What makes a great manager

[Wallywobbles]

I was promoted to global team lead 3 months ago in a very international company. Struggling a bit to crack managing my team, and feeling unsure of myself (which is uncomfortable). So, does anyone have any stories of great managers, and can they pinpoint why they were great? Or any stories of where you became a good or great manager?

My situation is as follows, so if anyone has any helpful advice, that would also be very useful. But it's a bit long so feel free to skip.

My boss is Polish and so is my team, which can cause communication issues; eg if I say "It'll be fine" it causes panic! Because I can't have understood the issues, (according to the team - Poles would never say that because they never believe it could be fine).

I'm Anglo-French and the company is based in France.

I have a boss that I really admire. She has an amazing capacity to get to the crux of the issue, ask the right question and to step in at the right time. On the downside we have a lot of "Can you achieve this impossible task in an impossible time" things to do from C-level, and generally we are pretty amazing at this.

My boss' negative feedback of me is that:
I go to fast.
Overload people with information.
That my team are managing my flow and not the other way around.
That my need for clarity puts other people under pressure.
I'm protective of my opinion, and don't listen to others enough.

There is positive feedback too, but I could really use some help feeling that I can crack this. I want to be a great manager. I have managed people before but never in such a structured way.

Thanks for any insights.

Hi, I know this is maybe a bit cheesy but I think the very fact you're on here asking the question, that you've sought feedback and are taking it into account shows you have all the ingredients to make a great manager. The truly crap managers IMO are the people that either really don't care or think they know it all already.

I don't have experience of managing international teams or Polish teams specifically (although I've had plenty of Polish people and people from other Eastern European countries on my teams in the UK before). I'd say don't over-complicate things for yourself and focus on getting the basics in place and the rest will tend to follow. By the basics I mean things like:

-Do all your team have good, clear, accurate job descriptions and understand their individual and the team's responsibilities and how this fits within the wider organisation and structure - be honest, when were the key documents last reviewed and updated? You can ask the team to each look at their own or work on it as a group, it doesn't all need to be on you.

-Get your meeting structures right, so individual 1-1s at a frequency that suits the individual, team meetings, wider departmental meetings. I too can have a tendency to talk fast and overload with information so I have a strict agenda to these meetings that guides us into hearing from everyone individually in a relevant/structured way - I act as more of the chair for most of the meeting so don't do the majority of the talking and everyone has the equal opportunity to put forward ideas or bring up problems/issues. It does mean sometimes a bit of tedious listening to the same things over and over (repeated whinges about things they know we can't change) and I occasionally have to bite my tongue from leaping to a solution/shutting down the conversation but this comes with practice

-Be mindful about what you communicate and when - we're lucky in this modern era to have so many different means of communication but I do think you have to be considered about what you use and when. Written communications/emails are really useful and allow (a) you to consider and refine what you want to say into a succinct form and (b) gives the recipient time to properly digest and understand, in a way that face to face/in meetings comms don't. So if you know you tend to go too fast or over-share maybe tell your team verbally the headlines or that there's some important info to share on XYZ topic with an email to follow, then send the detail on afterwards (and always give yourself a bit of a gap/reflection time on what it is you really need to say and what can be left out). Honesty is of course a really really important quality in a manager but I do think part of this is also considering on your team's behalf what they really need to know, and shielding them a bit from some of the noise/confusion/chaos that can come from above. I often give very edited 'highlights' of my conversations with senior managers in what is hopefully a digestible package for the team of 'Person A has highlighted an issue with B, I have agreed with them we will do C about it, I need you now to do....' (not telling them person A was being horribly negative and shouty, also raised issues D, E and F that are nothing to do with us/not actually a problem at all, proposed unworkable addition actions G, H and I that I have refuted etc).

-Don't make promises you can't keep and always follow through on what you have committed to. I try and abide by this in all my life, whoever it is but I think this is of such fundamental importance with a team as it's this that builds the trust and relationship so I try and prioritise this even over client commitments - if I've agreed to do something in a team meeting or 1-1 I try and do it right away afterwards or at the very least take some tangible action or block out time in my diary to do the thing. It saves so much hassle in the long run of the team not believing I'll do what I've said and so doing things behind my back or repeatedly chasing. Equally if it's something that's out of my power to change or not possible you have to front up and tell people that rather than hiding behind 'maybe later' or whatever...

Thank you that's really useful. Particularly, just sharing the high lights not everything. I tend to copy the team into everything but you are absolutely right they don't need that.
I think if I can find a better structure to it all it will feel more under control!

Does your need for clarity prevent them from getting on with their job? Do you need to know all the details?

I’m a new line manager so I don’t want to give you advice as we don’t know if I’m even doing a good job yet 😂I’m just trying to be fair and understanding. I’ve liaised with HR& the union before completing HR sickness/absence actions to ensure I’m dotting all the lines. To comment on your feedback:

I go to fast.
Overload people with information.

I, too, hate when people do this. Just endeavour to be concise. If you can remove words and reach the same meaning, remove the words. It honestly just wastes other people’s time as they have to mentally sift through whether what you’re saying is relevant or not and it can be mentally especially if you speak quickly. Someone always sends 1000+ word emails or documents across and it takes me at least 10 minutes to carefully read through, only to highlight around 10% of that which I actually need to know and take forward. It just doesn’t work.

That my team are managing my flow and not the other way around.

This could mean that you’re not managing them but letting them do whatever. It might need you to exert more control and maybe nip some things in the bud. Eg I’m asking the person who spams 1000 words to be concise. They know it’s an issue too, but just see it as a cute personality trait; I’m asking them to stop doing it.

That my need for clarity puts other people under pressure.
I'm protective of my opinion, and don't listen to others enough.

These don’t sound good tbh. I would be asking for specific examples of whenthud has occurred

I like managers who get involved in the teams work and support their roles.
I feel managers need to know what's involved in the tasks of their teams so that they are able to appreciate what they involve.

@OwlBabiesAreCute my need for clarity isn't from my team it's from the PMs in charge of the projects. I don't want my team going up a blind alley because we didn't get enough precision in the beginning. Sometimes we got appallingly vague outlines.

@wormshuffled I was doing their job single handed before, and the team that I recruited is there to replace me IYSWIM. So I definitely know what is involved.

I slightly feel that when we are being asked to do impossible things in impossible timelines at least having the minimum crucial information is necessary.

@ikno My boss has given me examples of when she thinks I've jumped in too fast, but in those cases I had no timelines so had no way of knowing if it was urgent or not!

Hopefully talking this through with MN is helping me to understand a bit better what I can actually do to improve. All the team bar me were on holiday this week, so I'd like to start next week on a better footing.

My plan is to listen and talk less. No information dumps. Ask questions. Get them to tell me what their planned flow is for the next week. Get them to tell me how they plan to timeline their project. (They are each working on a separate project.)
Then be firmer about them task tracking on our common tracker.