Do you manage?

I had a telephonic conversation with my friend about the reason why teams under perform or why most mangers are often not liked by the team/s they manage. After the priceless half and hour conversation I reflected back on the conversation and tried to understand the content of what was shared.Before anything else we are all humans and the ability to connect with other humans automatically shouldn’t qualify one as a good manger he said.

Secondly, companies think that by giving you opportunities to grow and learn for some odd reason they think they own you and that you owe them. And this is why you often find dissatisfied employees stuck at places where they feel that their role and jurisdictions are too pivotal to let go off, leading to the employees putting their needs second over the employer’s needs. This of course leads to frustrated employees he said, and even though they might see value of what they do, they do not value selling their souls in exchange of recognition.

Just like most conversations I’ve shared with him, we often make references to politics to make sense of everything we talking about. The drop of votes for the ANC in the recent local elections is one reference. He says to me that had the ANC be apologetic and not been arrogant in their campaigning messages they wouldn’t have performed much better than they have. He adds that poor leadership and management is one detrimental factor to mangers leading and managing their teams properly even more so this style of management disallows the team the opportunity to perform to their fullest potential- true managers manage by example.

Understand your team’s potential, understand each member’s limitations and understand what role each player plays. By the time he said this I was trying to figure what my role was and what it meant to the team. See its futile to be in a team where you are a good player but you’re not a good enough player in a team. 

Most managers I know are afraid, they afraid of change, they are afraid of failure and what often what they do is that they bestow this fear onto their teams and them ride out the mirage. I’ve seen teams fail because of unrealistic expectations founded by the mis-education and understanding of one’s team. Don’t get me wrong there is nothing wrong with motivating your team to become great in all what they do encouraging them to be at their best and mostly to give meaning to their best but its another reason to mislead a team into believing

I pray that if I ever get to be a top management position, I pray that I do not disconnect with my team as people never mind as employees, we are humans first before we are employees and I think companies have forgotten that.

Also read: Corporate Slavery

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