I’ve had a lot of managers over the course of my 35 year working life. Some of them were fantastic, some of them … well, let’s just say that the police got involved at some point. Suffice to say, I’ve seen a pretty decent wide spectrum of management, and learned a lot from them.
And just so we’re clear, here, I don’t refer to “Manager” by title, specifically, just people to whom I reported. Titles included Manager, Director, Vice President, Owner, Founder, Managing Partner, CTO, CIO and CEO. It’s not the title that I remember, it’s the action and the understanding that they showed me. Regardless of what was on their business card, they were at one time responsible for managing my performance and a specific point in my career.
There were managers I still miss, decades on from when they were watching over my activities, those who encouraged me to be better, who showed me the ropes when I didn’t even know I was in the ring. These are the ones I remember best.
There are, of course, a host of other managers that I would love to forget, though they taught me, inversely, valuable lessons on how I should act as a manager, myself.
Understand what you know, know what you don’t understand
Managers are not Individual Contributors. They are there to support their teams, support the individuals in those teams, to set standards and expectations, to bring about the best in everyone.
But more importantly, it’s knowing that you can’t do a manager’s role, and contribute to your team’s deliverables at the same time. As you rise in an organization, the less you come to know about a specific topic.
Managers who try to do both are doomed to fail at both: unable to manage the needs of their team members, unable to deliver the quality of the deliverable. Both elements will suffer, leading to a lesser result, poorer team dynamics, and likely a higher turnover. In more extreme cases (and I’ve seen these), you get toxic workplaces, which is a death knell to an organization.
Be consistent, even predictable
One of the greatest myths is that managers (and leaders) should be mysterious, characters who randomly appear and keep their people guessing.
Businesses cannot run like that. The best managers didn’t wear their hearts on their sleeves, so much as had expectations on their backs. That wasn’t intended as a fear tactic, it was a guide – you knew what was reasonable and what was going to cause trouble, allowing you freedom to make judgement calls without having to constantly ask for input.
Importance of flexibility
They’re more like guidelines than actual rules. Barbossa, Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl
Every organization lives and dies by its rules. They’re there to keep guardrails in place and ensure that everyone knows how things work. This is Human Resources, Finance, Legal, Governance, and other large Sentence Case Words and Phrases that keep things running.
The best managers know the rules well enough to keep things running smoothly … and know how those rules can be stretched, bent, even broken without incurring risk, and to whom those deviations in the rules can be applied. And they’re excellent at keeping away backlash because they’ve already judged the benefits vs. consequences.
Calm during disaster
A significant rule of life: Shit happens. The question isn’t if it will or even when, it’s what you’ll do when it comes. For most people, it’s juggling or backpedaling, even breaking down and curling up in a corner.
A good leader smiles and welcomes the challenge. They provide the pillar of strength, the assurance that all will be well, allowing others to sense that calm and move forward through difficulty and uncertainty. (Whether that same leader also curls up in a corner is irrelevant, because no-one ever sees it.)
Trust before suspicion
There are always bad eggs, people who are willing to game the system, take advantage of situations to their own good, talk themselves into a position they have no business occupying. No matter where you go, they’ll be there.
But they’re a minority, even a rarity (if it’s a good organization with good policies), so treating everyone with suspicion on the off chance that one person isn’t pulling their weight bring everyone down. You mostly want people to fly, even soar, and that only happens when they’re free to perform without the constant fear of the All-Seeing Eye.
That’s not to say that leaders trust blindly – that’s a recipe for disaster. No matter how you slice it, trust must be earned. And, sometimes, that means taking trust on credit until there’s a transactional test: if someone’s going to fly … or crash.
Call out bad behaviour
Good leaders address performance issues with their staff through 1-to-1 meetings, where a more intimate setting (not public) can support improvement. That’s the best way to handle the majority of a person’s professional development. This is important not just for those who aren’t meeting expectations and need coaching to improve, but also high performers who strive to be better and set high bars of expectation.
We must recognize that we are human, and we will be facing human behaviour. That sometimes means that people do bad things:
- Belittle others
- Intentionally create division
- Display aggressive behaviour
- Use disrespectful and harmful language
And so on. If any of the above ring a bell, you can likely add a few things to the list. Sometimes these come in small amounts, but like the Death of 1,000 Cuts, they add up.
Calling out the culprit(s) is two-fold:
- Talk about the problem
- Take steps to resolve it
That might seem obvious, but both elements are required. If a manager doesn’t acknowledge the issue and speak about it, then the manager is saying they accept the situation. Sometimes, you can’t speak to the culprit directly – they might be superior (and beyond), on a different team, or even external to the organization. But there are avenues for that, as well: talking to the immediate manager or to someone who is responsible for that external person’s relationship.
And there’s the need to acknowledge the situation to those affected by the behaviour: let them know that the situation is seen and heard, the position (usually favouring the team), and that steps are being taken.
Resolving it is another matter, not to be discussed here, but the good managers take effort to at least try. And if they’re unable to correct? Well, there’s always…
Protect the team from the storm
It’s a rare organization where there isn’t a regular shitstorm. Whether it’s internal or caused through external agents, there is almost always a sourness in the air. Good managers keep it away from their team.
Regardless of where the storm starts, good managers will filter out the negativity and/or translate it into facts and potential actions. And sometimes, that means blocking it entirely. Teams can be easily distracted by meaningless trouble, and a good manager will see to blocking such unnecessities.
Even when teams fail – as all teams do at some point – the manager is there to keep the team whole and operating. The manager might end up with a Very Bad Day, but the day ends with them, not the team. And it’s a great manager that takes the beating and smiles to the group.
And sometimes, the storms start within the team. Everyone can have a bad day, some can have a bad week, month, and year. Some issues from home life are dragged into the workplace because – spoiler alert – there is no division between home and office. One always bleeds into the other in a spectrum, there is no hard line.
That means the manager has to recognize that a storm is brewing within the team and capture it before it spreads. A coffee or a walk with a team member, allowing them to express themselves, even vent, is a useful practice and reinforces the trust between manager and staff.
Failure is always an option
Anyone who believes that success is the only option misses the point that perfection is unobtainable. Shit happens. And failure will occur. Whether it’s in an individual or across an entire team, accepting that things will go wrong is an integral part of management.
As with all forms of failure, it’s not that something went wrong, it’s what you do about it. How one acts in the face of failure is far more important than the failure itself. Ideally, impending failure is identified before it happens and steps are taken to mitigate it, but sometimes is sudden and unavoidable.
Managers lead in the face of failure. What happened? Why? Is there blame to cast, where would it lie, and how should it be framed? Merely pointing a finger is valueless – it doesn’t resolve the issue nor does it help prevent it happening again. Understanding what went wrong and how it occurred is eminently more useful, turning it to education and change to bolster processes and people to minimize the change of the issue happening again, if not eliminate it entirely.
Sense of humour
It sounds obvious, but it needs to be said: work is hard. Working with people is harder. Working with people, especially in larger organizations, can be brutal. Trying to keep a positive attitude throughout all of that is critical to one’s mental health.
A stern manager fosters a sense of rigidity, where rules are enforced and joy is harder to find. These are teams that will regularly under-perform, who are afraid to talk about important things, and confiding in their manager is effectively a non-starter.
A good manager isn’t just one who can smile, it’s one who can be a part of the team dynamic, which includes playful banter, jokes, and keeping things light-natured. (This also hearkens back to protecting the team.)
Most importantly, it shows a sense of inclusion, avoiding the “us vs. them” mentality of staff vs. management.
You only succeed when your team succeeds
Managers are judged differently than an individual contributor. ICs will have projects or milestones, parts of a larger puzzle that can be watched and evaluated. Managers have people.
Yes, managers will have their own assignments. They, too, are ICs, but either in very senior roles (eg. they’re a subject matter expert in a team where no other exists) or they’re helping out and backfilling.
But managers are judged by the team’s overall successes and failures. A well-functioning team that regularly delivers means the manager is seen by their superiors as being successful. A discordant team that misses milestones and produced lacklustre results is less so.
Good managers recognize their role in the team: foster the environment to allow teamwork to function