Remember our definition of management? A managerās job is to get better outcomes from a group of people working together through influencing purpose, people, and process.
With a small team, maintaining a shared sense of purpose is straightforward. You donāt get many crossed wires when your team can still fit around one table. That leaves people and process to focus on. Of those two, people are by far the most important.
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This is the crux of management: It is the belief that a team of people can achieve more than a single person going it alone. It is the realization that you donāt have to do everything yourself, be the best at everything yourself, or even know how to do everything yourself.
Your job, as a manager, is to get better outcomes from a group of people working together. Itās from this simple definition that everything else flows.
If the job is defined as getting better outcomes from a group of people working together, then a great managerās team will consistently achieve great outcomes.
To manage people well, you must develop trusting relationships with them, understand their strengths and weaknesses (as well as your own), make good decisions about who should do what (including hiring and firing when necessary), and coach individuals to do their best.
Leadership is a quality rather than a job. We are all leaders and followers at different points in our lives. Many aspects of this book should be useful to those looking to grow as leaders as well as managers, and great managers should cultivate leadership not just in themselves but also within their teams.
This is an important distinction because while the role of a manager can be given to someone (or taken away), leadership is not something that can be bestowed. It must be earned. People must want to follow you.
ITāS THE PEOPLE: People are the foundation of any companyās success. The primary job of each manager is to help people be more effective in their job and to grow and develop. We have great people who want to do well, are capable of doing great things, and come to work fired up to do them. Great people flourish in an environment that liberates and amplifies that energy. Managers create this environment through support, respect, and trust.
Support means giving people the tools, information, training, and coaching they need to succeed. It means continuous effort to develop peopleās skills. Great managers help people excel and grow.
Respect means understanding peopleās unique career goals and being sensitive to their life choices. It means helping people achieve these career goals in a way thatās consistent with the needs of the company.
Trust means freeing people to do their jobs and to make decisions. It means knowing people want to do well and believing that they will. - Bill Campbellās mantra