【第355回】Linda A. Hill and Kent Lineback, “Being the boss”

Though a playing manager is very common in recent companies, managing is totally different from playing. When someone is promoted to a manager, it is not ensured that he or she will be able to succeed with their high performance and great experiences as a player.

Many managers think at first that managing others will be an extension of managing themselves. They assume they will be doing what they did previously, except they will exercise more control over their work and the work of others. Instead, they find they must make a great leap into a new and strange universe unlike anything they’ve encountered before. (kindle ver No. 297)

We should not do for others what we did by ourselves. It is natural that each of us is totally different, then we shouldn’t regard other people as same as we.

In fact, becoming a manager requires so much personal learning and change that it is truly a transformation, akin to the transformations required by such life events as leaving home, finishing school and beginning a career, getting married, or having a child. Like these profound inflection points, becoming an effective manager will call on you to act, think, and feel in new ways; discover new sources of satisfaction; and relinquish old, comfortable, but now outmoded roles and self-perceptions. It requires you to consider anew the questions, Who am I? What do I want? What value do I add? (kindle ver No. 309)

To become a manager, we have to change ourselves. We should change our paradigm as a player to a manager.

There are, the author suggests, three points to be a great manager.

Part I, Manager Yourself, focuses on the person-to-person relationships you form with others, especially those who work for you -- which are the basis for how you influence others. ...

Part II, Manage Your Network, is about exercising influence with integrity and for constructive purposes, given the political realities of organizational life. ...

Part III, Manager Your Team, focuses on what’s required to create a real team of those who work for you. (kindle ver No. 642)

Let’t see important implications to each points.

A healthy sense of self -- a strong but not big ego -- is the foundation for virtually all other elements of character: for valuing others and treating them with respect; for empathy; for the ability to hear criticism, learn, and change; and for emotional maturity. (kindle ver No. 1259)

One of the most important basises is ‘healthy sense of self’. To know who I am and what I am seen like is the key to become a great manager.

Let’t move on to the second point, Manage Your Network. The author suggests that there are five steps.

There are five major steps in building a productive organizational network.

1. Know your business and organization.

2. Know where your group is going.

3. Map your web.

4. Create your network.

5. Sustain your network. (kindle ver No. 1685)

One of the biggest factors to enrich your network is your boss.

Managing up is important because your boss plays a pivotal role in your success -- or your failure. You can leverage your boss’s influence in the organization on your behalf in several ways -- (kindle ver No. 1950)

Your boss is your key success factor as a manager. Then, what should we do for our bosses?

They focus on their boss’s weaknesses and can talk at length about them -- and often do with their peers. But they seldom look for strengths. That’s a shame because your boss’s strengths are what you mus leverage, and you cannot leverage what you don’t recognize or appreciate. (kindle ver No. 2039)

The author’s suggestion is very realistic. We sometimes looks only at our boss’s weak points and complain them to other colleagues, because we long for excuses when we take a mistake. But, in order to make our network stronger and more strict, we have to utilize our boss’s power.

Now, let’s move to the last point.

“Plans are nothing. Planning is everything.” (kindle ver No. 2344)

It’s a statement by Mr. Dwight Eisenhower, allied commander and later U.S. president. Through planning process, we can communicate with our employees and think deeply about our capabilities as a team.

In short, defining the future creates the context for virtually all you do as a manager. It helps you create the right relationships with your people and assess daily problems so emergencies are less likely to supplant what’t truly important. Not only will a plan help you identify who should be in your network, it will help you use your network more effectively. A plan creates a context for delegation by making clear what activities are most important and should be delegated with greater care. A plan also creates a framework for making ethical judgments by helping you weigh the conflicting needs of stakeholders -- in short, by helping define a greater good. (kindle ver No. 2349)

Planning reveals and strengthens several contexts regarding relationship and works. And in order to strengthen our team effectively, all employees have to develop themselves through helping them to do so.

It’s your job as manager to help them assess themselves accurately. If people don’t know where they’re good and where they’re not, they won’t know what to emphasize and where to get better. (kindle ver No. 3214)

Rita Gunther McGrath, “The end of competitive advantage”
R. Babineaux and J. Krumboltz, “fail fast, fail often”
John C. Maxwell, “The 21 indispensable qualities of a leader”