Why are there so many bad managers? Because it's really easy to be a bad manager and really hard to be a good one. Great management means empathizing with others, putting the team goals ahead of yourself and accepting the blame when it's passed around, none of which are the defaults for us humans.
My father (a school director) summed up his philosophy on leadership in "When you succeed, it's the team. When you fail, it's you."
Very early on in my career I had the privilege of working with a manager who shared your father's philosophy. The experience left a lasting impression with me, and has led me to seriously consider whether management is something I'd be good at or would even want to do.
Perhaps most enlightening was her stance on promotion. Our department had been, overall, falling seriously behind and, as a result, the other managers hadn't promoted anyone in many years(!). She and I discussed this one day and, to paraphrase her words, she said: "At the end of each year, there should always be someone ready for the next level or getting close. If there isn't then I haven't done my job; I haven't appropriately challenged them. My goal is the growth of my reports, and their success is mine."
I had a manager (of the good variety) whom was so willing to accept responsibility that he would sometimes claim responsibility for failures he had no involvement in.
One problem that's quite common is that new managers are given very little training or mentoring - the company just promotes a senior developer to management and expects them to somehow figure out how to do it well (at least that's what happened to me). However, management requires a very different set of skills than programming, and, like programming, you can't just learn these skills in a few weeks (especially while working around the clock to try to meet a product deadline that's now your responsibility).
Unfortunately, the mistakes a novice manager can make - hiring the wrong people, irritating good developers to the point where they quit the company, etc. - are much harder and more costly to clean up than the kinds of mistakes you can make as a developer. For one thing, there's a multiplier effect: your actions suddenly affect more people.
The training companies provide are nothing extraordinary. Usually few days of managerial training spread over few months on what you can and cannot say/question employees i.e. religion, race etc. and few other tidbits on general managerial operations. If your boss is too lazy to send you to one your HR must. It is their obligation.
However that is not the crust of being a good manager. Emotional Intelligence (EQ) and having Empathy is. Realizing that every person is an individual and as such should be treated individually. I recommend books by Dr Paul Ekman like Emotions Revealed & on body language by Joe Navarro that will give you a head jump in working with & understanding people.
Is it bad that I want to answer this before even reading the article? My answer: because programming is not the only difficult thing in life. <goes off to read article>
Not even sure what the article was getting at. Other than my email address. :(
It takes more than just having a human element to do well. In large part, many managers are bad because they are not given any real control. Sure, they have some control over their workers, but that only gets you so far. Unless the manager has real control up, as well, they can only be so good. This is especially so on projects that are likely in a death spiral.
Worse, though, is that many "good" managers probably don't have a real idea on exactly what makes them good. Even more perplexing, they likely did well at some point and there may not be any obvious variables that have changed from their success to their failures. Other than the outcome.
I totally agree. My goal was to get some people to sign up I could do some customer development around an idea I have. Maybe I needed a little more detail.
I think the human aspect can go a long way and there are still a lot of elements as you suggest that work against you. Thing is, if you do protect your team (I've heard it called "the shit umbrella") and care about them, you can do a lot to make them happier and more successful even if you're dealing with a lot of crap yourself as the manager/leader.
Soft skills are hard to measure. I'm not sure we ever will, and my hope was to make the point that the pure measurement of results often does nothing to distinguish or incentivize good from bad management.
Good managers are a dime a dozen. Managers promulgate the myth that there are many bad managers to justify inflated salaries. But the pool of good managers is so vast that there is absolutely no excuse to hire a bad or an average one.
This the first of an infinite series of correctives to the standard Bloomberg-LinkedIn-Forbesesque-BusinessInsider business media line that employees better watch their step and always put their own interests last. Their bad managers, who despise "silos" (meaning "technical silos") know better. They keep their asymmetric information to themselves: they love management silos, which must be nurtured and protected against employee incursion, lest they too get the "big picture."
I'm glad you've had good experiences with managers. I know a lot of people who have really suffered under bad managers multiple times across their careers, especially in startups.
You're absolutely right. I wrote the post with the hope of getting to do some customer development interviews with those interested in what I wrote about.
Soft skills are a funny thing; to succeed as a leader/manager you need them, but it's hard to quantify strength and weakness in them.
I have some ideas for a product but didn't want to make the post about the solution.
Because managing is hard, and people deprecate managing enough that people don't strive for excellence in the field. How often are exceptional managers praised socially and not just rewarded financially?
I think if you look at the language someone uses, you can tell a lot about their quality as a manager...it's about we and they when it's good and I when it's bad.
Look at pro athletes; the best leaders on those teams generally are the ones that give all the credit around in wins and take ownership of losses. Peyton Manning used to throw his lineman under the bus in playoff losses and now he's all team as the Broncos are in the Super Bowl. Obviously there's other factors at play, but think about how a good leader is going to motivate his team through the human element things I talked about: people love to be recognized for things they worked hard on and it means a lot when people show they care about them. Who do you go out of the way to help on your team?
You can also learn a lot by talking to people they've worked with before re: management. I love an interview tactic I heard before where you ask someone to rank them on a scale of 1 to 10 on something. If they don't say 10 on something, you can then ask what made them not a 10 and usually get some good answers.
Not sure if this short post even begins to scratch the surface of many reasons why there are so many bad managers. Reads more like a self promotion post to me.
I have the memory of a goldfish. Helping me log key things (goals, personal interests, motivators) for easy reference would be a big help. Then, giving me reminders for things that are easy to forget like team member birthdays, work anniversaries and checking in to see if I helped a team member with their personal goals in the last month would all be helpful for me. Right now I hack it with a spreadsheet and google calendar, but it's more work and much less organized than it could be.
I hope to validate if that's just me or others similarly could use help holding onto that information and providing timely reminders. I have found it's little things like what I listed above that has greatly improved motivation and morale for the handful of teams I have worked with.
There is no app for everything. lol.. Interacting with humans & learning the theories on emotions and behavior (ref Dr Paul Ekman) is a far better direction in becoming a great manager/leader. And then obviously the responsibilities that go with management that any company should be able to provide in few days of training.
My father (a school director) summed up his philosophy on leadership in "When you succeed, it's the team. When you fail, it's you."