The Popular Manager
How should popularity be assessed in a management position?
Hey, fellow Leader 🚀,
I am Artur and welcome to my weekly newsletter. I am focusing on topics like Project Management, Innovation, Leadership, and a bit of Entrepreneurship. I am always open to suggestions for new topics. Feel free to reach me on Substack and share my newsletter if it helps you in any way.
The question of this article is: How popular should a Manager be? Depending on the leadership style the answers can vary substantially. The popularity can be defined by the level of likeness and support a leader has by the team. There is no question there should be a certain level where the team supports the leader, otherwise there is no true leadership. However, the question lies at the border. Becoming increasingly popular inside the team means the manager has a great relationship with everyone, but what if a rainy day arrives and hard choices need to be made?
As a manager results need to be monitored and strategized, where the team does the majority of the execution. When in a position of assessing performances, results, and levels of commitment, it might occur situations where certain elements of the team start to grow a grunge towards the leader. This might come from a myriad of situations, from the ways those performances and results are communicated, to the way how the team member takes critiques from anyone, including management.
Too much lean way with the team, depending on the different personalities and how hard the choices need to be made, can hurt the effectiveness of the manager’s action. Having a too-distant connection with the team, those choices will hardly pull the team to join the leader in accomplishing or facing those challenges.
Overall people are people, each team has a unique ecosystem of personal dynamics, communication flows, and protocols. Even if we should all behave like grownups, there is always someone who behaves like teenagers in the corporate world. Some people make no distinction between the person who is leading and the actions and requests required by the role. In opposite, the manager should create the mindset, that once the leading hat is on, the critics for the actions performed are focused on the role and not the person. This helps create some emotional distance which facilitates situational analysis and improvement by not becoming a personal issue.
The answer to the question above is highly dependent on the leadership style and, therefore varies greatly from manager to manager. Some leaders manage to have a close connection (friend level) with the team and continue to push for results due to their charismatic approach. Others are required to maintain a certain distance to help them manage better people and be strict when needed. It is all part of the growing process as a leader, and trying to find the sweet spot for both team and project context.
In conclusion, based on the manager’s personality and the tools at their disposal, the popularity should be at enough level, where the team trusts the leader, engages with the strategy, and delivers the results.
That’s it. If you find this post useful please share it with your friends or colleagues who might be interested in this topic. If you would like to see a different angle, suggest in the comments or send me a message on Substack.
Cheers,
Artur