A manager knows that he permanently requires space for decision making. You need to experiment to learn, you need to make changes to develop your creative spirit, and you must have a significant dose of decision-making power to exercise leadership.
Then it is required that its people be optimal, motivated, enthusiastic, aligned… but to carry out this task requires the use of dozens of resources that are usable in a flexible framework of action.
For example, a manager decides to implement a management of human resources by objectives (not by time, as is usually done, that is to say: pay hours of work, not quality of work), and agrees to reward a lead by telling him that if the Thursday exceeds his goals by making the most of his time, he will give him Friday off so that he can pick up his children from school, which, as far as he knows, would be important for his collaborator.
A leader who comes to this decision knows well that what he will finally achieve is, in the best of cases: to demonstrate that it is better to take advantage of time; that effectiveness and results are rewarded, and not punctual leisure; that he is a creative enough leader to surprise his people when he decides to do so; that knows the needs of its people and attends to them; keep the recipient of the reward motivated; as well as stimulate the loyalty of the internal customer affected by such decision.
On the other hand, there must be an effective unconditional support, the private dialogues between a subordinate boss and his superior always tend to improve the former's task day by day, and it is in this area where mistakes and bad decisions are openly discussed. middle management. Also of his occasional demotivation, of inconveniences that can delay his results and other daily matters.
But this type of dialogue never transcends that area.
In such circumstances, support for your decisions should always be unconditional. Otherwise, not only is all the power that is required of it taken away from it, but also the double discourse invites the staff to use it for their own benefit, requesting favors from one or the other depending on the case.
In addition, a manager who enforces standards and objectives is highly likely to achieve this if he is allowed to participate in setting such guidelines, since he has a higher degree of conviction and, as is known, it is transmitted to his people by the "waterfall" effect.
If it is not possible to allow the manager to decide his goals for himself, or to be part of setting them, then his manager should perform an additional task, worthy of the best leaders in the world: sell his middle manager what that it asks you to do. Companies seem content to notify staff, and this is as robust to take a message as building a building with water and sand. The average manager must be convinced of two things: that it is the right thing to do and that he can do it.
It is silly to think that a manager may not be free to determine when he no longer wants to work with a subordinate. When people are assigned to him without first consulting him; when the selection of his future collaborators is not even partially addressed by him. He has a defined profile and has the right to choose his collaborators based on this, for three reasons:
- He will work more at ease with certain people; He will demand more if he himself decided to join him; He will take people who by intuition will identify more quickly with him.
At the same time he must be professional enough to assume that he can lead anyone and that it would be an honor for him to be assigned someone, and that he will try to find the key that can unlock the hidden talent of any subordinate.
