| Managers of technical teams should be required to demonstrate a good understanding of what the team does and a good understanding of how similar teams are managed as a matter of best practice. You can't do it your own way or according to your fragile personality. Above all else, they must be nice and demonstrate a large capacity for empathy. At the end of the day, their job is to get their team to efficiently get work done. Regardless of method used, fear,micromanagement and threats as a proverbial stick with your salary serving as the carrot, that never works. Anyone can manage, but a good manager must be a leader. They must have the capacity to inspire their workers to want to excel in their work. For certain team types (like retail, manual labor, call centers,etc...) you can get away with a nasty task master yelling "the beatings will continue until morale improves" because your workers perform repetitive and simple tasks with critical thinking and creativity not being part of the job. Lastly, I hope everyone tries to introspect and find out who you are and if you would make a good manager/leader. I have, and I am confident I will make a terrible manager (one of the many reasons being I would simply hate it!). I can't help thinking with the bad managers I have had to work with: Do they really lack self-awareness that much? Is their management not able to see their mess? A theory I have is: There are two types of manangers, the first type will make excellent top or bottom level management, the second kind are great middle managers. I can't help wonder if some of the bad managers I have run into would make good middle managers and they're put there until a position opens up or something. |