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AUTOMATIC MERCHANDISER EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD Anant Agrawal Cantaloupe Systems Brad Ellis Crane Co. Carl Moser Cardinal Canteen Food Service Chuck Reed Crane Payment Innovations (CPI) Elyssa Allahyar-Steiner Avanti Markets Inc. Jeff Whitacre Food Express Jim Carbone The Classic Group/Chicago Coffees & Teas Jodi Glimpse Camelback Vending Joe Hessling 365 Retail Markets Lee Hartnett Commercial Coffee Service/ Food Systems Inc. Michael Miller Mondelez International Paresh Patel PayRange Paul Schlossberg D/FW Consulting Sandy Thornton VendEdge The value of education Continuing to learn has helped me become a better manager. HIRE people that will complement your strengths, weaknesses. Facebook/VendingMarket @VendingMagazine http://linkd.in/VendingMarketWatch hrough all the years I've worked in publishing, I've attended at least one annual trade show. I've listened to roughly 60 keynote speakers and hundreds of educational sessions. It's an interesting part of my job and I didn't realize how valuable it would be until I became a manager. Those of you who have gone from running a company yourself or being promoted to a manager can likely relate to how it requires a different set of skills. You fnd yourself trying to balance being a mentor with setting clear require- ments and goals. It can be diffcult to delegate the tasks that you either most enjoyed or believe to be most important. How do you even decide the right candidates to hire? How do you analyze their performance — being fair, motivating and also getting what you want? Get tips from trade shows I asked questions of other managers, but I also turned to the tips and tricks I col- lected along the way from keynote speakers. They provided a great frame- work as I gathered experience. One of my earliest educational sessions was given by a basketball coach who talked about how he felt we shouldn't encourage everyone to learn everything. Sure, a basic knowledge is fne, but a point guard shouldn't be trained as a center. He made the argument that each member of a team, including business teams, has certain skills, and the boss's job is to put those skills together to form a productive whole. Business owners would be better to hire employees who excel in the areas they are weak, rather than try to be strong everywhere. For example, an owner who enjoys talking to people but doesn't have more than a basic understanding of sales data can create a dream team by hiring a highly analytical person who is great with data. One of the focuses of at least eight of the speakers I remember, including a couple of prominent sports fgures and the CEO of a pizza chain, was the idea of positive reinforce- ment. It's one attribute to good management that some bosses disregard. However, numer- ous surveys show that recognition is what many employees seek. One speaker used to keep 10 pennies in his right pocket. Each day, he would try to compliment someone on his staff. Each time he did, he moved one penny to his left pocket. Often it was job related, but it could also be about a new hair cut or anything. Another speaker used to aim to compliment people in his life once every seven days. He had concluded that amount of time was the sweet spot for positive reinforcement. Aim to motivate individually Motivation is another key duty of a manager and it changes with each employee. I recall one speaker who used what looked like a web of words to determine motivation. He asked employees to write down words that were impor- tant to them. He did the same thing. They would compare "webs" and then he would ask what they wanted from their work. In this way, he was able to provide the right type of motivation. Yet another speaker tried to make employees feel united with the cause of the company. He would encourage them to participate in deci- sions and share input. The employees felt as though they had a stake in the future and felt valued. It made company success personal. This issue is featured at NAMA OneShow, a great place to see what more you can learn. T 8 Automatic Merchandiser VendingMarketWatch.com April 2015 E D I T O R ' S N O T E B Y E M I L Y R E F E R M A T