Clear and Present Manager

by | Syndicated

Since reading the last issue of The Testing Planet on leadership I seem to have come across more blogs than usual talking about how to be a great leader, manager, boss or whatever, for instance:

I’m interested in improving as a manager, leader, boss and (especially) whatever and this kind of material can provide inspiration. I’m also keen on personal reflection and introspection as a way of identifying areas to work on and over the years I’ve come to realise that a couple of principles trump most other things for me:

  • clear: I will do my best to be absolutely clear about what I think, what my response to any request is, what my motivation for any particular approach is, what I will commit to do (or not do) about some problem and so on. I will encourage and answer any question on any work-related topic to the fullest extent that I can given obvious constraints such as confidentiality.
  • present: I will do my best to be approachable, available and responsive. If I can’t be responsive I’ll try to explain why and give a commitment to respond at some later time.

With these in place, and applied appropriately, I like to think that whatever techniques, approaches or methodologies  that we’re using or experimenting with will be well-grounded and, although they apply primarily to how I want to interact with my teams, I try to abide by them when working with any of my colleagues.
Image: http://www.last.fm