How to be a better manager of people, activities and even yourself

Managers have to be leaders and leaders are often, but not always, managers. But a distinction can be made between the processes of management and leadership:

The distinction is important. Management is mainly about the provision, deployment, utilization and control of resources. But where people are involved – and they almost always are - it is impossible to deliver results without providing effective leadership.
It is not enough to be a good manager of resources, you also have to be a good leader of people.

The fragmentary nature of managerial work Because of the open-ended nature of their work, managers feel compelled to perform a great variety of tasks at an unrelenting pace. Research into how managers spend their time confirms that their activities are characterized by fragmentation, brevity and variety.

This arises for the following six reasons:

What managers actually do

What managers do will be dependent on their function, level, organization (type,structure, culture, size) and their working environment generally (the extent to which it is turbulent, predictable, settled, pressurized, steady). Individual managers will adapt to these circumstances in different ways and will operate more or less successfully in accordance with their own perceptions of the behaviour expected of them, their experience of what has or has not worked in the past, and their own personal characteristics.

There are, however, the following typical characteristics of managerial work:

1. Reaction and non-reflection

Much of what managers do is, of necessity, an unreflecting response to circumstances. Managers are usually not so much slow and methodical decision-makers as doers who have to react rapidly to problems as they arise and think on their feet. Much time is spent in day-to-day trouble-shooting.

2. Choice

Managers can often exercise choice about their work. They informally negotiate widely different interpretations of the boundaries and dimensions of ostensibly identical jobs, with particular emphasis upon the development of ‘personal domain’ (i.e. establishing their own territory and the rules that apply within it).

3. Communication

Much managerial activity consists of asking or persuading others to do things, which involves managers in face-to-face verbal communication of limited duration. Communication is not simply what managers spend a great deal of time doing but the medium through which managerial work is constituted.

4. Identification of tasks

The typical work of a junior manager is the ‘organizational work’ of drawing upon an evolving stock of knowledge about ‘normal’ procedures and routines in order to identify and negotiate the accomplishment of problems and tasks.

5. Character of the work

The character of work varies by duration, time span, recurrence, unexpectedness and source. Little time is spent on any one activity and in particular on the conscious, systematic formulation of plans. Planning and decision-making tend to take place in the course of other activities. Managerial activities are riven by contradictions, cross-pressures, and the need to cope with and reconcile conflict. A lot of time is spent by managers accounting for and explaining what they do, in informal relationships and in ‘participating’.

What managers can do about it

To a degree, managers have simply to put up with the circumstances in which they work as described above – they have to manage in conditions of turbulence, uncertainty and ambiguity. That is why one of the characteristics of effective managers is their resilience – they have to be able to cope with these inevitable pressures.
But there are competencies as described below which can help them to manage in these circumstances. To a considerable extent it is up to managers to be aware of these requirements, the behaviours expected of them and the skills they can use to help in carrying out their often demanding responsibilities. They must treat these as guidelines for personal development plans. Managers can learn from the example of their bosses, by guidance from those bosses and from mentors, and through formal training courses, but self-managed learning is all-important. The starting point is an understanding of the key managerial qualities and the criteria for measuring managerial effectiveness as described in the next two sections.

Managerial qualities

Pedler et al (1986) suggest, on the basis of their extensive research, that there are 11 qualities or attributes that are possessed by successful managers:

Studies carried out on the qualities displayed by successful top managers as quoted by Rosemary Stewart (1967) show a number of common characteristics, such as:

Managerial effectiveness

As a manager and a leader you will be judged on not only the results you have achieved but the level of competence you have attained and applied in getting those results. Competence is about knowledge and skills – what people need to know and be able to do to carry out their work well.
You will also be judged on how you do your work – how you behave in using your knowledge and skills. These are often defined as ‘behavioural competencies’ and can be defined as those aspects of management behaviour that lead to effective performance. They refer to the personal characteristics that people bring to their work roles in such areas as leadership, team working, flexibility and communication.
Many organizations have developed competency frameworks which define what they believe to be the key competencies required for success. Such frameworks are used to inform decisions on selection, management development and promotion. Importantly, they can provide the headings under which the performance of managers and other staff is assessed. Managers who want to get on need to know what the framework is, and the types of behaviour expected of them in each of the areas it covers.
The following is an example of a competency framework.

Look after the interests of external and internal customers to ensure that their wants, needs and expectations are met or exceeded.

Some organizations illustrate their competency frameworks with examples of positive or negative indicators of behaviour under each heading. These provide a useful checklist for managers willing to measure their own performance in order to develop their careers.

Developing managerial effectiveness

The development of managerial effectiveness should be focused on the qualities and competencies listed above. The fundamental question is: ‘How can I learn to be a manager?’
A familiar answer to this question is to say that ‘managers learn from experience’. But can experience alone be the best teacher? Several writers have expressed their doubts on this score. Tennyson called it a ‘dirty nurse’. Oscar Wilde noted that ‘experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes’. And the historian Froude wrote that ‘experience teaches slowly and at the cost of mistakes’. Experience is an essential way of learning to improve but it is an imperfect instrument. We also need guidance from a good manager and from other sources which will help us to interpret our experience, learn from our mistakes and make better use of our experience in the future.

What you can do

Perhaps Francis Bacon provided the best answer to this question when he wrote: ‘Studies perfect nature and are perfected by experience.’ The art of management, and it is an art, is important enough to be studied. The aim of such studies should be to help us to make better use of our natural attributes – our personality and intelligence – and to ensure that past experience is better interpreted and more fully used, and that
future experience is more quickly and purposefully absorbed.

Ten fundamental ways of becoming a better manager

If it is possible to summarise the fundamental techniques involved in being – or becoming – a better manager, these ten ways will provide you with a focused way forward: