Introvert management introverts or experience managing technical teams
To begin with about the author - I have been working in IT for more than 20 years in three companies: EMC, IBM, Sun (in alphabetical order). He started as a systems engineer immediately after the university, then he was a senior engineer, technical consultant, head of technical consultants and, finally, technical director who led a team of presales and architects of more than 70 people. In addition, for a year I was the leader of vendors through partners (Channel Sales Leader), distributed throughout Central and Eastern Europe. Below, I will try to share my experience exactly as a leader and, in order not to have wrong or unnecessary associations, I will give examples from practice while working for ABC (also three letters). Perhaps the presentation is somewhat one-sided, since all my employers are large international companies, and I worked in their regional offices. Well, then I can’t do anything with this specificity and what the reader deems not acceptable and not correct, let it remain so personally for him.
Firstly, why is the word “introvert” put in the headline? Without going into the depths of psychology, where I am not oriented at all, many, I think, have heard the words introvert and extrovert, especially recently. There are several comics on adme.ru describing the differences between these two types of people (actually, I first learned these terms from there), and those who are interested can dig into Wikipedia and the original sources - the writings of Jung and Hans Aysenck. For myself, I spend the watershed between extroverts and introverts in relation to public speaking: if a person likes to speak in front of an audience, he charges from this, gets pleasure and is ready to work with double energy after a performance, then most likely an extrovert is in front of you. If a person needs a long and painful way to prepare for a performance, to tune himself, and after a performance - to depart, then this is the one whom I consider to be an introvert. Moreover, it is important that this absolutely does not mean that some people do something better or worse than others - this is solely about the internal attitude to the act of public speaking.
Secondly, where is it all about, what is the connection between introverts / extroverts and technical teams. The thing is that it is techies, for the most part, introverts. This does not mean that an extrovert cannot be a techie and a very good techie, but, as my experience shows, extroverts do not linger on technical positions and, as soon as possible, move to seller positions or to other roles that emphasize communication with others. people. Similarly, among sellers, even excellent sellers, there are introverts who, with their self-discipline, force themselves to perform not the most comfortable duties — honor and praise to such people. It’s just that for someone it goes in a natural way and is purely pleasure, for another it requires maximum concentration, tension and a subsequent recovery period.
')
Having dealt with the terminology, we turn, in fact, to the subject of narration. I will immediately make a reservation that what I am writing about is not the result of some kind of training and an attempt to present someone's clever thoughts, but only a statement of my own experience, and therefore I do not pretend that the definitions are academic and I will be happy to hear the objections and wishes in any form, especially, with the indication of my incorrect conclusions and actions. So, under the actual leadership , I will understand the change in the behavior of the representatives of the team, which is improving some quantitative indicators. For example, in the ABC company, I was faced with the task of turning tech-techies into tech-sellers, which, naturally, ultimately should be expressed in an exponential growth in sales volumes. There is no reason not to say that the task is often either in such a clear form or not formulated, or generally exists solely in the head of one of the managers, and to solve it, one must work not with the team, but with this manager. Looking ahead, I will say that I believe that this task was solved to a significant degree, although I admit that alternative points of view are possible.
By tech-tech-techie, I mean a technician who is well versed in equipment, understands how it works, what tasks and how it solves. At the same time, an attempt to explain to the customer why he needs this equipment does not end successfully in all cases. Why? I will focus on one, I think, the main reason: the customer and the techie (and even the seller too) often speak completely different languages . And so much so that sometimes a translator is required (most often the seller is forced to act in this role). Imagine a customer, sometimes, even from the IT department, who thinks about there, how he can contribute to increasing steel production, improving the quality of cars or conducting a marketing campaign to attract new subscribers and a techie who talks about processor clock speeds, the number of drives, hyperconvergent and three-tier architecture ...
Now about who is to blame and what to do. My position is that customers are given to us from above and it’s not for us to educate them. Although, they can (and should) be formed, as I will write about below. But the behavior of the technician should be disassembled in detail:
Of course, this is a very exaggerated picture, but believe me, to some extent it corresponds to real life. We had one engineer at ABC who literally answered the customer: I came to change the disk to you, and not to explain what was wrong with you. Rebuilding a relationship with a manager who listened to it was worth the effort.
We first analyze, shall we say, superficial instruments that can correct the picture described. Firstly, this is the development of what in English is called softskills - teaching the art of presentations, sales techniques (for example, SPIN), psychological techniques, and the like. In my time, oratory training helped me a lot - I learned some tricks from there how not to be afraid of public speaking. Whenever possible, I try to be the first to come to the room where I have to speak, go around it, feel it, go into all corners and feel like the owner of the room where the guests will come, but this is my personal reception. There are many similar methods and everyone probably chooses something different. Secondly, in order to understand not only the language, but also the problems facing the customer, the technician should spend as much time with the customer as possible - get used to it, feel its problems and then the proposed solutions will become much more relevant and realistic. and, most importantly, understandable to the customer himself. So, for example, at one time I set the task for two of my subordinates to feed the customer lunch at least once a week and traced the obligatoriness of this event. It’s not even so important what the conversation at such dinners will be about - the main thing is that my techies and their colleagues from the customer’s side learned to understand each other and speak the same language. Of course, there are always more customers than resources available to you, and here I am guided by the 80/20 principle - 20 percent of customers bring you 80 percent of the money and it is on them that you should concentrate your efforts. And finally, thirdly, you need to find a pain point - a question that is interesting and / or important and understandable to the customer. Then the discussion will be mutual, and both parties will make efforts to understand each other. I will give one example from my practice, when I was still a techie. Arriving for the first time in one organization in another city, I was greeted, to put it mildly, with a cool question: why did you actually come? Your equipment does not suit us (the claims were essentially and fair) and we have already decided to buy your competitors. Having difficulty persuading the customer to listen to my presentation, I talked about technology, feeling that everything goes into milk and just wasted time. I said, until the customer casually objected to one small technical, as it seemed to him, inaccuracy. I can say without exaggeration that the dispute about this inaccuracy lasted more than an hour, and with the transition almost to screams ... The seller who was with me, having lost the essence of the conversation, almost fell asleep. And we, quarreling, came to a common point of view, then the customer asked for another presentation, prices and remained our client for at least 10 years. I have been friends with this customer for more than 15 years, having changed the company (to another ABC), and without doing any business with it. We just became friends.
Returning to the topic, the task of the manager is to develop the mentioned skills of communication, presentations and the like (softskills) with techies. It is important to note that it is not enough just to organize training, it is necessary to ensure the involvement of employees, their interest, participation. In parallel, by the way, the most important task of joint activities of technicians, teamwork, recognition of each other, organization of interaction is being solved. And do not think that there is no such task, even if everyone is sitting in the same room (open space) - introverts are self-sufficient. They do not need and are not interested in communication for the sake of communication - if there is a task on which he works alone, then he may not even know the name of his neighbor for years.
But, as it is accurately said above, these methods and tools can only slightly adjust the behavior of techies. Because the main thing that underlies their actions and desires is motivation. About motivation written hundreds of articles and books on this topic, you can defend a thesis. There are self-motivated people who are always ready to go further and deeper. If you have such people in the team - you are lucky, appreciate them. For the rest, external factors and conditions are needed. In order not to be unfounded, I will describe what motivates me and what I motivated my teams. Firstly, this is belonging to an organization, to a community. This medal has two sides. The organization should have a noble goal and purpose, for example, providing mobile communication for all people, providing a platform for storing any information and the like. This goal should be formulated in the form of slogans, slogans, be simple, clear and well-known. If the company's stated goal is, for example, an increase in dividends on shares from $ 18 to $ 21, then you should not expect people who don’t have any shares, they will give all their best. ... And on the other hand, techies should share this goal. For myself, I divide all companies into "religious" and "non-religious." Companies that they believe in may or may not like them, like Apple, for example, but whose goals are understandable. And companies that "also have" or that were believed sometime in the past ...
It is clear that the previous paragraph refers to the reality given to us from above and to change the situation, most likely it is not possible. However, the atmosphere in the local office is equally important. When the entire office clearly understands the tasks and shares the general goals of the company, it works as one organism. And everything from the general manager to the secretaries are trying to do everything possible for the good of the company. Moreover, in such a situation, there is no rejection of the fact that any commercial organization should make a profit and everything, including techies, is focused on the fact of making a profit.
At the very beginning of my career at ABC, we were telling each other with a question: How much money did you bring to the company today ? And, if at first this question, in any case, caused a negative reaction in me: how much money, if I studied today, for example, how to write scripts for automatic installation of software on a server, then gradually, it became a guide to action.
Creating such a constructive atmosphere is the task of all managers without exception. And the atmosphere is not only and not so much about money. This is the availability of all managers for subordinates, friendliness, mutual assistance and mutual assistance. Such companies have results that they show, always exceed all expectations.
And, returning to the topic of various languages ​​spoken by customers and techies, with the right atmosphere in the company, there is no longer a question of translation. Techies are not locked in the sink of technical terms - they want to be understood and they themselves are trying to explain complex technical things with simple and understandable words. And learning softskills, which were discussed above, will not give superficial results, but will arm techies with methods and tools that will be constantly used precisely because of the desire to convey their thoughts and be understood.
The last remark on the topic of interaction with customers is the behavior of a manager who creates the atmosphere at his own level, supports and cultivates the desire of technicians to be understood and explains to them that it is necessary to chew on and speak to customers even those things that themselves seem obvious to techies.
One of the pillars of the constructive atmosphere is trust . Techies must trust their supervisor, and the supervisor must always be on the side of his subordinates and trust them.
Let us examine two truly typical situations. In the first case, I grew up inside the team and became the head of my own colleagues. These are the most hothouse conditions under which you already have authority a priori, you “own” and trust you (I don’t take extreme cases into account when you become a leader, let's say, not quite deserved - this is most likely in the second situation) . Of course, it is important to maintain relationships with colleagues who now obey you. I had no doubts that it was the relationship that was the most valuable thing, which could be a team that is, should remain a team, regardless of any external factors. External factors here include various transformations, changes in goals and objectives, additional responsibilities, changes in working conditions and much more ...
Probably, the mistakes of the newly-minted manager are typical: first, remaining in the soul of a techie and guided by the principle “you want what would be done well - do it yourself”, he tries to drag the increasing load on his own. Then, if disappointment does not come, the novice manager learns to delegate duties and, succeeding in this direction, delegates absolutely everything, turning out to be useless to no one. Anyway, this is my way. These issues require detailed consideration.
Clearly, the path of a techie-manager who is unable to cope with an ever-increasing load is hopeless. And then, probably, everyone should decide for himself either to become a real leader and inevitably lose that level of expertise and technical knowledge that he had before the appointment, or to give up leadership functions and remain an expert. Sitting on two chairs, it may be possible, but in reality it does not work.
But the issue of delegation is already deeper and closely related to the topic of trust. The most disgusting thing a manager can do is to engage in micro-management - to try to penetrate into every action of his employee, to control every step he takes. I will not say for everyone, but such petty care is absolutely contraindicated for introverts - there is a task, there are deadlines - we will discuss the result closer to the end of the term. Of course, this is a risk for everyone, but this risk, in my opinion, is an essential element of trust. Moreover, it is necessary to understand that if your subordinate introverts, then a request for help in a situation when something is not working is absolutely atypical for them. So the manager, on the one hand, trusting his subordinate and the expected result by the deadline, on the other hand, worried about this result, it is necessary to find a balance between petty care and control of each step and general benevolent questions about the progress of work and offers of help. It is an unobtrusive sentence, because, we note once again, an introvert, most often, will suffer, but will not ask for help himself. In a healthy friendly atmosphere, problems with finding such a balance do not arise.
The second situation, when the leader becomes a guest "Varyag" - is appointed to lead the established team from the outside. In this case, there is no initial trust of the parties to each other, and there can be no relationship, and it is necessary to build relations from scratch. It takes time and effort, but if there is a desire, it is a completely solvable task. My experience, I will make a reservation right away, as I consider it positive, says that, again, trust is one of the key factors. I initially completely trusted the team that had formed before me - after all, they worked like that before I came, and solved all the tasks before them. Moreover, the team, in which the head is the Varyag, has significantly greater knowledge than the new man, who initially has no authority and besides just trust comes the second most important factor - respect .
Respect is the second pillar of the atmosphere in the office. Primordial respect for others, for their opinion, recognition of the righteousness of others, turning to his subordinates for advice, in my opinion, creates the creative and trusting atmosphere necessary for productive work. It doesn’t work by a strong-willed effort — from tomorrow I will respect Vasya Pupkin, and next week I will also trust him. These are organic things and I do not agree with the well-known dictum that a good person is not a profession. Maybe this is not a profession, but I would like for my leader to be exactly a good person. And the rest of the leader can be taught if he listens to his subordinates.
Of course, authority is gained not only by trust and respect - actions are also important. But here I will not even give any examples - I sincerely try to do what I want, what they would do to me, as I consider it right, based on the fact that I respect my subordinates and trust them completely.
By limiting the graphomaniac impulse, I will highlight a few moments, the understanding of which came gradually and which were not initially obvious.
Cuts, transformations and layoffs . If I were asked about the darkest, most nasty and vile side of work as a manager, then this is it.
I propose a classification:
Employee initiative. Yes, it happens that people leave. I, in most cases, take it as my mistake - I could not create an atmosphere in which the employee would be comfortable, could not provide sufficient funding for him, could not give him interesting tasks. Sometimes it happens that doing all this was not possible, but nonetheless. Perhaps the only situation that is unacceptable is blackmail by an employee of the head. However, when it comes to salary, an invitation brought by an employee to work from another company with a larger salary amount can help in raising salaries in the current place, as one of the arguments. Of course, there’s a fine line, but in a normal relationship between the manager and the employee, if they both understand and accept the problem and work out a joint plan to eliminate it, where such an invitation is one of the plan’s points, then this is a working option to correct the situation. Similarly, if an employee leaves for career growth. Of course, I will do everything possible to keep him, if possible I will objectively try to analyze with him the pros and cons of such a decision and the risks that are possible during the transition. But in any case, if there is no opportunity (and often there is really no way) to provide him with similar growth in his career and / or salary there, in the company where you are now, then it is more correct, by swallowing his own emotions, to let him go and sincerely wish success.
The decision of the head. Honestly, I was not in such situations when I myself, without external factors, decided that there was no place for any person on my team. If I saw that there is a problem - I have always tried to solve it and correct the situation, without resorting to such drastic measures.
Employer Initiative. As mentioned above, the accounting of resources in companies, especially commercial ones, is conducted according to the number of employees (head). Simplifying the picture, it turns out that the amount of money earned is divided by the total number of employees. If the result of production per employee is less than the indicator required by the company, a decision is made to reduce the number of employees. Of course, the reality is more complicated and multifaceted, but the article is not about that. Of course, if the decision on the need for staff cuts is made somewhere at the top, then the decision on who specifically falls under the cuts cannot be made without the participation of the manager. In my opinion, any manager understands or should understand that the demands on him will not decrease due to the fact that he will have fewer resources and, therefore, there is no place for emotions when making a decision - first of all, business factors are assessed from the point of view of the company's business. in general, and units, in particular. I will describe the actions that I took, being in the described situation:
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Firstly, why is the word “introvert” put in the headline? Without going into the depths of psychology, where I am not oriented at all, many, I think, have heard the words introvert and extrovert, especially recently. There are several comics on adme.ru describing the differences between these two types of people (actually, I first learned these terms from there), and those who are interested can dig into Wikipedia and the original sources - the writings of Jung and Hans Aysenck. For myself, I spend the watershed between extroverts and introverts in relation to public speaking: if a person likes to speak in front of an audience, he charges from this, gets pleasure and is ready to work with double energy after a performance, then most likely an extrovert is in front of you. If a person needs a long and painful way to prepare for a performance, to tune himself, and after a performance - to depart, then this is the one whom I consider to be an introvert. Moreover, it is important that this absolutely does not mean that some people do something better or worse than others - this is solely about the internal attitude to the act of public speaking.
Secondly, where is it all about, what is the connection between introverts / extroverts and technical teams. The thing is that it is techies, for the most part, introverts. This does not mean that an extrovert cannot be a techie and a very good techie, but, as my experience shows, extroverts do not linger on technical positions and, as soon as possible, move to seller positions or to other roles that emphasize communication with others. people. Similarly, among sellers, even excellent sellers, there are introverts who, with their self-discipline, force themselves to perform not the most comfortable duties — honor and praise to such people. It’s just that for someone it goes in a natural way and is purely pleasure, for another it requires maximum concentration, tension and a subsequent recovery period.
')
Having dealt with the terminology, we turn, in fact, to the subject of narration. I will immediately make a reservation that what I am writing about is not the result of some kind of training and an attempt to present someone's clever thoughts, but only a statement of my own experience, and therefore I do not pretend that the definitions are academic and I will be happy to hear the objections and wishes in any form, especially, with the indication of my incorrect conclusions and actions. So, under the actual leadership , I will understand the change in the behavior of the representatives of the team, which is improving some quantitative indicators. For example, in the ABC company, I was faced with the task of turning tech-techies into tech-sellers, which, naturally, ultimately should be expressed in an exponential growth in sales volumes. There is no reason not to say that the task is often either in such a clear form or not formulated, or generally exists solely in the head of one of the managers, and to solve it, one must work not with the team, but with this manager. Looking ahead, I will say that I believe that this task was solved to a significant degree, although I admit that alternative points of view are possible.
By tech-tech-techie, I mean a technician who is well versed in equipment, understands how it works, what tasks and how it solves. At the same time, an attempt to explain to the customer why he needs this equipment does not end successfully in all cases. Why? I will focus on one, I think, the main reason: the customer and the techie (and even the seller too) often speak completely different languages . And so much so that sometimes a translator is required (most often the seller is forced to act in this role). Imagine a customer, sometimes, even from the IT department, who thinks about there, how he can contribute to increasing steel production, improving the quality of cars or conducting a marketing campaign to attract new subscribers and a techie who talks about processor clock speeds, the number of drives, hyperconvergent and three-tier architecture ...
Now about who is to blame and what to do. My position is that customers are given to us from above and it’s not for us to educate them. Although, they can (and should) be formed, as I will write about below. But the behavior of the technician should be disassembled in detail:
- It is more convenient for a specialist to speak the language in which he speaks daily in his circle. Exaggerating, the notorious bits and bytes - this is the subject in which techies are oriented and where they feel like fish in water.
- The tasks of the customer in the form of the examples given above are generally perceived as irrelevant excuses (bla-bla-bla or bullshit, if you use English terminology). Let him say how many processors he needs, and I will answer which server model he needs.
- The specialist (and, more often, the introvert), generally did a favor to the seller, looking up from his important affairs, set aside time for the meeting and once explained everything. Not his problems, if he remained misunderstood.
Of course, this is a very exaggerated picture, but believe me, to some extent it corresponds to real life. We had one engineer at ABC who literally answered the customer: I came to change the disk to you, and not to explain what was wrong with you. Rebuilding a relationship with a manager who listened to it was worth the effort.
We first analyze, shall we say, superficial instruments that can correct the picture described. Firstly, this is the development of what in English is called softskills - teaching the art of presentations, sales techniques (for example, SPIN), psychological techniques, and the like. In my time, oratory training helped me a lot - I learned some tricks from there how not to be afraid of public speaking. Whenever possible, I try to be the first to come to the room where I have to speak, go around it, feel it, go into all corners and feel like the owner of the room where the guests will come, but this is my personal reception. There are many similar methods and everyone probably chooses something different. Secondly, in order to understand not only the language, but also the problems facing the customer, the technician should spend as much time with the customer as possible - get used to it, feel its problems and then the proposed solutions will become much more relevant and realistic. and, most importantly, understandable to the customer himself. So, for example, at one time I set the task for two of my subordinates to feed the customer lunch at least once a week and traced the obligatoriness of this event. It’s not even so important what the conversation at such dinners will be about - the main thing is that my techies and their colleagues from the customer’s side learned to understand each other and speak the same language. Of course, there are always more customers than resources available to you, and here I am guided by the 80/20 principle - 20 percent of customers bring you 80 percent of the money and it is on them that you should concentrate your efforts. And finally, thirdly, you need to find a pain point - a question that is interesting and / or important and understandable to the customer. Then the discussion will be mutual, and both parties will make efforts to understand each other. I will give one example from my practice, when I was still a techie. Arriving for the first time in one organization in another city, I was greeted, to put it mildly, with a cool question: why did you actually come? Your equipment does not suit us (the claims were essentially and fair) and we have already decided to buy your competitors. Having difficulty persuading the customer to listen to my presentation, I talked about technology, feeling that everything goes into milk and just wasted time. I said, until the customer casually objected to one small technical, as it seemed to him, inaccuracy. I can say without exaggeration that the dispute about this inaccuracy lasted more than an hour, and with the transition almost to screams ... The seller who was with me, having lost the essence of the conversation, almost fell asleep. And we, quarreling, came to a common point of view, then the customer asked for another presentation, prices and remained our client for at least 10 years. I have been friends with this customer for more than 15 years, having changed the company (to another ABC), and without doing any business with it. We just became friends.
Returning to the topic, the task of the manager is to develop the mentioned skills of communication, presentations and the like (softskills) with techies. It is important to note that it is not enough just to organize training, it is necessary to ensure the involvement of employees, their interest, participation. In parallel, by the way, the most important task of joint activities of technicians, teamwork, recognition of each other, organization of interaction is being solved. And do not think that there is no such task, even if everyone is sitting in the same room (open space) - introverts are self-sufficient. They do not need and are not interested in communication for the sake of communication - if there is a task on which he works alone, then he may not even know the name of his neighbor for years.
But, as it is accurately said above, these methods and tools can only slightly adjust the behavior of techies. Because the main thing that underlies their actions and desires is motivation. About motivation written hundreds of articles and books on this topic, you can defend a thesis. There are self-motivated people who are always ready to go further and deeper. If you have such people in the team - you are lucky, appreciate them. For the rest, external factors and conditions are needed. In order not to be unfounded, I will describe what motivates me and what I motivated my teams. Firstly, this is belonging to an organization, to a community. This medal has two sides. The organization should have a noble goal and purpose, for example, providing mobile communication for all people, providing a platform for storing any information and the like. This goal should be formulated in the form of slogans, slogans, be simple, clear and well-known. If the company's stated goal is, for example, an increase in dividends on shares from $ 18 to $ 21, then you should not expect people who don’t have any shares, they will give all their best. ... And on the other hand, techies should share this goal. For myself, I divide all companies into "religious" and "non-religious." Companies that they believe in may or may not like them, like Apple, for example, but whose goals are understandable. And companies that "also have" or that were believed sometime in the past ...
It is clear that the previous paragraph refers to the reality given to us from above and to change the situation, most likely it is not possible. However, the atmosphere in the local office is equally important. When the entire office clearly understands the tasks and shares the general goals of the company, it works as one organism. And everything from the general manager to the secretaries are trying to do everything possible for the good of the company. Moreover, in such a situation, there is no rejection of the fact that any commercial organization should make a profit and everything, including techies, is focused on the fact of making a profit.
At the very beginning of my career at ABC, we were telling each other with a question: How much money did you bring to the company today ? And, if at first this question, in any case, caused a negative reaction in me: how much money, if I studied today, for example, how to write scripts for automatic installation of software on a server, then gradually, it became a guide to action.
Creating such a constructive atmosphere is the task of all managers without exception. And the atmosphere is not only and not so much about money. This is the availability of all managers for subordinates, friendliness, mutual assistance and mutual assistance. Such companies have results that they show, always exceed all expectations.
And, returning to the topic of various languages ​​spoken by customers and techies, with the right atmosphere in the company, there is no longer a question of translation. Techies are not locked in the sink of technical terms - they want to be understood and they themselves are trying to explain complex technical things with simple and understandable words. And learning softskills, which were discussed above, will not give superficial results, but will arm techies with methods and tools that will be constantly used precisely because of the desire to convey their thoughts and be understood.
The last remark on the topic of interaction with customers is the behavior of a manager who creates the atmosphere at his own level, supports and cultivates the desire of technicians to be understood and explains to them that it is necessary to chew on and speak to customers even those things that themselves seem obvious to techies.
One of the pillars of the constructive atmosphere is trust . Techies must trust their supervisor, and the supervisor must always be on the side of his subordinates and trust them.
Let us examine two truly typical situations. In the first case, I grew up inside the team and became the head of my own colleagues. These are the most hothouse conditions under which you already have authority a priori, you “own” and trust you (I don’t take extreme cases into account when you become a leader, let's say, not quite deserved - this is most likely in the second situation) . Of course, it is important to maintain relationships with colleagues who now obey you. I had no doubts that it was the relationship that was the most valuable thing, which could be a team that is, should remain a team, regardless of any external factors. External factors here include various transformations, changes in goals and objectives, additional responsibilities, changes in working conditions and much more ...
Probably, the mistakes of the newly-minted manager are typical: first, remaining in the soul of a techie and guided by the principle “you want what would be done well - do it yourself”, he tries to drag the increasing load on his own. Then, if disappointment does not come, the novice manager learns to delegate duties and, succeeding in this direction, delegates absolutely everything, turning out to be useless to no one. Anyway, this is my way. These issues require detailed consideration.
Clearly, the path of a techie-manager who is unable to cope with an ever-increasing load is hopeless. And then, probably, everyone should decide for himself either to become a real leader and inevitably lose that level of expertise and technical knowledge that he had before the appointment, or to give up leadership functions and remain an expert. Sitting on two chairs, it may be possible, but in reality it does not work.
But the issue of delegation is already deeper and closely related to the topic of trust. The most disgusting thing a manager can do is to engage in micro-management - to try to penetrate into every action of his employee, to control every step he takes. I will not say for everyone, but such petty care is absolutely contraindicated for introverts - there is a task, there are deadlines - we will discuss the result closer to the end of the term. Of course, this is a risk for everyone, but this risk, in my opinion, is an essential element of trust. Moreover, it is necessary to understand that if your subordinate introverts, then a request for help in a situation when something is not working is absolutely atypical for them. So the manager, on the one hand, trusting his subordinate and the expected result by the deadline, on the other hand, worried about this result, it is necessary to find a balance between petty care and control of each step and general benevolent questions about the progress of work and offers of help. It is an unobtrusive sentence, because, we note once again, an introvert, most often, will suffer, but will not ask for help himself. In a healthy friendly atmosphere, problems with finding such a balance do not arise.
The second situation, when the leader becomes a guest "Varyag" - is appointed to lead the established team from the outside. In this case, there is no initial trust of the parties to each other, and there can be no relationship, and it is necessary to build relations from scratch. It takes time and effort, but if there is a desire, it is a completely solvable task. My experience, I will make a reservation right away, as I consider it positive, says that, again, trust is one of the key factors. I initially completely trusted the team that had formed before me - after all, they worked like that before I came, and solved all the tasks before them. Moreover, the team, in which the head is the Varyag, has significantly greater knowledge than the new man, who initially has no authority and besides just trust comes the second most important factor - respect .
Respect is the second pillar of the atmosphere in the office. Primordial respect for others, for their opinion, recognition of the righteousness of others, turning to his subordinates for advice, in my opinion, creates the creative and trusting atmosphere necessary for productive work. It doesn’t work by a strong-willed effort — from tomorrow I will respect Vasya Pupkin, and next week I will also trust him. These are organic things and I do not agree with the well-known dictum that a good person is not a profession. Maybe this is not a profession, but I would like for my leader to be exactly a good person. And the rest of the leader can be taught if he listens to his subordinates.
Of course, authority is gained not only by trust and respect - actions are also important. But here I will not even give any examples - I sincerely try to do what I want, what they would do to me, as I consider it right, based on the fact that I respect my subordinates and trust them completely.
By limiting the graphomaniac impulse, I will highlight a few moments, the understanding of which came gradually and which were not initially obvious.
Cuts, transformations and layoffs . If I were asked about the darkest, most nasty and vile side of work as a manager, then this is it.
I propose a classification:
- employee dismissal
- dismissal on the initiative of the head
- dismissal at the initiative of the employer
Employee initiative. Yes, it happens that people leave. I, in most cases, take it as my mistake - I could not create an atmosphere in which the employee would be comfortable, could not provide sufficient funding for him, could not give him interesting tasks. Sometimes it happens that doing all this was not possible, but nonetheless. Perhaps the only situation that is unacceptable is blackmail by an employee of the head. However, when it comes to salary, an invitation brought by an employee to work from another company with a larger salary amount can help in raising salaries in the current place, as one of the arguments. Of course, there’s a fine line, but in a normal relationship between the manager and the employee, if they both understand and accept the problem and work out a joint plan to eliminate it, where such an invitation is one of the plan’s points, then this is a working option to correct the situation. Similarly, if an employee leaves for career growth. Of course, I will do everything possible to keep him, if possible I will objectively try to analyze with him the pros and cons of such a decision and the risks that are possible during the transition. But in any case, if there is no opportunity (and often there is really no way) to provide him with similar growth in his career and / or salary there, in the company where you are now, then it is more correct, by swallowing his own emotions, to let him go and sincerely wish success.
The decision of the head. Honestly, I was not in such situations when I myself, without external factors, decided that there was no place for any person on my team. If I saw that there is a problem - I have always tried to solve it and correct the situation, without resorting to such drastic measures.
Employer Initiative. As mentioned above, the accounting of resources in companies, especially commercial ones, is conducted according to the number of employees (head). Simplifying the picture, it turns out that the amount of money earned is divided by the total number of employees. If the result of production per employee is less than the indicator required by the company, a decision is made to reduce the number of employees. Of course, the reality is more complicated and multifaceted, but the article is not about that. Of course, if the decision on the need for staff cuts is made somewhere at the top, then the decision on who specifically falls under the cuts cannot be made without the participation of the manager. In my opinion, any manager understands or should understand that the demands on him will not decrease due to the fact that he will have fewer resources and, therefore, there is no place for emotions when making a decision - first of all, business factors are assessed from the point of view of the company's business. in general, and units, in particular. I will describe the actions that I took, being in the described situation:
- Attempt (sometimes successful) to take a punch. This includes everything that happens before the decision is made that the sword will fall exactly on your unit. Starting from the banal stretching of the result and increasing the company's turnovers (it may be funny, but this is what everyone actually works for) and, ending with explanations at all levels of the negative impact of the department’s reduced resources on the general business, building business cases proving this negative impact , presentation of promising projects, analysis of employee employment and the impact on the timing of projects and everything that can be done ...
- Deciding on who the team will have to part with. And the protection of his decision - from other leaders, including the higher ones, who may have their own opinion, which is not necessarily the same as yours. To accept their opinion or not - to decide the head.
- Transfer of an employee who was hit to another department. The larger the organization, the more opportunities to retain the person in the company, even if not in your department. Running through all the colleagues, advertising the employee, and agreeing on a translation at all levels is the responsibility, as I consider, of the manager. I will say at once that this path has often been successful.
- Compensation. As a rule, various variants of the output package are possible and usually the manager may in one degree or another influence the choice of the best option.
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Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/351316/
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