What Makes a Good Manager?

I’m often asked for ideas on how to be a good manager and how to be a good people manager. These are the essential skills of managers no matter what is the end product – computers, customer service or bread.

Make a list of the names of your previous “managers”. You may even want to go back to schools and when you were growing up. You may even want to consider your parents and how they managed you.

Consider also stories which stick in your mind which you’ve heard from friends and relations about their experiences of people who managed them.

Against each “manager” make 2 lists – what they did well and what they did badly.

Don’t rush this – give yourself a couple of days to ponder it all.

The aim is to give you a reminder of what works and what doesn’t work and importantly, why it works or doesn’t work.

It will be a guide to what your behavior as a manager should be.

It could also be cathartic for you to finally face some of your own demons.

• How did they treat you?
• How did they make you feel?
• Did you trust them? Why? Why not?
• Did they show you respect?
• How did they go about telling you that you weren’t doing well or doing the right thing?

Take an honest look at yourself. How do you measure up against the best managers you’ve just listed? Have you adopted any of the less worthy strategies of the managers you didn’t like and who didn’t treat you well? We have to be cautious of using unworthy tactics because you know they worked well on you by making you fearful or make you perch nervously on the edge of your seat most of the time.

Now you have a better and clearer idea of where you are right now before you get any more training or experience or work on developing more skills.