Brilliant Manager, 3rd Edition

CHAPTER 1

Managing

people

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T

he thought of writing this chapter was what motivated me

to write this book in the first place. Let’s face it, the average

standard of managing people is far from brilliant, so this

is a very good place to start a book about becoming a brilliant

manager.

I would like to start with an optimistic observation:

People in a work context are very forgiving. If your performance

improves then your staff will very soon forget your past lapses.

This means that you can turn round the team’s view of your

management style very quickly indeed.

I will also restate the golden rule of management in an appro-

priate form:

The simplest way to get your staff to behave in a particular way is to

behave that way yourself.

Fundamental principles of managing people

One of the problems that managers face when managing people

is that they often have not accepted the fact that the principles

of people management are very similar to the principles of being

a good parent or a good teacher, namely:

 setting high expectations of people’s performance and

behaviour that is appropriate to their abilities;

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4 brilliant manager



setting clear boundaries of acceptable behaviour;

 imposing discipline and, where necessary, punishment when

behaviour is unacceptable;

 setting clear boundaries of acceptable performance; working

with underperforming staff to improve their performance;

if performance cannot be improved in your team you

must decide if individuals need to leave your team or, in

extremis, whether they need to leave the organisation;

 providing clear, immediate feedback on performance and

behaviour; praise good performance, and constructively

criticise poor performance;

 personally setting an example of the performance and

behaviour you expect;

 behaving in a way that wins the respect of your team.

Being a parent or teacher is a great responsibility. Brilliant man-

agers have to accept that they are doing a job with similar levels

of responsibility. You may find this uncomfortable as a manager,

but your staff will have no trouble at all accepting that this is the

way brilliant managers should behave.

Is management manipulation?

I would really like to believe that you can be a manager without

being manipulative, but there will be times when a manager has

got to be manipulative. The uncomfortable truth is that when

resolving all the different pressures from existing customers,

your own organisation, bids for new business and the like, you

are inevitably going to have to persuade people to do things that

are not entirely in their own interests. It is also an uncomfortable

truth that you are not always going to be in a position where you

can explain the bigger picture to all your staff. All that you can

hope to achieve is that your manipulation is moral. My definition

of moral manipulation would be:

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