What makes a good manager?
A simple, 5 word question, but similar to “What is the Meaning of Life?” it’s elusive.
Here at Attuned we believe Management is Art.
Like art, management can appear simple. It is actually elusive and complex. It takes years to nurture and refine technique. Like art, it can capture the best of the human spirit, inspire us. But too often management is undersold.
We have all seen memes like this:
“What makes a good manager?” is asked at three different stages of our career, from three different perspectives - when we are members of a team talking about our manager, when we become a manager ourselves, and when we lead an organization, and try to make sure all of our managers are good managers. Regardless of the stage of our career, regardless the vantage point, the answer to “How to be Good?” remain the same.
Here we deliver 10 of the most important behaviors that managers need to practice in order to be part of that special group - good managers. This is a sophisticated list, for people serious about improving their management skills.
1) Connect Top Management to the Front Line
Social media tells us managers should be leaders. Ideally this is true, but it is not necessary.
The manager role in and of itself is extremely critical to the organization. It is the connective cartilage that allows the company to move, to get things done. It is the role needed to make sure things are executed, responsible for the daily operations of top management’s vision and goals.
Managers sit in the middle ground between those who set the vision and goals of the company, top management, and those who actually interact with customers and the daily tasks, the front line. What the front line experiences - the complaints they receive, the pressures from the customer, the conversations they have - can be very different to the pretty vision that top managers spout. Managers need to be receptive to both sides, act like the perfect synapse.
Managers need to be receptive and understanding to the front line.
This is the key.
As a manager you need to re-word the company’s goals in to your own voice. Keep the company vision in mind, factor in the daily troubles of the front line and deliver an honest message about why the team has this goal, how it connects to the overall vision. Managers need to rework this message consistently, and it always needs to be authentic.
Deliver the company’s message in your own honest voice, but within the lanes set by the company.
Master this skill and you will become a better manager.
2) Understand Each Individual
Likely you have a variety of personalities, a variety of backgrounds, and a variety of motivations on your team.
Hopefully your company has hired well, with people believing in the overall vision of the company, keeping proper attention to hire for a diversity of backgrounds and experiences. This means people on the team being different to you.
Those team members who are similar to you will likely be easy to manage.
It’s the ones who have different motivations, and different values that bring out the true skill of a good manager. You need to understand them as individuals. That is the most important step. We’ve found that there are 1.7 million different combinations of intrinsic motivators. It’s that complex set of interactions that a manager needs to engage with to intrinsically motivate each member so they want to come to work, want to do their best.
Using Attuned to bring objective, scientific data to this complex equation can help.
Your normal visional allows you to see your team member’s behavior, and you can see their personality, but motivations and their values are not visible. If you have each of your team members take Attuned, you (and they will) be able to visibly see their intrinsic motivations.
Understanding each member’s intrinsic motivations, will help you to change the way you communicate, to the way that they need, not the way that is most “natural” to you.
This will engage them, and lead to higher performance. To be a good manager you need a team with high performance…
3) Keep the Team Winning
A team needs to feel like they are winning.
Success keeps morale high.
A high morale brings buoyant moods, which helps your team overcome more challenges, creating a virtuous cycle helping you to continue to achieve more.
As a manager you need to find a way to keep your team feeling like they are winning. That they are achieving.
The goal from corporate leadership may be hard, it may take time to achieve.
To be a sophisticated, good manager you will need to break that goal down in to smaller pieces. Talk to your team about achieving those smaller pieces, and get them excited about those achievements.
Celebrate the wins.
For very ambitious people, it can sometimes seem trivial to celebrate small wins. This can be especially true for entrepreneurial types who have an ability to tolerate suffering and difficulty, for a long time, much longer than the average individual, in order to achieve really big goals. But very few people are built like this. Most of your team members won’t be programmed for that level of deferred gratification.
Articulating consistent achievements is so important to being a good manager.
Do you need to negotiate more achievable targets with top management? Then do it.
As a manager you should consistently be checking in with yourself, asking yourself the question: “Does the team feel like they are winning?”
If not, find a way.
Choose a different goal, set a shorter destination, be louder about celebrating.
They need to feel like they are being successful, that the work they do matters.
If you can keep the team winning it will be easier to have:
4) Tough Conversations
It should never come as a surprise to a member when you have a difficult conversation with them. If they are surprised you’re not being a good manager.
The most difficult aspect of having these tough conversations is the first conversation.
Once you have that first conversation, clearly talking about the issue that needed addressing, whether it be performance related, behavioral, or whatnot, then subsequent conversations about that same topic will be progressively easier.
Get the issue out in the air with them. Privately of course.
You will hear and learn about different techniques to deliver these hard, personal messages - the sandwich technique, etc… They can be help, but ultimately it doesn’t matter.
You just have to have the courage to initiate the first tough conversation about an issue.
Over time, over years, if you care about it, you will get better in how you deliver the message.
Maybe you’ll be less intense, less emotional, more articulate.
But for now, to be a good manager, just go have that tough conversation you have been avoiding.
It will lead to:
5) Psychological Safety
This is a word that every manager should know.
It should be a regular part of the conversation with your team.
Psychological safety means is that each member should be able to be open in their communication, be honest, and not feel like their career or wellbeing will be hindered or attacked if they say something hard to hear.
In diverse teams, psychological safety is key to cohesiveness, the wellbeing of all members, and contributes to whether the team is inclusive in reality or just in word. All of these lead to better performance. If people come from different national, ethnic, religious, sexual, physical backgrounds it’s likely they don’t share common communication styles and patterns. Culturally accepted behaviors might start from a different place. It’s the manager’s role to make sure that they don’t just make it easy for people like them culturally to communicate, but rather each member has a feeling of safety to express themselves openly, especially on difficult topics, without fear of retribution.
This can be quite hard for managers, as it takes maturity.
It takes humility.
It takes openness of mind.
And might not feel “natural”.
James Alexander, Founder / CEO of Trive Talent, https://trivetalent.com, discusses one of his worst managers
6) Fast Feedback Loops
Feedback needs to be delivered timely to the member. Especially critical feedback.
The closer you can close the gap between their action or behavior, and the timing you deliver the feedback, the better. Do it quickly.
This speed will help team members understand what needs to be changed.
It will also help create a psychologically safe environment as you will not be carrying around baggage of critical feedback you need to deliver, looking at the member through that negative lens, holding those critical feelings inside until the next 1-on-1, or the next “right” time. If you do hold on to the feedback, your member will feel you have something against them, which will erode trust and wellbeing.
To be a good manager, psychological safety within the team is critical, and a measurement that managers should be evaluating themselves on.
Here’s a bonus 6.1:
When you give critical feedback:
do so privately
get to the point very quickly
once clear, and you’ve had sufficient discussion, move on
don’t use “feedback” tricks
The Sandwich Feedback Method is popularly taught. It suggests you give praise, criticism, then praise.
Don’t use it.
You’ll often be tense when delivering critical feedback so you will come across as not honest, not authentic. The manipulation is easy to spot. You’ll be serving up the sauce that’ll weaken the environment of psychological safety you worked so hard to build.
7) Being Hard / Being Soft
This is probably the most difficult skill to master.
Most people can be “hard”, in whatever way you interpret that: having high standards, being disciplined, giving critical feedback, not getting too close to staff. All this is important.
Most people can also be “soft”, especially new managers, who often fall in to the trap of being non-managers, being too accommodating to members.
But knowing when to be which is very difficult.
There is not an easy answer, as it comes down to circumstance, and context. Like much of life it is a balance. A balance we are always so delicately trying to hold.
For now, be aware of which you are being. Keep track of how hard you are being, and how soft you are being. Mentally take note after your meetings. Do you need to adjust?
If you struggle to get this right, it’s better to be hard.
You can always apologize.
Say “sorry”.
Be open and transparent. Which can help you pull back that relationship.
But being too soft can accommodate poor behavior. Give that too much room to flourish. It will mean you have to be much harder later on, which will be harder for your team to understand.
8) Don’t be a Super-Hero, be a Coach
This is a case of “What Got You Here Won’t Get You There”. To have been selected to become a manager you were probably a top performer. But, sadly, those top individual contributor skills don’t convert to being a good manager.
To be a good manager you need to be a Coach. Encourage your team. Understand them. Have high expectations for them. Develop them to be their best.
You don’t do everything for the team. Don’t use your superpowers to constantly fill the gaps, put the team on your shoulders, and take them over the line to reach the goals.
If that’s what’s happening you are the star, and they are the supporting cast.
That doesn’t make the team better. No-one really grows. You’ll burnout, and the team will be unmotivated.
Rotimi Ismail, Managing Partner, RS Hunter, Nigeria
Certified Coach
9) Walk the Narrow Corridor
Find the path between chaos and an over-regulated, rule-based structure.
If you can walk that narrow path than you’ll find creativity and innovation. Your team will become more resilient, flexible. They will be able to come up with ideas freely to meet the constantly dynamic business environment.
If you have too many rules creativity dies.
Your member’s will be scared to take risk, to step out of line.
If you don’t have enough structure, or are a non-manager, it will lead to chaos. You might have talented people but they’ll go in different directions. There will be primitive, tribal decision-making and social structures. You will not be able to achieve much.
Liberty thrives in the narrow corridor in-between.
10) Be Thoughtful
Every once in a while make a thoughtful, personalized gesture for each of your members.
This means learning their tastes, knowing what they like.
It’s kind of like listening to your partner: just quietly pay attention to what they are saying they want to buy, and then surprising them at their birthday with that thing they just mentioned once or twice. They’ll be flattered because “You remembered,” “You were listening.”
Do the same for your team.
Now You Know How to Be a Good Manager
Are you a good manager or a bad manager?
When you aren’t around are you being talked about negatively by your team, or admirably?
Do you help them to be their best?
Or are people voting with their feet and leaving your team?
Managers have to work with a wide variety of personalities, by people driven by different intrinsic motivations, to connect the front lines with top management. It is often a thankless task. But one that is critical for organizations to operate well. Managers account for 70% of the variance in engagement of people at work. And despite some of the momentary trends, management is not going away anytime soon.
This wasn’t the usual list on what makes a good manager. We’ve given you the sophisticated guide on how to be a good manager. So, now you know. In some immortal words “And knowing is half the battle.”
Now go out, be a good manager.