Good Management Starts From Watching and Caring
日本語はこちら。
I've been in a "management" role for about 6-7 years now. The size of the teams I've managed have ranged from as few as 2 to 10 members with various aspects differing wildly (e.g. team member's seniority, experience, employee/contractor, etc). Throughout my experience as a manager, I've made many mistakes and learned a lot of lessons. Some of them come from books or from my managers and mentors but I'd say a lot of them come from my own experience.
Now, I could write yet-another-blog-post-about-management but I'm pretty sure I won't be able to add anything new and I wouldn't be able to cover even 1% of what management consists of. Instead, I'd like to share just two things that I think are always necessary when it comes to good management.
1. Watching
The first thing a manager needs to do is "watch" your team members. This is where everything begins. By "watching", I mean things like:
Taking note of their work
Noticing when they've done something well or poorly
Seeing how they're communicating with others (both in good and bad ways)
Members' working hours
In order to manage your team members, you need to know these things or you won't be able to give adequate advice or take appropriate action. For you to give credit about their work, you need to actually know what they're doing. You have to notice when they've said something inappropriate to others in order to give feedback. You have to know what their pain points are for you to address them.
It all begins from "watching" your members.
2. Caring
The other point I want to emphasize is "caring" about your members.
By caring I mean actually caring. It's very easy to fall into the trap of thinking that you are caring by just asking how they are and showing empathy. These actions are important and are first steps you need to take to start managing but what's more crucial is that you actually take action.
When you are care about someone, you want to make sure you're making life easier for them so that they can reach their full potential. Watching and listening, showing empathy will only get you halfway there and I find that's not usually enough. You could think of the first point about "watching" as a preparation step for this "caring" part.
Granted, this isn't easy. The watching or listening part is not too difficult as you're more in a passive state and your member will be doing the majority of the work. But after that it's your turn as a manager to do your part of the work.
The actual actions you take to show that you're caring will be different depending on what the issues is. It could be things like:
Offloading the work
Making sure your team member gets a pay raise
Giving "Air Cover"
Take time on reviewing their work
Don't worry. You will fail (at first)
Ok that subject was a little sarcastic😉
Out of the many things a manager has to do, these two things are very difficult (especially "Caring"). Don't worry if you can't do it well. It's not really something you can learn through reading textbooks (or blogposts 😉). You'll probably need to practice it several times and see what kind of "care" fits your style and your member's style.