I have been fortunate to manage multiple people in my career so far, and really believe it is one of the most rewarding part of working. Seeing people develop over time does give me more satisfaction than seeing an achieved sales target on a spreadsheet. But I have had to learn how to become a good manager, it wasn’t intuitive for me. Sadly some of my early staff members paid the price of my ignorance (I beg for their forgiveness!…). But I have learnt, and we all can. So what are the key foundations to put in place to become great at managing people?

The biggest and most challenging part for me was to stop keeping control and start extending trust. When you are a strong achiever, you want to stay on top of everything to deliver all the time. So you plan, check, roll out, educate, solve, and do most of the talking. It’s a nice way of getting the job done, but a bad way to manage people. And not a great way to manage yourself overtime either. I realised one day that by opening the gates of trust and sharing more with my staff, I was actually more performant myself. So you have to open yourself up to let others do it their way, and sometimes fail. You need to create space for good communication and connection. That way when staff experience issues, they will feel comfortable coming to you. And not keeping all the ‘top’ information to yourself helps them feel involved and committed.

In keeping with extending trust, the second foundation is to be open to be vulnerable. This means accepting and expressing that you don’t know much about certain things. It is best to ask an expert in the team or an external partner, which creates respect for your integrity and empowers the other person. Likewise if you want to be good at managing people, you need to be willing to hear what they have to say. Constructive feedback is essential in learning what you do best and what you need to improve on. It might hurt, but the more you seek it, the easier it gets. Start with a 360 degrees anonymous on-line survey if you are not comfortable with verbal feedback.  Wouldn’t you rather know?

Now the other side of the coin of being trustworthy and vulnerable is that you must keep your people accountable. Otherwise the balance does not hold, and you tip into becoming a passive manager that staff learn to hear but not listen to. And it is absolutely your job to put in place those boundaries. So use WIP meetings, keep track of deadlines, maintain professional standards. Nobody will teach them that if you don’t. In other words, put a clear framework in place, and let your staff roam free with their own way within it.

This ties in nicely with my next point: to become absolutely great at managing people, you need to adapt your leadership style to the individual and the situation. Great managers can assess when their staff need more competency, or when they need more motivation, or both. And at times nothing at all but just an open door if needed. So you need to stay in tune regularly with your team, to get the pulse of what is going on for them. Listen to the tone of their voice, look at their actions, ask a few open-ended questions. That way you know what is your role within the framework: hands off or hands on, gently pushing or waiting.

A classic trait of a good people manager remains to lead by example. Unfortunately this tends to disappear gradually in the corporate world, where bad behaviours can be tolerated if you are high enough. Your people look up to you, every day, even if it’s implicit. So show up on time for your meetings, respond to e-mails, be courteous. And whilst we are at it, don’t bag other managers or cascade down the pressure you just inherited from the board meeting. If you want your staff to take breaks or come prepared to meetings, do the same. Whatever happens around you, remember that you inspire others all the time.

In the end the cliches of the manager being a great buddy or a know-it-all are worthless. If you don’t create trust within a set of expectations, if you don’t listen and if you don’t inspire, the rest is just rubbish. If you have experienced bad managers (let’s face it, they are plenty of them around) be compassionate, as they might not know how to be better. Emotional and social intelligence are concepts that only started to float our organisations recently.

But you can start leading from where you are right now, no matter who is above you. Extend trust, seek feedback, be accountable and set your own example. These are all attributes that will serve you for a very long time in your career.