Business Management ABCs

The Biography of a Manager – The Coach As an Example (1)

Quite sure that most managers know the basics of management. But then, what?

What do I do as a manager?

The biography of a manager starts in early life when the future manager is still a child. Being a child he wants to do everything himself (“me do it”). That is the essence of childhood – doing things your way, learning. Try to experiment, looking for boundaries. Later on some continue this path, where others have found the way to let others work for them. This can also start soon. They are often in the lead (“He Charlie would you do me a favor?”). This is one of the dilemmas of the manager: what is my task and what do I delegate?

But then on his way in life, the future manager encounters a lot of challenges. The question “what do I do and what do I delegate,” gets swamped by a myriad of possibilities. The simple question what to do seems more complicated than expected. “What to do,” depends most of all on the field of business a professional is working in and each company can have a different focus in that sense. This will mean that a manager will have to adapt to this sometimes unique situation.

Individual careers.

The diversity of What people do gets visible in the team. The team is buildup of individuals that have their own professional background like the manager has one and each of the team members requires a unique management approach.

This is one of the simplest sides of management. And here, not only managers are dealing with this. How to manage your career. What do you need? What do you do? The manager has experience with many different careers and will know how to manage individual team members each with their own background. The coach / manager has been there (must have been there). Think about the soccer coach as a manager who knows the game of the individual player.

Team dynamics.

Team dynamics add more complexity to the work of the manager as certain combination of roles in a team are more conflicting than others. This is new to the manager as it is new to the coach who recently changed from being a player to become a coach. It is quite different coaching a team than playing in it.

Culture and Style.

Add to this the culture of the organization that is also unique in forming, structuring and organizing the activities. In a way different than from the competition (where the new manager came from…). The manager has to cope with this, but is not always conscious of it. What is “not-done” in one organization can be a best-practice in another.

One example of how this may affect the manager is what happened to Bernd Schuster. He managed the Real Madrid soccer team but could cope with the Spanish culture. In fact he didn’t adapt his approach to the Spanish requirements, most of all those in confronting the press. As a coach he was ok, but he didn’t survive the demands of the culture.

Culture is also about the limitations of your own background and what a new situation and a new environment demands from you. What do you personally value and what is important in the area where you are coach or manager?

Then there is a very important relation between the individual productivity of the player and the style. A player who is focused on offering an attractive game may be less productive in scoring… to name one example.

copyright 2009 Hans Bool

For more information on productivity and a simple test to determine key performance indicators, have a look at: the productivity test