Suppose you’re a young person who has just been promoted into their first management job. You’re supervising a bunch of folks, some of whom may have been peers. You know that there’s an awful lot to learn. Where to begin?
I’ve trained a lot of those kinds of folks over the last 30 years. I may have even been one myself at some point. So today’s post is about the thing that trips up a lot of managers, even those with a number of years of experience under their belts.
When you become a manager, the hardest thing to grasp is that your job is mostly to help others do their jobs. You really don’t have much of a role other than that. There is a tendency as we see subordinates struggling to finish something to “take charge” (something we managers do!) and do it yourself. That’s as bad as doing your kid’s homework. They don’t learn and the reality is that you might not be as smart as they are and get it wrong if it’s in an area that’s not really where most of your expertise lies.
As an example, I manage technical people from time to time, even in my role as a consultant. I don’t pretend to know as much as they do about code or some other things. What I do know how to do is to ask questions and formulate logical solutions which they can then translate into the technical stuff. I’m not doing their jobs: I can’t. I’m doing my job: giving them the support and resources they need to do it themselves.
If your people need pencils, go get them. If they need training, offer it. If they need a pep talk, deliver it. But do NOT do their work for them, even if you believe you can do it better or deliver it more quickly. We are only as good as the people working with us and failing to develop your staff is the biggest reason I see managers struggling over the long-term. I know what I can do: my goal is to find out what my team can do so that one day one of them can replace me as I move up the ladder.
Make sense?
Consult Keith 