Manager - How Not To Be

As soon we hear that word "Manager", the first thing that comes to our mind is a person who gives orders, ask others to work, dictate others etc and may be thats the reason many of us want to become managers, cos all of us want to dictate, none of us like to take orders. However, is that what a manager really is? A person who gives orders and asks others to work. Well for many of us the answer is "yes". Anyways none of us wants to be spoken ill about nor would like to hear anyone speaking bad about us. All of us as managers want to be praised and looked upon as an ideal. There are lots of books available in the market that teaches about how to become an effective manager, how to be a productive and a lovable manager and many more. But according to me its far more important to learn and get trained on how not to be manager than how to be.

5 Qualities a manager should not posses:

1. Show Attitude
Many manager's suffer from this feeling of bossism and that they are here to command the employees.The feeling of insecurity inside them make them more bossy. They somehow feel that if they donot show attitude or boss over his/her subordinates the subordinates are not going to listen to them. But they miss the fact that showing attitude does a reverse affect on them, which they fail to notice. Althought the employees do the work assigned to them by their manager, whether he/her shows attitude or not, the manager loses the Good will. The subordinates start disliking him/her.

2. Never look upon on your subordinates
This is second most important thing that one manager should always keep in mind when speaking to his/her reportees. He/she may not have done well the last time but that doesn't make the employee a bad one. After all he has been selected and assigned the process by the recruiters only after thoroughly interviewing him/her. It is normal for humans to do mistakes, but its the responsibility of a good manager to sit together with the employee and retrospect and try to see what went wrong and why did this happen. If necessary the mistake must be shared among others during team meetings without revealing the name of the person who committed it,such that it never happens again. But please "Donot look down on them just because they made a silly mistake and make them feel that they are good for nothing".

3. Donot pass any sarcastic comments over your subordinates and Donot group up with other managers and leaders and ridicule your assosciates ( this is seen more among the young managers)
Another major thing seen primarily among young managers are that they take their assosciates for granted and just to show them off before their assosciates they tend to make comments over their subordinates during team meetings and team hurdles. This does no good for the manager, infact it does more bad and no good at all. If they feel that he will be taken to be as a jovial and friendly manager then they are wrong. Although it may feel to the managers at that moment because the employees also join the laugh with him/her. But dont you get fooled, they laugh not because, they liked it, its because they are left with no other options. You are just increasing the hatered for you among them and believe me they are never gonna forget the comments that you made on them although it is quite obvious that you are not gonna remember them. And when they hit back its gonna be real hard.

4. Don't tell your subordinates that he doesn't expect anything great from them
A good manager must always be optimisitc and he must install that optimism in his subordinates. It might be that your previous team haven't performed well or might be that you may not have had the right people for the right job. But one should not look with the same eye everytime. Donot tell you new joinees or your new team that you have never had a great team or your previous team never functioned well and hence I dont expect much from you guys either. If the previous team has not functioned properly or according to the function required its the managers fault and not the employees. Its what the manager is paid for, to make the team function properly and effectively. If you cannot do that then the problem is with you and its you who needs to change.

5. Donot expect new joinees to become perfect in a single day
All the managers are in a hurry to get the new joinees trained fast and make them productive and their hurry is justified as they have commitments to keep, but donot take it too far. Donot expect them to be perfect with the process and tools in a single day of training. Train the employees, and give them time to come up the learning curve. Think of the time that you had taken to learn the process. Make a note of mistakes that new joinees commonly make and teach them that so that they donot do it. Be innovative in training.

Importantly
Donot laugh at your subordinates when they do something wrong, its not gonna help you in anyway, instead smile at them, clap them, pat them when they do something right. And this is surely gonna help you.

Hope this helps new budding managers.

To learn how to become a great manager read the book "The One Minute Manager". Its really a nice one and will definitely help the new budding as well as old managers.

If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and achieve more, then you are a LEADER.