving speech “Nine Minutes on Monday” at the 2012 SHRM conference, Tuesday June 26, 2012

I look forward to putting these into practice when I return to the office on Thursday — that’s right, I’m so excited, I can’t even wait to Monday!