What sets great managers apart
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What sets great managers apart
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Re: What sets great managers apart
#2I don't think this is what sets great managers apart. Communication is certainly necessary, but not sufficient. Empathy and care, technical relevance, decisiveness, honesty, ability to provide feedback, trust are all at least as important as communication.
At this point, I'd take someone somewhat capable and behaving like a human over most things.
Re: What sets great managers apart
#3Communication is important, sure. But I don’t think it’s the most important skill for managers.
If communication was the key skill needed to be a great manager, it would imply that great managers could parachute in to run any old team, as long as they were able to communicate well.
But the best managers don’t just communicate their decisions; they need to exercise judgment and expertise to make good decisions in the first place. And making good decisions requires understanding your technology/product/team very well, which all go far beyond communication.
Re: What sets great managers apart
#4I think advocating is impossible to be done by managers effectively. There're just so many dimensions involved and it's genuinely non-trivial. The best workplace is where the employees advocate for each other. Because everyone notices different things about others, but they often just keep it to themselves. They assume just because it is revealed to them it must be obvious to others as well. Not so.
And advocating for yourself is just doomed to fail. But that doesn't mean you don't have a voice. You do, for others; due to the nature of how advocating works.
Re: What sets great managers apart
#5Communication is important, sure. But I don’t think it’s the most important skill for managers. If communication was the key skill needed to be a great manager, it would imply that great managers could parachute in to run any old team, as long as they were able to communicate well. But the best managers don’t just communicate their decisions; they need to exercise judgment and expertise to make good decisions in the…
Very true - decision quality is super important! My point here is that trust erodes in the absence of good communication, and when that happens, your decisions matter less because you won‘t be able to deliver on them as effectively.
In your other point though, I‘ve seen highly effective managers who didn‘t understand much of what the team was doing technically, because the were able to build trust among everyone involved in major processes.
Re: What sets great managers apart
#6I think advocating is impossible to be done by managers effectively. There're just so many dimensions involved and it's genuinely non-trivial. The best workplace is where the employees advocate for each other. Because everyone notices different things about others, but they often just keep it to themselves. They assume just because it is revealed to them it must be obvious to others as well. Not so. And advocating fo…
"Advocating" isn't necessarily just praising their team.
Managers end up in rooms that their reports don't, so the manager needs to effectively represent the team's interests in those forums.
For example, if a manager is in a project allocation meeting and sees a project that would help their reports reach their career goals, the manager should be "advocating" for the project to be assigned to their team.
Re: What sets great managers apart
#7one of the most annoying things to me are managers who pull the "here's what I'm evaluating you on...now write up this self eval what you've done over the last year that fits these items and I'll copy paste it into your eval." Why even become a manager if you can't capture these yourself? A self evaluation should be a reflection of what a person gained over the past year and not an exercise to fill out a form for a manager to remind them of such.
As a manager I take notes throughout the year WITH my staff to capture what they worked on, how they grew, and all that stuff. If there are stumbles along the way we capture those too. It just makes it easier to then show the higher ups how consistently good a person is (or not in some cases). The self eval is less of an exercise in futility of reminding the boss what you did but an opportunity for staff to reflect on their growth.
Re: What sets great managers apart
#8Communication is important, sure. But I don’t think it’s the most important skill for managers. If communication was the key skill needed to be a great manager, it would imply that great managers could parachute in to run any old team, as long as they were able to communicate well. But the best managers don’t just communicate their decisions; they need to exercise judgment and expertise to make good decisions in the…
I agree. Good communication can feel good while not providing any benefit to reports or the business. Good communication paired with good decision making is the best but if you have to pick between the two, you need good decision making while communication is just nice to have.
Re: What sets great managers apart
#9Had 1 on 1's with my manager for a whole year and everytime they told me how I was doing such a great job as compared to others in the team. There was no zero bad feedback. At the end of the year we had the yearly review and they praised me. However on the review document they placed me on PIP. It was such a shock because why tell me everyday how I am doing such a great job only to put me on PIP? Raised the issue with the skip and he admitted the reason they did that was because HR forced them, claiming not everyone can do well, someone must be on Pip, so they settled on me.
These days our 1 on 1's barely last 5 minutes, it's like we do it as a formality. She is even afraid of talking to me and the worst bit is that I cannot change teams because of the PIP. Plus it's a bad job market. never been this dammned
Re: What sets great managers apart
#10Had 1 on 1's with my manager for a whole year and everytime they told me how I was doing such a great job as compared to others in the team. There was no zero bad feedback. At the end of the year we had the yearly review and they praised me. However on the review document they placed me on PIP. It was such a shock because why tell me everyday how I am doing such a great job only to put me on PIP? Raised the issue wit…
It’s funny because my manager used to blame things on HR…
Then I became a team lead and a people manager. Nobody told me squat. I decided bonuses and performance rating freely. I entered them directly into the system.
All the HR stuff was all a lie.
Left soon after when I was held back (without pay increase) while other engineers with less experience and significantly fewer accomplishments were fast tracked for promotions while I was held back.