How I Became a Good Manager

By Munesh Singh Kumar
False Assumptions - Managing is Easy!!!
Being the son of the owner of the company, I was
fortunate enough to start at a manager role in a
software development company. The company is
pretty big in size and employs software engineers
from the best institutions, management people
from reputed universities and a lot of other people
who have a varied academic as well as
experience background.
I was excited, I was under the impression that
work will be less, authority will be more, work
delegation will be done and just day-end/ month-
end/ quarter-end reports would need to be
compiled - how difficult could it be?
Now I know how wrong I was. It has taken me a
little of 3 years to earn the respect of my team
members, which has translated not only in a
better work environment for them and myself, but
has also made me and the entire team a lot more
productive and happier.
What went wrong?
In fact, if I list what went right in my initial
management phase the list would be smaller and
easier to note down. In simple words, everything I
used to do during those starting years did not
work for me. All the advice I got during that time
was probably not properly executed by me
resulting in no difference, I was still a failure at
something, which I thought was very easy to do.
I tried harder and the tried different ways, but
nothing worked.
1 - I was nice to everyone, letting them work the
way they wanted (mainly because I did not have
an insight into how work was supposed to be
done) - but this only resulted in no work being
completed.
2 - I tried imposing deadlines, sometimes liberal
and sometimes strict just to prove a point, but
nothing changed as I was not able to convince
myself what my deadlines meant.
3 - I tried shouting at people, which only resulted
in my team members running away from me.
4 - I tried to involve my seniors resulting in my
importance getting negated as all questions and
issues bypassed me and went straight to the
seniors.
5 - I ensured I was in office before any of my
team members came in to work, I left after
everyone had left for the day, but I was never able
to get the respect I wanted.
Nothing was working, I used to stay stressed all
the time - my easy work place had become one of
the hardest and I was not able to think of a
solution to my problems. At that stage, I would
not be able to give an answer to a simple
question of what was going wrong because as
per me everything was wrong.
How it changed?
With nothing working out for me in my managerial
role, I had no choice but to take help from
seasoned professionals, which did turn out to be
a very good decision.
The advice I got was not only effective, but also
gave me a wider perspective towards the work
environment, got me the loyalty of my team
members and made my team one of the most
productive team in an office of more than 450
professions.
1- I started researching the work my team was
doing. I went through the history of projects as
well as the future deliverables planned to get a
handle of where exactly we stood in the project
life cycle and what was left to be achieved.
2 - I changed my approach completely. I began
connecting with my team members on an
individual level, understanding their specific work
deliverables, introducing a more humane touch to
my methods - I was then able to communicate
with them and understand the bottlenecks and
alter timelines based on more feasible and
practical estimates.
3- I stopped shouting at my team members. I
realized that anger and force was not the best
solution to my issues.
4- I had to rework delivery schedules, I made my
coordination work more efficient to ensure that no
work hours went idle, this cut down on the
overtime my team had to put in because of my
inefficiencies.
5- I had to work a lot on my ability to scope out
customer requirements and translate them into
specifications to avoid rework and deviations from
client expectations.
6- I stopped being a manager - I started being a
team member
I made very simple and obvious changes in my
approach, I had to work hard to improve upon my
own skill set, but it made my team happy, I got
their respect and the much needed work
dedication and was able to deliver results. I learnt
the hard way that although my designation was
that of the manager, I still had to earn the
position.
MAG STUDIOS
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