At higher levels of management, the job starts to converge regardless of background. Success becomes more and more about mastering a few key skills: hiring exceptional leaders, building self-reliant teams, establishing a clear vision, and communicating well.
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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.
As a manager, you are judged on your teamâs outcomes, so your job is to do whatever most helps them succeed. If your team is lacking key skills, then you need to spend your time training or hiring. If someone is creating problems for others, then you need to get him to stop. If people donât know what they should be doing, then you need to construct a plan. A lot of this work is unglamorous. But because itâs important, it must be done, and if nobody else does it, then it falls to you.
This is why adaptability is a key trait of great managers. As your team changesâwhether itâs goals shifting, people joining or leaving, or processes evolvingâwhat you do every day will also change.
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.
Remember that your job is to be a multiplier for your people. If you can remove a barrier, provide a valuable new perspective, or increase their confidence, then youâre enabling them to be more successful.
In each case, youâre giving someone an opportunity to grow in a way that speaks to their interests and strengths. âThere is one quality that sets truly great managers apart from the rest: they discover what is unique about each person and then capitalize on it,â says Buckingham, the renowned management consultant who has studied hundreds of organizations and leaders. âThe job of a manager . . . is to turn one personâs particular talent into performance.