I am a terrible manager. How many of you think or know this but would never voice it? If you are in your 20s, you feel invincible and, therefore, would never entertain the thought that you are terrible at something. By your 30s you are at a vulnerable time in your work life and determined to make it up the corporate ladder that even if you do know it, you would never dare to say it. By the time you reach your 40s you are probably getting up there on the corporate ladder. Everyone else looks the part. You are certainly not going to give your competitors the opportunity to find a reason to knock you out. In your 50s you could be in the throes of a mid-life crisis, MLC. You are no longer sure if you are a good or bad manager. It could all just be another symptom of your MLC. So you don’t say anything. Already close to retirement in your 60s it doesn’t matter as much whether or not your make it as Manager of the Year. You have come to realise and accept that no one is invincible. Once, during an interview (for some management job) I was asked to describe who, in my past, had been a great manager. It turns out that the person I most admired was someone who really focused on connecting the technical team. He started each week with a team meeting that began with a group hug. Literally. Like many managers in those days, my most respected manager had an open door policy. But in his case, it was a literal and genuine open door. With a team of about 50 staff, he still was able to make himself always available. The original Go-to-Guy. When you walked into his office, he would drop whatever he was doing. He would turn to look at you and give you his full, undivided, listening attention. No scanning of emails while he talked to you. No answering of phones or texting. No interruptions unless it was an emergency. He mastered the art of active constructive responding by which a true leader must turn toward and accept bids for connection from staff instead of turning away from them. There is indeed nothing more seductive than someone being fully present and making you the centre of their universe in that moment. I would have given my soul, metaphorically speaking, to this manager. Each one of us would do anything that he wanted us to do to advance the work of the unit. Perhaps more importantly, he never did ask us for our souls. He encouraged and respected the boundaries of the work-life balance guidelines. He was a team player in the real sense of the word. A sort of proxy problem solver, he leveraged the broader team expertise. If you had reached an impasse, despite trying several options and having more ideas, he would say, go talk to Larry, or Lisa or Loretta as they are working on something similar. He would call them and say, “I want you to work with Musabi on [issue X]”. He would stay engaged, check on progress and provide other resources if and as needed. He “effortlessly” kept things flowing smoothly. To advance in an organisation is to become a manager. Yet, over the course of my professional life, I have witnessed disastrous outcomes. Highly gifted, technical people are forced up the corporate ladder into management positions. Some fail miserably and end up losing their jobs. The company loses valuable technical skills, a star worker loses a corporate lifeline. This brings to mind a story which, at first reading, may seem unrelated. A friend tells of the saga of firing a woman who had worked in his family home for many years. However, as soon as she left, the family fell apart. The children stopped doing homework. His wife stopped speaking to him. Meals were delayed and lacklustre. An air of gloom settled on the once happy home and he, father and husband, became the scapegoat. Yet, the whole family had agreed that the woman had stopped providing technical inputs and did nothing around the house. But, what big mama spent her days wandering around the house(not performing any household duties) did, was connect people. Parents and children. The cook and the nanny. She connected the people who had the technical skills. She was a manager, but no one recognised that until they let her go. The raconteur told of how he had had to go to the village to look for big mama and beg her to return. She agreed; at double her last pay cheque. Once back, the family returned to happily humming along. Big mama continued to waddle around doing...nothing; except being the family’s Go-to-Gal. Currently based in Rwanda, the writer comments about people, organizations and countries whose stories create a chrysalis for ideas.
