What makes a GREAT Manager?

Isn’t that a heading that almost makes you snicker and think to yourself, “I might as well skip this part, I already know what managers think of themselves”.  How few of us have had the chance to be with a “Great” leader?  Usually we don’t realize it until we’re looking backward, because great leaders, (or managers) don’t “act” like leaders, at least, not the leaders we’ve gotten used to seeing.  Adolph Hitler was a manager, but he wouldn’t fit in our “Great” category.  So, what makes for a “Great” manager? 

            According to Jim Collins in Good to Great,

humility + will = great management. 

Collins adds;  “modest and willful, humble and fearless”, to put that into a picture, think Abe Lincoln!  He was more passionate about serving his causes than about demonstrating prestige.

            But consider the most common management incentives in use in business today – pay scales, bonuses, incentives, prizes offered for salespeople who make an early close.  Fortune 500 companies thrive on unveiling the numbers on their reports – but what’s really happening?  In their book Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths, and Total Nonsense, Pfeffer & Sutton demonstrate case after case of techniques used by CEO’s playing debt games to make bottom lines look better, or holding customer returns to make production look better.  Business becomes a paper game for better pay and more power.  What happens to the relationships… what happens to the customers?

            What does a Great Company look like?  In simple terms, think of a tribe.  In a Great company, management realizes that they have a purpose, and it’s not the attainment of power, it’s to make sure the needs of the business and personnel are met in an efficient way, so the wheel can turn with harmony.  Managers in a Great company seek input, accept ideas, welcome feedback, even criticism in a healthy format, and offer access to the entire team.

            Great managers will lead with questions, will engage in debate, and will not seek blame when facing tribulations, but will remain solution minded.  A person rarely makes the same mistake twice.  It makes more sense to solve a problem and keep the person, than get rid of the person, and face the problem again.

            It’s the difference between respect and contempt.  Great managers remove contempt from the environment.  In fact, Great managers make the contempt that is common in many environments, an obscenity.