A DIFFERENT MUSCLE

“I need a manager, a mentor and a friend; which one do you want to be first for me today?” A Colleague

I was reminded nearly every day this past week that “Management is a different Muscle”; and it is not a muscle that is strong in everyone.  It is a muscle that you have to develop and continue to work before it ever becomes toned.  Managing people and personalities requires very different skills versus a non-management role.  Patience and perseverance come to mind as skills I have repeatedly used recently. 

I sometimes wonder as I go from meeting to meeting trying to put out fire after fire and attempting to coach and mentor along the way, if anyone that I work with ever thinks about me.  I realize that seems like a very selfish place to be.  A “good” manager thinks about their team and the individual needs of their team.  They think about what is both good for the business and for their direct reports; but what about what is good for me?  Is anyone thinking about me?

There are days that I feel like I am the ring master of a three-ring circus.  In the ring to your left, you can see lions on display carefully listening to the commands of their trainer but waiting for one perfect moment that they can break free.  In the ring to your right, you can see clowns entertaining the audience at each other’s expense.  In the middle ring high above the ground floor there is a trapeze artist with no safety wire walking a tight rope but praying they will not lose their balance; all the while, the ring master demonstrates her ability to juggle 20 balls in the air without letting a single one hit the ground.  As I jump from call to call and meeting to meeting, I think about this three-ring circus and the juggling that is happening simultaneously and then as I reflect it hits me, no one is watching this circus; no one is paying for this ticket; no one is aware of this chaos, no one but me.

Patience and persistence are the two management muscles that I am using the most right now.  The patience one is something I have quite a lot of; however, I am starting to see that too strong of a patience muscle can result in an underdeveloped assertiveness muscle.  If I devote too much time being patient and talking through issues, I have the potential to lose the perception that I can make and act on tough decisions.

In all of my experience and consultations with other managers, there seems to be a “one or the other” type of manager.  Managers that are too patient and understanding so as to lead to the perception that they are “easy” and do not require any performance standards; or the type of manager that is assertive, quick to react and unengaged in coaching, instead asserting their rightful place as a manager and quickly calling the play without any consultative processes.  The place I am seeking to find is in the middle, but as we have previously ascertained, the middle is messy.

There is no one way to go about this job and anyone new to management will learn sooner than later that the muscles they used out of management are completely different than the ones they will need to develop in management.  These muscles will cramp, they will be incredibly sore some days and you will lose sleep trying to figure out what your body and business needs to be successful.  Your strengths will evolve and what the business demands will also evolve. Twenty years into managing people and my muscles are still sore and still developing.

The three-ring circus will go on and as the ring master, you will need to keep your eye on everything all at once with the knowing that IF you are doing your job right, NO ONE will know about the circus, let alone be watching it; no one but you.