The 3 essential qualities of a good manager
20 August 2014
Read by 4294 persons
For some of you, reaching a management position is a necessary step in your career progression. Or you may already be a manager in your professional role.
Knowing how to manage then becomes a primary issue, because you will be evaluated on your management qualities and the resulting achievements.
And there is no magic recipe for being a good manager.
It's a clever mix between:
Skills: leading, listening, summarizing, organizing, communicating, making decisions, delegating, prioritizing, managing emotions, controlling, motivating, etc.
Behaviors: being exemplary, managing your team, taking risks, assuming the organization's decisions, etc.
Experiences: the diversity of experiences, situations and teams encountered, etc.
This list of elements is far from exhaustive. It can be completed by all the specific areas of management that exist.
But then, do you have to be a superman or a wonder woman to be a good manager?
In reality, experience shows that 3 essential qualities are required of a manager, whatever their field of management. The other skills are then structured around this trio.
Quality #1: Be positive
Imagine you arrive at work in the morning. You greet your manager and they "look grumpy". They are clearly in a bad mood and unhappy.
Do you feel motivated and energized to accomplish your tasks?
It's not certain…
Similarly, during the team meeting, you see your manager sighing constantly.
Does this energize you? Do you want to invest in the team's mission and for your manager?
I doubt it…
The first quality of a manager is their state of mind, which must be positive at all times.
And this is far from easy every day!
Because the manager is a human being. Like everyone else, they have their moods, their internal tensions, their personal problems, their desires, their character, etc.
Nevertheless, they have a management function, at the service of an organization.
The people on their team and in the organization therefore expect them to be able to energize and motivate their team by being positive.
Quality #2: Be pragmatic
The manager is often seen as a solution provider.
The people on their team submit a significant number of problems of all kinds. And this throughout the day.
There is often little respite for the manager who leads a team!
They must therefore propose solutions that move their team forward.
They can also position themselves as a resource person, and accompany the members of their team to find solutions themselves that help them move forward. I'm talking here about the manager-coach posture that I will develop in a future article.
The manager is therefore expected to act and make decisions pragmatically, providing applicable and precise answers. These answers must take into account the constraints of reality and have real impacts.
This quality of the manager is developed in particular with:
A good understanding of their area of responsibility
A good knowledge of the people the manager works with
The development of their human skills
Experience
Quality #3: Be courageous
Your manager systematically announces the good news, and very quickly moves on to the bad news, or even avoids them. What do you think of them?
Are they up to their responsibilities?
Do you trust them?
It's difficult to answer affirmatively…
The manager belongs to the organizational system. They are thus the relay of information and decisions that come from top management (management, board of directors, …).
Teams therefore expect to be informed by their manager. Relaying news that the team doesn't like is part of the manager's responsibilities.
And that takes courage! Certainly, the manager must be a fighter.
Withholding information, from an organizational point of view, leads to unspoken issues and rumors. The consequences of a lack of information can be much more difficult to manage than a difficult decision that has been announced.
The courage that the manager must demonstrate can therefore be expressed in several areas:
Relaying information and decisions to their team, good or bad
Passing on feedback from their team to upper management
Recalibrating an employee following insufficient work
Asserting and defending the interests of their team within the organization
Treating all members of their team equally
Being at the service of their team
Facing all the unpredictable situations of daily life
Taking risks and assuming them
Accepting negative criticism and judgments from their team or the organization
You see, courage is at the base of many other behaviors or abilities that directly impact the way of managing.
Furthermore, and more personally, courage is a virtue that allows you to dare. Without courage, there is no great progress, nor self-improvement.
With courage, it is possible to move mountains!
Self-coaching and actions
It is now time to put the content of this article into action. The following points are addressed to those who wish to develop their management qualities:
Which qualities, among the 3 presented in the article, do you recognize in your current way of managing?
Congratulate yourself on applying them in your daily life. It is forbidden to skip this step!
From tomorrow and during the coming week, define 3 actions to take that correspond to each of the 3 qualities.
Examples:
Being positive: I smile when I shake hands with my colleagues in the morning
Being pragmatic: I ask a very experienced manager for help the next time I am presented with a difficult problem, and without waiting
Being courageous: I announce the news to my team, the one I've been putting off for several days
3hcoaching.com
Posted on August 20, 2014.
Knowing how to manage then becomes a primary issue, because you will be evaluated on your management qualities and the resulting achievements.
And there is no magic recipe for being a good manager.
It's a clever mix between:
Skills: leading, listening, summarizing, organizing, communicating, making decisions, delegating, prioritizing, managing emotions, controlling, motivating, etc.
Behaviors: being exemplary, managing your team, taking risks, assuming the organization's decisions, etc.
Experiences: the diversity of experiences, situations and teams encountered, etc.
This list of elements is far from exhaustive. It can be completed by all the specific areas of management that exist.
But then, do you have to be a superman or a wonder woman to be a good manager?
In reality, experience shows that 3 essential qualities are required of a manager, whatever their field of management. The other skills are then structured around this trio.
Quality #1: Be positive
Imagine you arrive at work in the morning. You greet your manager and they "look grumpy". They are clearly in a bad mood and unhappy.
Do you feel motivated and energized to accomplish your tasks?
It's not certain…
Similarly, during the team meeting, you see your manager sighing constantly.
Does this energize you? Do you want to invest in the team's mission and for your manager?
I doubt it…
The first quality of a manager is their state of mind, which must be positive at all times.
And this is far from easy every day!
Because the manager is a human being. Like everyone else, they have their moods, their internal tensions, their personal problems, their desires, their character, etc.
Nevertheless, they have a management function, at the service of an organization.
The people on their team and in the organization therefore expect them to be able to energize and motivate their team by being positive.
Quality #2: Be pragmatic
The manager is often seen as a solution provider.
The people on their team submit a significant number of problems of all kinds. And this throughout the day.
There is often little respite for the manager who leads a team!
They must therefore propose solutions that move their team forward.
They can also position themselves as a resource person, and accompany the members of their team to find solutions themselves that help them move forward. I'm talking here about the manager-coach posture that I will develop in a future article.
The manager is therefore expected to act and make decisions pragmatically, providing applicable and precise answers. These answers must take into account the constraints of reality and have real impacts.
This quality of the manager is developed in particular with:
A good understanding of their area of responsibility
A good knowledge of the people the manager works with
The development of their human skills
Experience
Quality #3: Be courageous
Your manager systematically announces the good news, and very quickly moves on to the bad news, or even avoids them. What do you think of them?
Are they up to their responsibilities?
Do you trust them?
It's difficult to answer affirmatively…
The manager belongs to the organizational system. They are thus the relay of information and decisions that come from top management (management, board of directors, …).
Teams therefore expect to be informed by their manager. Relaying news that the team doesn't like is part of the manager's responsibilities.
And that takes courage! Certainly, the manager must be a fighter.
Withholding information, from an organizational point of view, leads to unspoken issues and rumors. The consequences of a lack of information can be much more difficult to manage than a difficult decision that has been announced.
The courage that the manager must demonstrate can therefore be expressed in several areas:
Relaying information and decisions to their team, good or bad
Passing on feedback from their team to upper management
Recalibrating an employee following insufficient work
Asserting and defending the interests of their team within the organization
Treating all members of their team equally
Being at the service of their team
Facing all the unpredictable situations of daily life
Taking risks and assuming them
Accepting negative criticism and judgments from their team or the organization
You see, courage is at the base of many other behaviors or abilities that directly impact the way of managing.
Furthermore, and more personally, courage is a virtue that allows you to dare. Without courage, there is no great progress, nor self-improvement.
With courage, it is possible to move mountains!
Self-coaching and actions
It is now time to put the content of this article into action. The following points are addressed to those who wish to develop their management qualities:
Which qualities, among the 3 presented in the article, do you recognize in your current way of managing?
Congratulate yourself on applying them in your daily life. It is forbidden to skip this step!
From tomorrow and during the coming week, define 3 actions to take that correspond to each of the 3 qualities.
Examples:
Being positive: I smile when I shake hands with my colleagues in the morning
Being pragmatic: I ask a very experienced manager for help the next time I am presented with a difficult problem, and without waiting
Being courageous: I announce the news to my team, the one I've been putting off for several days
3hcoaching.com
Posted on August 20, 2014.
