Managers eat alone

When I was at Apple Computer I worked for Bruce Cleveland, most recently an executive at the former Siebel. He used the phrase in the title of this entry to describe the fact that when you become a manager, you can no longer be familiar with your employees. When I worked at Sun Microsystems, Scott McNealy talked about a higher standard his managers needed to have both inside and outside Sun.

Here are some basics to think about:

• Your words are words of authority
• Stick with requirements
• You will be doing their performance reviews
• Your jokes might be taken personally

If you join a hallway discussion as a manager, many employees will take your words as direction. You might think you are only having a casual discussion and it might trigger a massive design change or schedule change before you know it. Make it clear that your team should continue on their plans. Make sure they know they are empowered to think and make decisions for themselves. Changes should be explicit, well thought out and not ad-hoc.

If you try and do your employee's jobs they will feel micromanaged and ineffective. As a manager, drive your agenda through requirements and not implementation. Implementation is your employee's job. Implementation is why they are in their jobs. You need to allow them creativity and provide them opportunities to think and grow so they can become bigger contributors later in their careers helping both you and your company or even the industry.

Remember that at sometime during the year you will write a performance review for your employees. If you and they behave as if you are only buddies, it can be a rude awakening. Familiarity can be misleading. It can make you slow to do the portion or your job where you have to be both critical and constructive. It is better to make the boundaries clear. You are their boss and will do the job in a professional and business-like manner. If you do not, you may be forced to change the relationship into a business-like one abruptly and that can turn the friendship sour.

Things you can say or discuss with a peer are trickier as a manager. If you tease an employee, they may consider it to be official criticism. If you gossip, it may be consider prejudiced or invasive. If you inquire, your employees may feel obligated to talk and feel uncomfortable. In both this and the previous paragraph it is easy to go too far and not be compassionate or human. The important thing is to be aware and unassuming.

Take your position thoughtfully and your employees will more likely take you with respect.

More later ...