What Are The Traits Of A Successful Manager?

Do you have what it takes to be a great manager?
Do you have what it takes to be a great manager?
Image Credit: Photo by Lovefreund

There are a lot of managers out there. However, not all of them are great managers. If you would like to become a great manager, this of course brings up the question of just exactly what you will have to do in order to make this happen. It turns out that there is not just one characteristic that you are going to have to have, there are a number of them. Do you have what it is going to take in order to develop the manager skills to become a successful manager?


You Have To Feel Optimistic

In order to be a great manager, a lot of us think that we have to born with special powers. However, the good news is that it’s more about how we choose to live our lives instead of any superior talents or manager training. A great example of this is optimism. In order to be a great manager you need supersized levels of optimism. With all of the challenges that other managers are always running into, it may seem crazy to think you can beat the odds. But the truth is, if you aren’t the one who believes in yourself, who else will? If you’re going to convince other managers to work with you, attract and hire great people, or get people to do what you need them to do, you have to first believe in yourself.


The Ability To Juggle

It goes without saying that being a manager requires you to have the ability to work on multiple things all at the same time. The better that we are able to manage all of the things that are expected of us, the better we’ll be as a manager. The life of a manager is filled with both highs and lows. You might make a team presentation in the morning and do one-on-one counseling in the afternoon. It’s your job to make sure that nothing drops through the cracks (after all, everyone needs a slice of your time). Just make sure to spend most of your time on activities most likely make a difference.


Say Goodbye

One of the most important things to realize as a manager is that things change. What was important yesterday may no longer be important tomorrow. In order to become a great manager you are going to have to develop the ability to let go. You can’t possibly manage a team of professionals if you need to make every decision yourself. You need to hire people who can figure out what needs to be done without waiting to be told, and then do it. This is not the time to let your ego get in the way. Hire self-starters for your team, and then get out of their way.


What’s Your Vision?

One thing that all great managers do is to inspire their team. If you want to be able to do this, then you are going to have to be able to present them with a vision that they are going to be able to get behind. However, having a strong vision is not enough. In today’s millennial short-attention-span world you need to be able to articulate that vision in plain English, preferably in 90 seconds or less. You can’t recruit employees or convince people to do what you need them to do – not to mention get funding – if you can’t quickly make them understand and appreciate your dream.

You Need Charisma

As a manager, one of the most difficult things that you’ll ever try to do is to get the most out of your team. In order to make that happen you are going to have to show charisma. You need people on your team that will give 110% of themselves to you. The paycheck that the people on your team are getting won’t inspire that kind of loyalty, so you need to lead with your personality. Rally team members around a shared mission. Give them a reason to believe–a higher purpose to get behind–and be sure to make it fun.


It’s All About Your Customers

The reason that you are a manager is to show your team how to support their customers. Customers can be the people who buy your company’s products and services or they can be other departments within the company. You need to realize that the work that your team does will only be as good as the service you back it with. The last thing that you want to have happen is for another manager to come along and deliver better service than your team does. As a great manager, you need to ensure that a focus on your team’s customers has to be baked into their team building and what they do each and every day.


What All Of This Means For You

With a little luck, the goal of every manager is to become a great manager. The question that we are all faced with is just exactly how can we go about making this happen? It turns out that in order to become a great manager, there are a number of different things that we are going to have to do.

The first thing that all great managers bring to the table is a feeling of optimism. You have to believe in yourself. You also have to have the ability to juggle multiple assignments at the same time. Being a manager means that you have to stop doing certain things and get other people on your team to start to do them. Your team will only be able to support you if you have a vision and if you are able to clearly communicate it to them. Great managers have the ability to get the maximum out of their team all the time. Great managers also realize that their team exists to take care of customers and they make this the driving focus of their team.

Great managers are made, not born. What this means for all of us is that we can become great managers if we are willing to try hard enough. We simply need to understand what we have to do in order to become great. If you can follow these tips than you just may have found what you need to do in order to move to the next level. Use these suggestions to become a great manager!


– Dr. Jim Anderson Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World IT Management Skills™


Question For You: Do you think that a manager’s vision has to be the same as the company’s vision?


Click here to get automatic updates when The Accidental IT Leader Blog is updated.

P.S.: Free subscriptions to The Accidental IT Leader Newsletter are now available. Learn what you need to know to do the job. Subscribe now: Click Here!

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

As though the job of being a manager was not tough enough, it turns out that there is something that can make it just a bit more challenging: change. You know what I’m talking about here. Every so often your company gets the good idea that they could become more effective if they reorganized. Arggg! This is exactly the kind of thing that can throw even the best laid plans up into the air no matter what manager skills you have. Keep in mind that none of us have any manager training on how to deal with situations like this. What is a manager to do when a reorganization happens?