Early in my career, I made a number of mistakes as I was learning how to manage people. While learning from your own mistakes is sometimes the best way to develop, when I advanced in my career to the point that I had newly appointed managers working for me, I tried to assist them in avoiding some of the same mistakes that I made.<\/p>\n
Over time, I came to recognize the constant contradictions that you need to balance in order to be a successful manager. I started primarily sharing these realizations with new managers, but have come to recognize that these concepts apply regardless of your experience level.<\/p>\n
A successful manager needs to recognize that your people are what make you a manager, not just the title. Your people can give you great joy, but can also give you your greatest headaches, as your well-planned day can\u00a0be thrown askew by an unexpected resignation, performance issue and\/or difficult personal situation.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s extremely important to establish and maintain a positive relationship with your employees, but true friendship makes addressing difficult situations that much harder and could lead to signs of favoritism. It\u2019s important to attempt to understand each person\u2019s personal situation so that you can respond to their needs accordingly. Regularly sharing personal Facebook updates with your team might not be the most appropriate thing.<\/p>\n
Managers need to maintain a type of controlled paranoia. You need to always think about what might go wrong in order to avoid as many negative situations as possible, but you can\u2019t portray a continually negative attitude\/outlook to your team without risking low morale.<\/p>\n
Maintaining your personal integrity\/credibility with your managers and team members is critical to your long-term success. \u00a0It is imperative to develop a tracking method for commitments you and individuals on your team make and develop a process to ensure these commitments can be met. Even more important, you need to ensure that the work is distributed appropriately amongst your team and that you don\u2019t put all the \u201cmonkeys\u201d on your back simply because you feel\/know that you could handle something better yourself.<\/p>\n