How to be a Manager – A step-by-step guide to leading a team

Exempt and non exempt status are very clearly defined. One gets paid hourly, the other a salary. If you are on any kind of schedule, you are usually non exempt unless really a manager.

If you're going to work and are having the hardest time with people, you should question the team. Anyone expressing an inkling of toxic, negative, or unprofessional attitude needs to be removed. Some people go bad, but it's just them telling you they want to go. Be graceful, but fire them.

Whatever you do, don't try to fix attitude. Everyone is entitled to their attitude in America, and it's the wrong battle. Let them have it.

They are not, however, entitled to contaminate your work culture, which must be upheld as sacrosanct. And, if it's you, then you've already burnt out.

A lot of old school management involves whips and dangling carrots. Managers are supervisors, and workers are presumed to misbehave without supervision. They are motivated with rewards, and put in check with punishment. Workers hate managers, and managers hate their job which would not exist if the workers would just behave. Good workers question their environment, their pay, then leave.

In reality, most ambitious professionals will behave when they take ownership of their responsibilities and opportunities, and will seek to build trust with others that do also. When handed, responsibilities and opportunities can quickly turn into dreadful obligations, so people must want them, and they will when they are aligned with their professional ambitions.

Once you have a team of such individuals, a manager is relinquished from behavior management. This holds true even at the lowest paying jobs.

Having this as the premise of your corporate culture will allow you to focus on managing work, not workers. And will allow your workers to focus on their work, and not each other. Trust will also naturally build among those showing responsible behavior. All this without "managing people". All this without "a leader".

Everyone leads themselves towards a common goal, empowered by a common philosophy, from the comfort of a common, sacred, positive workplace.

This formula took me five years, and it wasn't just the hardest part of building my business. It was five years of not being able to build my business. Today, I can say without reservation:

People are the best part of building a business.

And I am grateful to everyone, including those whom I fired, for teaching me this lesson.

I work for a small consulting firm focused on improving productivity and building innovation systems within small-medium sized businesses. And having strategic plans, vision, values is hugely important in building a focused innovation program. It's become routine in my engagements to spend significant time defining goals and values where the companies had none previously! This sort of exercise is valuable for firms at any stage and size in my opinion.

I guess it's also spun around a new startup rather than fixing an already operating business.

If you like what you read here then look up Traction and Get A Grip.