Whenever someone asks me what I am doing I always want to say “I’m doing manager sh#t”
Periodically individuals ask me what I do as a manager because they are trying to determine if they want to become a manager (or wondering why I am in meetings all of the time). I always struggle with the answer because many things I do are not well-defined. This post is a summary of all the things I do and deal with as a manager in an attempt to provide a better answer for those who want to become managers.
When I first became a manager I focused on immediate actions such as visible people issues and responding to urgent tasks to support the value stream. I was not able to handle (or even see they were needed) all of these tasks listed below when I became a manager but over time I developed the ability to do these things and I still have more development.
Note that managers in different organizations behave differently based on the expectations of the organizations. For instance, in previous companies in which I worked the managers always seemed stressed and generally unhappy. I don’t see that where I am now.
Management Activities
This includes the tasks that may be documented in a job description that all managers have to do. These include:
- Determine the number of people needed in the department and balance/manage the workload
- Approvals such as spending, travel, file/folder accesses
- Transferring info from the organization such as updates and new initiatives to team members
- Transfer info from team members to others such as project updates
- Hiring
- Budgeting
- Discipline
- Reviews
Leadership Activities
These include less tangible activities where I apply my experience. knowledge, and feel.
- Productivity improvements such as helping team members be more efficient and less stressed
- Comforting employees that some of the stressful or frustrating things are ok (or things that I need to fix
- Strategic long-term planning for the department (I like to think that I am a business owner of my department sometimes to give myself proper ownership of supporting our customers)
- Department process improvement
- People Stuff
- Assess where people are on their development curve
- Determine when I should step in and solve a problem, allow the team member to solve the problem, push them to solve a problem for their growth or responsibility, or step in when I see there is significant risk in the path they are taking (such as sitting in on a meeting and trying to avoid adding my 2 cents when (I think) I know the answer.
- Levelling up team members who are not meeting expectations or are a bit behind in their development and determining the right amount of pressure to apply
- Get people to play well together
Mentoring/coaching/developing
This is something that I am starting to grasp after being in the role for about 4 years because this is enough time to start seeing career growth.
- career progression
- mentoring engineers and fellow managers
- Employee development/coaching
- project guidance
- Improve Employee development processes
- Giving growth projects
- Green Belt Mentoring
Project management
These are the basic actions of managing/supporting projects and making sure our department is supporting the value stream of the business. Some of this is also a “hidden factory” to make up for lacking in current systems
- Prioritization
- Defend my department/filter tasks
- Shuffling priorities for hot items
- Manage projects
- Connecting people
- Process improvement
- Coordinate with others in the organization
- Facilitate
- Daily attend meetings for managing projects
- Projects for development and help the business
- Workload management
- Describe big projects
- Communicate project updates
Solving Problems/answering questions
I have been in the business for a few years so I have connections and understand many of the processes. I have enough experience that many of the problems that occur are similar to problems I have seen before. Some problems are also big/urgent enough that I need to help solve them.
- Solving problems for others
- Helping to understand problems and then define actions and improvements
- Solve business problems
- Solve technical problems
- Making sure employees are working on the right things
- Making sure projects are progressing in the right direction
- Note: sometimes it is hard to balance giving them the answer rather than having them do it
Becoming a Better Manager
When I became a manager, how I felt about the people I worked with changed. I now feel responsible for being there for my team members so I tend to make myself available a little more than I probably should. This causes me to give more of my time to my team members reducing my time flexibility compared to when I was an individual contributor. The feeling reminds me of being a parent, you are always trying to do the right thing and develop more independent people but there are always things that feel like I can do better.
There are also things that I know I need to get better at.
- I let people flounder too long before stepping in and getting them to improve like regularly asking them to do the day to day in their job, I should not be holding hands
- Fewer meetings
- Delegating
- Allowing the team members to do the work rather than me doing it
- I always feel like if I can do something I should do it and and not not burden others.
So if you are interested in becoming a manager maybe this list will help you better understand the job.
What do you do here?: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTdOHBIppx8