The Evolution of a Manager

<body topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 marginheight=0 marginwidth=0> <table cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 border=0><tr> <td valign="top" colspan=2 height=110 BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#080000" bgproperties="fixed" background="16bf0f21egerdp.jpg"> <div> <B><IMG SRC="05b203c0.jpg" border=0 width="32" height="60" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></B><FONT SIZE="5" COLOR="#66334C" FACE="Arial" ><B>   albernstein.com  PSYCHOLOGY THAT WORKS   </B></FONT><B>      |     </B><A HREF="index.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE=" albernstein.com PSYCHOLOGY THAT WORK"><U><B>home</B></U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id111.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Speaking and Workshops"><U>Speaking and Workshops</U></A>   |   <B>The Evolution of a Manager</B></div> <div> </div> </td> </tr><tr> <td valign="top" width=210 BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#080000" bgproperties="fixed" background="16af2f02egerdp.jpg"> <div> <I>Over the past twenty-five years as a consultant and therapist, Dr. Al Bernstein has studied the growth and development of managers. In this talk he will describe the stages managers go through as they evolve from inexperience to maturity.</I></div> </td> <td valign="top" height=370 BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#080000" bgproperties="fixed" background="16df0f03.jpg"> <div> <I>The Evolution of a Manager</I></div> <div> Managers do not spring fully armed from the head of Zeus, nor do they arise spontaneously from the ranks, or emerge from graduate school ready to plug-and-play.  Managers are people, and as such they grow, develop, and evolve.  As they grow their conceptions of what managing is evolves as well.  </div> <div> The process of evolution happens in silence most of the time because the people it's happening to are far more focused on the job than understanding the person who's doing it--even if they are that person.  Business culture is suspicious of persons who aren't too busy to reflect.  As a result, most managers must reinvent themselves like lonely and imperfect wheels, smoothing their own rough edges in painful collisions with the hard realities of existence.</div> <div> Observed or not, development in human beings--and managers--follow certain predictable patterns.  We all move from self-conscious fits and starts to fluid grace in performing our tasks.  From seeing only black and white to recognizing subtle shadings of gray, and from wanting all we can to wanting to be useful.  </div> <div> People can get stuck at a particular stage and do things the same way throughout their career.  But most grow and develop.  Through experience  they learn there are better ways to do things and better ways to think about things.  This is the quiet joy of our careers--not the accolades, testimonials, and promotions, but the knowledge that we are actually getting better.  One of the great thrills of life is using yourself to full potential.</div> <div> Managers grow by understanding that there are five things you can manage: Money, task, people, power, and image.  To be a mature manager you must be able to manage all of them.  Early on, people try to get by managing the one or two that come easiest. As they mature they begin to realize that they have to master the difficult parts as well.  What people learn about managing each of these areas develops in its own predictable way:</div> <bR> <div> <B>Managing Money.</B>  Managers who don't manage money don't last long.  Cost control is the minimum.  If a new manager does nothing else but stay within budget, he or she will eventually discover that merely avoiding costs does not create anything new.  As managers mature, they begin to conceive of money less as treasure to be hoarded, and more as a tool to be used.  It takes money to make money.  Managing money well involves a clear conception of what you'll get for what you spend.</div> <div> <B>Managing Task.</B>  As people mature, their conception of managing task moves from doing the job themselves or telling other people exactly how to do it,  to encouraging people to do it their own way.  A  beginning  manager is a single person with many sets of hands.  As a manager matures he or she becomes more able to use excess heads as well as hands. </div> <div> Immature managers attempt to control the process as well as the product. They manage every task as if it were the rapid, orderly production of hamburgers at a fast food restaurant.  If you manage for hamburgers, you get hamburgers.  Forget new ideas and ground breaking insights, the best that you can hope for is that your work comes out cooked on both sides.  </div> <div> <B>Managing People.</B>  The simplest way of managing people is telling them what to do.  Mature managers develop a complex understanding of the people who work for them so that they can lead these people to places they never would have gone themselves.  There is a Huge difference in being a taskmaster and being a leader.</div> <div> <B>Managing Image.</B>  The world no longer beats a path to the door of the inventor of the better mousetrap.  To get anywhere you have to be able to promote yourself and your product.  As people mature, the management of image moves from manipulating other people to think what you want them to think, to presenting yourself and your product as they really are to a market--either your superiors, constituents, or customers--that really needs what you have to offer.</div> <div> <B>Managing Power.</B>  To the immature, power is an end in itself.  It is something that you use to get your own way.  The temptation is strong to use power to make life as pleasant and comfortable as possible.  This is kind of like using a Ferrari only to commute to work.  It looks good and feels good, but its potential is wasted on the task.  The mature use of power is in creating a vision, an idea that is bigger than the person thinking it, and bringing it to life in the real world.</div> <bR> <div> Maturing as a manager means moving from a conception of the world that is no larger than yourself, to seeing a larger system and knowing you have an important place in it.  It is the drive to attain this state of balance and usefulness, far more than greed and ambition, that is responsible for the great things that business, and people in business, can do.  </div> <div> <A HREF="id47.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Speaking and Workshops"><U><B>Other talks and workshops</B></U></A><FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Times New Roman" >   </FONT></div> </td> </tr></table></body>