Why Are Managers Extraordinary People

Over the last few years I had the honor to work under the guidance of 7 managers at various companies. I found myself particularly lucky because every single one of them is an amazing person with great characteristics, and offers an abundance of things that can be learned by people around.

Aside from being extraordinary in their roles as managers in the workplaces and acquaintance outside of work, there are many similarities among their traits and habits, as I have surprisingly realized one day. From there I followed the footprints of memory and traced back to the pieces of memories deeply embroidered in my mind of the time that I worked with them and all the things I have learned from them. Gradually, the result of that effort crystallized from trivial discoveries of their similarities in different aspects to the full realization of what it takes to be an extraordinary manager.

1. Be passionate and active in life

The number one shocking similarities among all those 7 people was that 5 out of 7 of them have hobbies in sports or exercising. For those 5, they all had times routinely allocated in their busy schedules dedicated for getting into the outdoors and shed some sweat after a nice and long workout. Some were biking, some were running. Some were long, some lasted shorter. Some encompassed only the solitude of a single person, some involved the participation of a party of people. Despite those differences, the one thing that remains identical to them was their passion for living an active and fulfilling life. Those exercises that are solidly built into their lives are not merely for the purpose of staying in fit, but also for enjoying the outdoors, explore their potentials, stretch their endurance, and enjoy the complacency of achieving set goals on a daily basis, whether alone or together with others.

2. Dedicated and work hard

The one thing that stroke not a tiny bit of difference among them was their absolute dedication towards their work, and their commitments were easily reflected through their hard work. They all had insanely busy schedules by any measures, with tons of responsibilities. Just like any managers, they all had to effectively manage the operations within the team and the well-beings of every single member in the team. However, none of them had shown any bit of complaint, and have often suffered personal times for the sake of their work.

3. Humbleness, you live you learn

Each every one of those 7 managers is the elite in their respective field of expertise, and yet they all have shown great humbleness at accepting new and different ideas from their subordinates. More importantly, they are all willing to invest great resources into changes for the team and themselves from the suggestions of others if they deem necessary.

4. Leadership

One cannot be a manager if he or she lacks leaderships, nevertheless a great one. I have observed extraordinary leaderships in all of my managers, who exhibited what it takes to lead the team to achieve its short and long term goals, as well as inspire people on the team to give their best at their work and become motivated to improve themselves iteratively.

5. Kindness

Often people mistakenly correlates effective management with strict rules, policies and harsh management approaches. My own experiences, however, proves the nonexistence of that relation. The managers that I worked with scatter pretty evenly across the spectrum of personality, but they all have their kind sides exposed to the people that they work with. And it is that kindness what it took to make people willing to work with them and become motivated to grow and learn together with their managers.

6. Vision

Part of having effective leadership is to have great vision over the goals of the team and the organization, and being able to foresee the upcoming endeavors that are necessary to be successful. Pretty much all the managers that I worked with had cunning visions for the teams and the organization, and were also able to effectively strategize and utilize available resources to achieve the visions they had in mind.

I guess the several points listed above would put into a pretty good recipe for becoming an extraordinary manager, or at least an extraordinary person, suffice to say. While I’m on the journey to discover even more similarities among them and the great inner powers within them that formulated their success, I’m going to start apply some of these points onto myself in an attempt to become a greater individual.