Describe a Strong Manager

Your company will live or die based on the strength of your managers. Your people have to be at their best in order for your company to be at its best. Solid managers figure out the way each individual can contribute their unique maximum contribution to the organization.

Being a manager has the potential to abbreviate your lifespan. You have had directors and executives in one ear and you have individual contributors in your other ear. Individual contributors are saying that they do not feel heard or seen by organizational leadership and executives and directors are saying their messages do not cascade down to the individual contributors.  Given this landscape, it's no wonder that the managers that are most well regarded are the ones that do the best job with communicating messages both up-and-down within their organization. Strong managers are excellent communicators.

There is another component that allows managers to super charge their organizations. Managers that have solid project management skills are vital to our organization's success. Everyone that I talk to has more projects than they have time, and most of these projects are in some form of disarray. A manager that uses their project management skills to provide clarity within a within a project can be a hero.  But let's not kid ourselves, "just figure it out" project management skills will yield just will yield "just figure it out" results. The better way to go is to invest in learning some project management methodology. My personal favorite is scrum because it is a lightweight framework which is easy to adapt to whatever situation you find yourself in, but any framework is better than no framework.

Now that our manager has project management skills and communication skills, there is one more thing we need to make sure they have. It is a non starter for a human to manage other humans if they do not have emotional intelligence. We have all the situations where we had to deal with someone who does not have empathy or does not have self awareness. Managers that are devoid of emotional intelligence consistently damage the fabric of any organization where they are allowed to lead others.

Strong communication skills, strong project management skills, and good emotional intelligence define a strong manager for me. What defines a strong manager for you?