Feb 27, 2015
Originally Answered: What is the best way to become a great manager?
When I quit my regular job five years ago, one team member said I was the best manager he ever had. And now, five years later, I am listed as one of Europe's leading "experts". I put this in quotes deliberately, because I think this is grossly overstated. Nevertheless, I do know how to make good progress as a manager...
In my opinion, you can only really become great at something when you go through three phases, in an everlasting cycle:Experience, Experiment & Express.
Experience
Read books, magazines and blogs. Listen to podcasts; attend webinars and conferences; watch videos and just pay attention to what other managers are doing. Keep a notebook! The goal of this phase is to collect ideas. This is mainly about other people's experiences, not your own. You need those to generate your own ideas in the next phase. Personally, I like reading books about inspiring leaders and companies. For example, Creativity Inc. by Ed Catmull and Reinventing Organizations by Frederic Laloux. But different people have different ways of absorbing experiences that are offered by other managers. Choose your own learning path, as long as you don't ignore what others have already tried before you.
Experiment
With all the ideas you collected in the previous phase, you can now experiment with your own. What happens when you give team members compliments? What happens when you bring them coffee? What happens when you let them discuss team values? What happens when you ask them to define their own goals and targets? What happens when you let them vote on each other's performance? The goal here is validated learning. You use the ideas from the first phase, but you probably have to adaptand tweak them a bit, to make them work in your context. Don't be afraid to fail. Half of the ideas won't work for you. That's OK. But you won't know until you try.
Express
Last but not least, you should act on what you learned in the second phase. It is said that the best way to learn a topic is toteach it. A very simple approach would be to keep a simple diary. By externalizing what you noticed in your own experiments, you are better able to internalize what happened. Your goal here isunderstanding. Another approach could be to write a blog about your learning experiences as a manager, or to prepare a presentation about it, or simply to discuss what you did and what you learned in an online forum or in a local group of peers. Communicating about your adventures as a manager is tremendously helpful for your self-development.
And that's all! Your third step (expressing your thoughts) will help others in their first step (collecting ideas), making everything nicely connected and entangled. :-)
Ever since I started experiencing, experimenting and expressing, I received many more compliments than complaints about my management style and ideas. Recently, one of my current team members said, "You are my first CEO who doesn't suck!" I took that as a compliment too. ;-)
However, the more I do this, the more I feel I still have a lot to learn. It's great when people want to share this same journey. It can be very fulfilling.
In my opinion, you can only really become great at something when you go through three phases, in an everlasting cycle:Experience, Experiment & Express.
Experience
Read books, magazines and blogs. Listen to podcasts; attend webinars and conferences; watch videos and just pay attention to what other managers are doing. Keep a notebook! The goal of this phase is to collect ideas. This is mainly about other people's experiences, not your own. You need those to generate your own ideas in the next phase. Personally, I like reading books about inspiring leaders and companies. For example, Creativity Inc. by Ed Catmull and Reinventing Organizations by Frederic Laloux. But different people have different ways of absorbing experiences that are offered by other managers. Choose your own learning path, as long as you don't ignore what others have already tried before you.
Experiment
With all the ideas you collected in the previous phase, you can now experiment with your own. What happens when you give team members compliments? What happens when you bring them coffee? What happens when you let them discuss team values? What happens when you ask them to define their own goals and targets? What happens when you let them vote on each other's performance? The goal here is validated learning. You use the ideas from the first phase, but you probably have to adaptand tweak them a bit, to make them work in your context. Don't be afraid to fail. Half of the ideas won't work for you. That's OK. But you won't know until you try.
Express
Last but not least, you should act on what you learned in the second phase. It is said that the best way to learn a topic is toteach it. A very simple approach would be to keep a simple diary. By externalizing what you noticed in your own experiments, you are better able to internalize what happened. Your goal here isunderstanding. Another approach could be to write a blog about your learning experiences as a manager, or to prepare a presentation about it, or simply to discuss what you did and what you learned in an online forum or in a local group of peers. Communicating about your adventures as a manager is tremendously helpful for your self-development.
And that's all! Your third step (expressing your thoughts) will help others in their first step (collecting ideas), making everything nicely connected and entangled. :-)
Ever since I started experiencing, experimenting and expressing, I received many more compliments than complaints about my management style and ideas. Recently, one of my current team members said, "You are my first CEO who doesn't suck!" I took that as a compliment too. ;-)
However, the more I do this, the more I feel I still have a lot to learn. It's great when people want to share this same journey. It can be very fulfilling.