Finding Effective Managers!

Traditionally managers have been appointed based on their superior technical expertise. As I have said before however, often we do nothing more than “lose our best engineer or salesperson and promote someone who turns out to be a lousy manager”.

So the question becomes, how do we go about finding staff to become our next crop of managers… or probably more importantly, our next generation of leaders!?

Obviously competence in the technical aspects of the job are important however perhaps a few other traits can give us a additional hints to find the talent.

Can I suggest the following when looking for leaders / managers.

Choose:

- those who regularly tell others what they are doing and the results they have achieved on behalf of the company. Yeah I know they can be seen as braggers but better this sort, than the ones who are mumbling about the problems at home or type of mobile they are thinking of buying

- those that seem to be able get their colleagues to help out when things need to get done, the characters that say ‘hey lets all come in on Saturday finish this off and we can go to the pub for lunch together after’

- those who are willing to be in the spotlight… you know… the types that volunteer to plan a company event or activity or that will give presentations to other employees

- those with a good network, they know ‘everybody,’ the sort of person you instinctively go to, to ask… do you know anyone that can get me a left handed widget for my ‘whats-it-thingo’

- those that finish tasks on time without sacrificing quality or wasting resources

- those that seem to make others feel good about themselves, the types that say, ‘he’s a good guy’ or ‘she’s a great help’ and that are comfortable paying compliments to others

- those that can sell the ‘no’ or a different point of view with tact and still maintain relationships by knowing what is common ground and strengthening that, rather than accentuating differences

- those that don’t bad mouth others or complain about workmates, ‘those idiots in financial control, production or the upstarts in the pampered sales team’

- those that solve problems in imaginative ways and through negotiation rather than the ones that come to your office and say, ‘this is a cock up what do we do now’!

- those that listen and show they are listening rather than those that love to just talk.

Well I agree it is not a complete list, however it does give some hints as to the qualities we need in a leader / managers.

More management articles can be found at orglearn.org just follow one of the links management, leadership and career success.