Lesson in Management

Recently a friend has been talking about how his manager's attitude and behaviour has lead him to resign.There were profound lessons to be learnt in management with the way he described the reasons for disliking his manager.Let me share some of those lessons here:

1. Trust the people whom you work with.
2. Don't keep bugging them on routine responsibilities
3. You should be easily accessible and willing to help out with any issue in the team however good the leaders in your team are.
4. You should be a good decision maker.
5. You should be able to negotiate with the customer even in favor of team members where required.
6. You should work on improving team's morale rather than discouraging them by only pointing out their mistakes.
7. You should ensure that you understand the new assignments yourself before delegating them to your team members.
8. You should appreciate your team's efforts.
9. You should ensure your team is not falling prey to "all work and no play" syndrome.


The author of bestseller "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People" says there are 2 types of delegation: Gofer delegation and Stewardship delegation. The Gofer delegation is more method focussed. That means you tell your subordinate exactly the methodology he should be following and check up the status every now and then to ensure the methodology is being followed. The other style - stewardship delegation has results as it's focus rather than the methods; give the person a job and tell him what the output should be. The way he achieves it should be none of your business. This gives much more satisfaction to the person who is carrying out the task and has more room for better and creative results - even if it requires a little more patience from you as a manager as compared to Gofer delegation.