The "M" word
"Manager" has become something of a dirty word in the 21st century.
How often do you hear people say things like:
"It's not about managing - it's about leading. We need more leaders, and fewer managers"
I remain skeptical about this. I do think we need leadership (IE direction setting and fire-starting) - but we also need more hands-on help. Inspiration will not help us when we need another pair of hands to solve our practical problems. Hence why I agree with the great Henry Mintzberg: Macro-leading is a bigger problem in modern organisations than micro-managing.
I think some of the reason we have this anti-manager prejudice is because of how little support we give to people when they become managers for the first time. The typical on-boarding for a first time manager is:
"You now have manager in your job title. So, get on with it.”
In the absence of even a definition of our basic expectations, people default to what they have seen on TV. Being a manager must be about installing bureaucracy and telling people what to do - that's how they do it on The Apprentice or The Office, right?
What is a better way to think about this role?
Here are some things that a manager should do:
Your manager supports you to stay engaged in your role, so that you can get the satisfaction of doing work that you take pride in
Your manager encourages you to focus on your long-term goals, so that you develop the skills you need to progress your career in a direction that you find rewarding
Your manager proactively seeks to build a good relationship with you, to 'get' you as a person, to build a high level of mutual trust so that real things can be talked about
Your manager helps you to learn by taking on progressively bigger challenges, and offering you the benefit of their experience to help you get unstuck
Your manager works to improve the organisation that you work in, so that unnecessary friction is reduced when doing your work
Your manager translates the big picture (of the organisation, or of specific projects) to a scale that is relevant to your role, and takes an understanding of your work to senior leadership
And, yes, some of these things do not have to be done by managers. Organisational improvement might fall to an operations team. Support with learning in the work might be done peer-to-peer by a team. But the first couple of points are, I think, the ones that are most absent for people in our prevailing organisational cultures.
We talk a lot about putting people first, and caring about team wellbeing etc. But quite often this boils down to talks about ice baths and mindfulness. When what is really missing for people is: someone who cares1.
It's not just that having a manager who cares leads to a better human experience of work - nor even that it leads to employees being more engaged. Good relationships are central to a high performance culture - and you cannot impose or mandate relationality. You can only invite it, by doing it.
But all of this cannot happen if the only time you meet your manager is once a year at an appraisal meeting. It needs to be an ongoing activity. In order for that to happen, we need to learn to recognise that being a manager takes time - and to factor in that time to our resource planning.
See also: the 21st century mental health crisis.