Across The Board – Are We Any Better at Managing People?
by David Maister 2002
Choose Managers With Emotion, Not Logic
By David Maister
Mr. Maister is a consultant, author of Managing the Professional Service Firm and Practice What You Preach, and co-author of First Among Equals: How to Manage a Group of Professionals.
One of the biggest problems in raising the quality of people management is that, in many companies, managers are not chosen for their ability to be-or even interest in becoming-managers. They are chosen for their superior technical skills, their business-getting ability, their financial orientation, or because they “deserved the promotion.” When management is a reward, then everyone competes for the position-even those who have no interest in performing the role.
What should we be looking for in an effective manager or supervisor? Since the job of a manager is to get things done through other people, we need someone who can get his fulfillment and satisfaction from the success of others. This requires the ability to suppress one’s own ego needs, a trait not always found in those who have succeeded in the junior ranks.
To be effective, a manager must be capable-by creating energy, excitement, and enthusiasm in those being managed-to get people to achieve everything they are capable of achieving. Fundamentally, this is about managing people’s emotions. Managing is not a logical, rational, or intellectual ability but, rather, a social, interpersonal, and emotional skill. Few businesses use these criteria when selecting managers, and fewer still have selection processes capable of diagnosing them accurately.
If skills are important, then even more important is the issue of motives or attitudes. A manager’s job is to influence others. But what causes people to accept influence? The answer is trust. If I believe that you are coaching me because you are trying to help me succeed, then I will engage in a dialogue; I will take your comments and your challenges seriously. If I believe that you are only trying to make your own star rise, or meet business targets, then I will probably go into compliance mode. I will listen to what you say since you are my supervisor-but I will not engage.
Putting all this together suggests that to be effective, a manager must convince those supervised that he is interested in them as individuals, and in their careers. In many businesses, unfortunately, those who show an “excessive” people orientation are screened out as candidates for managerial or supervisory positions as being insufficiently “businesslike.”