Now, as regular readers are aware, I not only pretend to understand Enterprise Technology but at times I also masquerade as a mid-level IT Manager; fortunately, I’ve had a number of good mentors and I like to think I’ve learnt something along the way.
The best managers know their team’s capabilities and trust in them; the best managers are the ones who don’t have a permanent frown and stressed look. In fact the very best managers often appear to do very little at all and just give a gentle nudge here and there.
It’s a confidence game, if you look confident most of the time, your staff will do too. And it’s not just about having confidence in your staff, you must have confidence in your own capabilities; for example, ‘Could you do your manager’s job?’; it always surprises me when a manager expresses the opinion that they could not do their manager’s job or even their manager’s manager’s job. Not would they want to do it but could they do it if push came to shove? And could they do it well?
If you can’t do it; you should be asking yourself why? What is it that you are missing? What skills do you need or do you think you are just not good enough? If it’s the latter, you’ve got a problem because you are a bed-blocker and your team is being held back. If you are missing some skills, perhaps you need to get some development and mentoring.
Or perhaps you are just not interested and are confident that you’ve reached your level of competence? Or perhaps you simply have different priorities? That’s fine and actually you might have a lot to offer your staff as long you ask yourself some questions and are honest with your team. Often it is teams run by such managers who feed an organisation with some of its best people.
And you also need to be asking yourself, who in your team can do your job? And then ask why not again? If no-one in your team is capable of stepping into your job; ask yourself what do they need to do and how do you get them there.
I see too many managers who are so insecure in their position that they are holding themselves and more importantly their team back simply because they are protecting their position without having the confidence to move on to the next level. And yet it is often those managers who won’t let their star performers move to further their career.
Yes, you can judge a manager by the quality of his team but I reckon you can really judge a manager on the quality of the people that they move on into bigger and better things.
