Thinking about being a Manager?
There are 2 quick things that I wish I’d known before being a manager:
- The best managers understand the distinction between managing a team and leading a team.
- They’ve often worked for a great boss at some point in their own career.
“Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.” — Peter Drucker
In his book, Peter Mauch, states that Leadership without Management yields steps forward, but as many if not more steps backwards. Management without Leadership avoids any step backward, but doesn’t move forward.
Managing a team comes down to the operational decision-making — hiring, firing, measuring team performance, allocating time, resources and feedback — all with the goal of achieving the optimum effectiveness of your team. A good manager has a superior skill set that best allows her to decide on behalf of the team how to maximize their collective performance. Therefore a manager’s decisions are tactical and absolutely crucial to the success of the team and the company.
Leading a team, to me, almost represents the inverse of management. It’s not about what you are deriving from your team, but instead has to do with what the team is getting from you? How are they motivated and inspired by your vision? How does your communication align them with each other and the company goals? How are you allowing for and fostering innovation in your team? How are you encouraging their development? What are they learning from you? How are you using your experiences to help them be the best [analyst/designer/engineer] they can be?
The best people I’ve ever worked with usually have a mix of these two qualities
If you’ve had the privilege of working for a truly great boss, you probably feel this way because of what they taught you, how they helped shape your career, or maybe they even helped shape you. Was it their style of feedback that constantly pushed you to innovate? Did they recognize your potential early on and give you space to design how you would work and create without excessive direction? Maybe they took your mistake and used it as an opportunity to change the way you thought going forward. Drawing from the management styles of leaders who have impacted you the most is the best way to ensure you will do the same for your team.
But what if you find yourself approaching the threshold of becoming a manager, but you’ve never experienced a great boss yourself? If you’ve achieved enough professionally to be considered as a good candidate for management, you have likely received some form of guidance along the way that helped you to get there. If not the guidance from a boss, perhaps it was a mentor, or someone senior to you that you’ve looked up to. Thinking about the people who taught you the most, even if they weren’t a boss, is the best way to prepare to impact others. If you still don’t have any experiences to draw from, you may want to consider whether this is the right time to move into management, and whether you are doing so for the right reasons. It might be beneficial to first find a mentor and work up a discourse before attempting to manage other people. In preparing for a management role, being a “natural leader” is a great head start, but won’t take you nearly as far as your past learning experiences.
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