The roles you take on
"Try being a manager yourself before you go too far off into your 'they're all idiots' zone." That was Jim's feedback on an earlier note of mine, and not the first time I've had this sort of feedback.I've had "manager" titles pinned on me, which certainly is different from actually being a manager. I'm also a parent, which is somewhat like being a manager. There too, there are occasions when you can do nothing right.
When you have the "manager" title pinned on you, you also inherit, by way of culture, a repertoire of behaviors, most of which are idiotic. For instance, you might inherit the model that a manager's job is to make decisions; to be an arbiter. In many cases, this is actually the case, and actually a useful function you can perform for the business; but far too often, the model is implicitly held, never questioned, and inappropriately applied to all sorts of situations.
Unlearning these "model manager" behaviours is the hard part of that job. So in that sense, managers are all idiots; and subordinates are all incompetent in that same sense. The "manager/subordinate" structure carries with it these assumptions. So do "parent/child", "husband/wife", etc. come with theirs.
If you are lucky, you will have at some point the opportunity to actually train for the kind of situations you will encounter as a manager (or a subordinate, or a parent, etc.). In many of these roles "training" is quite unlike the sort of formal training we are familiar with, but it takes place anyway.
By training, I mean a context in which it is safe to experiment, and discard what the model says you "should" do, and come up with behaviours that a) fit the situation at hand, b) make effective use of your individual skills and abilities, and c) are considerate of the other persons involved in the situation.
When we pull that off, we're definitely not idiots. The more we build up our repertoire of behaviours that fit these criteria, the smarter we become. And the smarter we are, the farther away from stereotype roles such as "manager".
two comments:
I agree with everything you said Laurent if you insist on the clear distinction between “manager” and “bad manager” or perhaps more generously: “someone doing badly in the manager role at the moment.”
As you point out, you don’t have to mindlessly inherit the stereotypical behaviors. I never did. Those behaviors are there perhaps as defaults when your attention is legitimately on something else. Perhaps such behaviors are there for no good reason at all.
For me, at least two things have been sufficient antidote for mindless folly as a manager, leading to the a) b) and c) you name in your training paragraph above.
- Realizing that I am accountable for the productivity of a bunch of resources beyond my simple self, and that some of those “resources” so-called are human people.
- Realizing that as a manager of people, my job is creating a context where these others can succeed.
I may have been wrong and unproductive as a manager, perhaps often so. I have never been mindless. Those two realizations are far, far too huge in their implications for me ever to have descended into mindless behaviors.
I think the issue is one of title vs. role actually. I’ve described role, functionally. Along with the “title” of manager within hierarchical organizations often comes a sense of superiority, a sense of entitlement. There’s sometimes a sort of caste system within organizations. That’s all about dysfunctional sociology, actually. Has nothing to do with the “role” of manager. There are way too many of these folks lately, but that’s an organizational problem, not a personal problem with the individuals. Wrong people promoted, promoted the wrong way, for the wrong reasons, with wrong and / or insufficient training, wrong surrort, wrong role models, and idiotically wrong expectations on them. It’s remarkable that so many organizations work at all, what with all these compounded errors.
BTW, there’s a recent rant on Artima with sentiment on bad managers similar to yours, and similar to mine for that matter. Like your post, they say “managers” not “bad managers” or “managers doing the job badly.” The role is both necessary and incredibly valuable if done well. It’s also a disaster when populated by people who don’t understand it’s purpose, or who are underskilled at the job. Worse when it’s a sort of reward, and the people filling the role feel in some sense entitled.
The Artima piece describes the almost perfectly prototypical disasterous manager of technical people – the badly promoted uber-tech.
All of this begs two questions:
- What do we do, so that we can be good, or at least not horrible managers should the job fall to us?
- What do we do to encourage growth from badly promoted “managers” into actual contributing managers, in people who are unfortunately stuck in the role?
Not that I have an opinion . . .
- Jim
James Bullock () - 15 02 04 - 05:19
Ijust want to help me with “Cases for and against subordinate participation in decision making”.
kyazze sam. - 22 10 05 - 17:07
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