I've been gradually sliding a supervisory role in my job (mainly by dint of everyone else with similar levels of seniority not being interested) and it's been a bit of a challenge because I'm an academic and a research nerd and not a manager. My supervisees are all good folks but they haven't been getting important parts of their jobs done and it's negatively impacting the org. I need to learn how to get them finish their crap but the descriptions of most management books stick to my skin in a way that feels hard to wash off. Does anyone know of good books/etc that won't make me talk like an MBA program replaced my soul with foam packing peanuts?
Edit: Thanks for all the really thoughtful responses, it's a huge help.
Call mandatory meetings at every possible opportunity and when you do pull a chair in front of the group then, and this next part is critically important, turn the chair around backwards and sit down. This will show you to be relatable and just like them.
Make sure to address them as "sport" a bunch of times too, this will make everybody feel like they're a part of a family, and people love that. Also, pizza parties
If you did that (not at every opportunity) and then only addressed me when something was wrong, explained why you had to talk to me, and used a couple curse words, you'd be in my top 3 managers I've ever had.
Don't forget to do the Chris Rock black people vs n-words routine in its entirety.
I miss Beatnik. He was great at this.
His answer would be something along the lines of, ‘be upfront with them, insulate them from the worst of management, and position it as you and them against upper management’.
Best thing I've found is just have a running list of what everyone is working on and deadlines. New project assigned to your team by the boss? You divvy up the responsibilities, check in on progress, and make sure everyone's comfortable coming to you with questions. Give them the goal and the deadline, let them figure it out.
Of course, under capitalism we're all under pressure to keep ratcheting up output. So in a lot of environments if you try and protect your team you're the one who gets squeezed.
One book I'd recommend is Managing With Power. Don't let the title put you off, it's a really bad title. Actual content is good. The reality is that if you're a manager you have power, whether you like it or not. Book talks about how to use that power for generally good purposes.
Help them do the work and you'll find out why they aren't getting it done. Don't make your deliverables their problem, make being happy and productive their job.
Yeah, actually doing what they're doing will instantly put you in the top 10% of managers.
- They'll respect you lightening the load, if only slightly
- You'll more easily understand the problems keeping them from doing their job better
- You'll be able to coach them when they ask you how to do this or that (it sounds like you can already do this, but you'll stay sharp this way)
- You can speak with more credibility to upper management
- If you put it on the line and get fired, you're experienced with the job you used to do
20-40% of your time spent doing your subordinates' job will make you a phenomenal manager. Ideally you're doing it as much as you can get away with.
read roberts rules of order. hold regular meetings. transition to a horizontalist, democratic structure. wear a beret and carry a shotgun.
e: i'm not sure i understood the question
it’s negatively impacting the org
Sounds great tell them to keep it up. Based employees bringing down the org with inefficient practices praxis
The job is dressing up like Bigfoot and stealing equipment from pipeline construction sites.
Here’s a tip: do not let people post lol in work chats. Lol is the gateway to passive aggression.
coach improvement in private, praise in public.
think of oneself as a player-coach when working tasks and/or developing skills in team members. if something is not getting done, delegate tasks from the project and take some on yourself. be open to suggestion as to how things get done and encourage initiative.
the bosses that got the most out of me worked along side me as often as they could and would always take the tougher bit.
I think Al Capone seemed like a pretty decent manager of his outfit. There was an incident where a competitor made fun of one of Al's supervisees. Al listened to this story and interpreted it as bullying, and felt obliged to address the issue as it happened in the course of his colleague's duties. Al went directly to the competitor to resolve the situation and nip that bad behavior in the bud to set an example that this is unacceptable professional behavior by beating the man to death. This may seem extreme by some theories of management, but a blood sacrifice, especially a righteous one, can be an opportunity to reinforce team bonds and increase workplace morale by rallying around a shared mission, one that makes them feel secure in their work and gives the whole rat race a little meaning.
Servant Leadership is kinda a terrible term, but it seems to be close to what some of my best managers have done to really build camaraderie and improve things. Basically, you need to understand everyone's capabilities well (including yours) and allocate them effectively to deal with the work. If you are senior in doing the things, then you might be the most effective part of the team. This doesn't mean you should be doing most of the work necessarily, because it might make more sense for you to train up others to be able to divide and conquer the workload. So it's really about knowing your labor capabilities and your workload and how they fit together best.
Other things to consider are keeping everyone in your team at least informed on what each other are doing (something like regular stand-ups to check progress) even if they are not directly impacting each other. This helps build cohesion and cross-pollinate ideas. Someone else on the team might have found a trick to dealing with an issue that could help other parts of the team, etc.
And do the grunt work if your team is better at doing the more interesting and complex work. Mgmt that abstracts away as much of the BS parts of the job is always super appreciated in high-paced settings. It allows your people to focus and deliver and grow. Do the boring data entry if you aren't able to be useful in other ways, especially if it helps your team work faster/better.
Other stuff is fighting the org / making the case to protect your team ("going to the mat" as I've heard it called). This is a whole other thing that you'll have to gauge for yourself as you grow. Setting expectations is another thing that you should train your team to do, as it is critical to how your team relates to the rest of the org. Think of Scotty on Star Trek. He adds buffer time into the work to keep his team happy, but it also means they can 'perform miracles' when the situation merits the need.
I've never been officially in a mgmt role, this is just based on my perspectives and what I've seen with good mgmt.
https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTRfaR3CE/
I managemnt is thr science of getting out of being nice to people. Just be nice to them.
huh... commenting to see if anybody has any useful suggestions.
Best I can think of is an Army manual, FM 22-100 (which will probably require you to do some pretty heavy reading between the lines if you can manage to look past all the US Army stuff), chapters 4, 5, 6 and appendices A and B are sections with stuff that might be more general purpose even though the text frames everything around combat.
