Skip to main content
managing

It's a time of year for reflection. Let's reflect on the impact of bosses, past and present, and their influence on us. Let's reflect, more importantly, on our own skills as managers and supervisors (and supervisors-to-be).

The first managers we meet are parents, relatives, babysitters and teachers. Their influence can linger in many ways throughout our lives. Our first bosses at work can also have a profound influence. In some cases we mimic these first managers – tough, absent father, and we become one; overbearing first supervisor, and we apply that style. But of course, we can also become the reverse, not wanting others to suffer as we did. Life is complicated. To understand our own managerial impulses, we need to dig deep.

Here are two other important influences:

  • What were the top two strengths of the best manager or team leader you have worked for?
     
  • What were the top two weaknesses of the worst manager or team leader you have worked for?

For me, the best manager was a passionate visionary and, at the same time, a careful, considerate leader at his best. The worst managers – two are coming to mind – were unable to listen to contrary ideas and arguments from subordinates. I can still remember one cutting his fingernails while I was making some (futile) argument to him. Both were bullies and one had a cruel streak. But I don't mean this to be about me.

Slow down – I know newspaper columns are meant to be read quickly – and try to answer the questions about your own life. They may reveal something of who you are today.

Two more questions:

  • What are the three biggest mistakes managers or team leaders make?
     
  • What are the three wisest things managers or team leaders can do?

Bad management is an unrecognized crisis in Canada. I suggested we begin a conversation on the issues. These two questions dig into that. The answers can help you to understand – or shape – your own theory of management.

  • In taking a new job, what are the traps you watch out for?

This is another way to understand what you dislike. One time the office of the person interviewing me seemed like a funeral parlour, with a deathly stillness – empty orderliness, reflective of the leader in the interviewer's chair, I sensed. Not for me.

Two wrap-up questions:

  • What’s your biggest weakness as a manager or team leader?
     
  • What are the biggest challenges you face to be effective as a manager or team leader?

Now we're coming closer to the target: You. And closer to action.

It's worth considering whether your weaknesses relate to the bosses in your life – whether they have influenced you – since that can help with change. But change won't be as simple as deducing the behavioural influence. Change only comes by disciplined effort – deliberate practice.

Your first instinct may be to tackle the biggest flaws – derailers that can prevent career success. But most advice on behavioural change stresses taking on doable challenges in small chunks so you can develop a pattern of success and build upon it.

So pick one weakness that you think you can improve on and write down what you specifically need to do to improve. Lay out a battle plan, one practical step at a time. Consider the triggers that create bad behaviour – stress and irritating personality types of colleagues are frequent contributors – and how to avoid their sway. Review your progress every week, without fail. If you can, create a scorecard. For example, you might promise with every direct report to express gratitude once a week. Be specific, with a numerical goal, if possible.

I should warn that evaluating progress once a week may be too infrequent. Every evening, executive coach Marshall Goldsmith pays an associate to call and ask a series of questions that force him to recap whether he was true to his behavioural intentions as he went through the day's activities. That forces accountability – he can't shrug it off.

Time to get going.

Cannonballs

  • My heart sank on Dec. 24th when I arrived at a bakery five minutes after it opened to find about 60 people ahead of me. But it was a good lesson in customer service from Bread & Butter in Kingston, Ont.: The line snaked into the warmth of a neighbouring restaurant, where the bakery had arranged for coffee and baked goods to be available, while every staff member it had handled our orders. What can you do similarly in your busy times?
     
  • More than 60 per cent of frontline leaders say they never received any training for their new role.
     
  • A study that proves the obvious: If you pay more attention to your cellphone instead of the employee in front of you, they consider it a snub and it builds mistrust. So avoid phubbing (their term for phone snubbing).

Follow related authors and topics

Authors and topics you follow will be added to your personal news feed in Following.

Interact with The Globe