The Management Cheat Code

The most important lesson I ever learned in management was one I learned right at the start of my management career, and one I learned completely by accident.

When I first became a manager, I was part of a growing company with a lot of inexperienced managers taking up key roles. Thankfully, we worked for a company that took training their managers very seriously. Over the course of our first year or so, we were trained as a group each week before going off to our respective departments to try to implement what we had been taught.

At the end of our first year together, an employee satisfaction survey was carried out, and we all got together to go through the results. What we found was that there was a clear difference between how the people who worked for me answered to how everyone else did. Overwhelmingly, it was clear that people who worked for me felt that I valued them, that I had their best interests at heart, and that I cared about their well-being. This was not seen anywhere else.

Don’t worry, this isn’t a brag about my exceptional management abilities. The truth is, I had no idea how this had happened. When asked to share what I was doing with the rest of the management team, I couldn’t tell them anything. I didn’t even think I’d been doing a very good job at all.

However, the initial assumption pretty much everyone else made was that I must have been doing something right. I mean, that was the most logical answer. But we talked about the things I had been doing, and really there didn’t seem to be any evidence to support this explanation. Were my one-on-ones better? Was I more consistent and dependable? Was I a great coach? Nope. None of that.

What we actually learned is that far from being better at those things than my peers, it actually seemed like I was actually quite a bit worse. I’d made commitments to my team and then forgotten about them. I’d randomly changed my mind about things I wanted done. I’d cancelled one-on-ones with almost no notice because I’d had other things to do. I had really not even been a good manager, let alone a great one. So it made no sense that people in my department felt so much more valued than the people in the rest of the business.

I don’t remember how long we spoke about it for, but it was a long time. We covered everything. We found nothing. We were all getting pretty exasperated trying to work it out, when something occurred to me…

Did they actually care about their people?

I asked them that question, and although they or course said that they did, I saw immediately from the looks on their faces that they didn’t, not really. The question itself has quite clearly seemed a bit ridiculous to them. I realised something that day that shaped my entire management career. The tools we are given as managers - the one-on-ones, the communication models, the talent mapping, the active listening techniques - these are all tools to make people feel valued and cared about. But people aren’t stupid, and if you don’t actually care about them, these are just tricks. They probably won’t work.

The reason my team felt valued despite me being an objectively bad manager was simply that I actually did value them. Not as a trick. Not because I wanted anything from them. I just did actually value them. I wanted all of them to do well for themselves, and I viewed it as my job to help them get the most out of their work. When I messed up, which I did frequently, I apologised not to be polite or because I felt I was supposed to, but because I was actually sorry. When they did well I was happy, when they were struggling I cared. And none of that was because I thought it would help me get better results. I just actually cared about them.

And it turned out they just knew that, they could feel it, because they were human beings. We know when someone cares about us, and we know when someone doesn’t. They all knew I cared, so they forgave me for my near constant mistakes as a manager. I think when that survey came around they didn’t think about the times I’d let them down or made mistakes, they just thought about the guy that had - in his own flawed way - always tried to look out for them.

I’m glad I have all the management tools I have at my disposal. I believe all managers should learn them and that they are incredibly valuable. Without a doubt, receiving training in the technical skills managers actually use day-to-day will help you do the job better and mess up far less frequently. But if you care about your people - genuinely care about them - that will shine through even if you mess all the technical stuff up.