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What makes a great manager

What makes a person a great manager is difficult to distill into an post. It takes years of experience and dedication. Having had a really great one at my previous assignment, I wanted to share some of their characteristics which I admired.

No micromanagement

They do not feel the need to tell you how to do something. They trust that you, who works on this thing every day, will make a good call.

They do not stress you about deadlines. If a manager is stressing you, they probably do not understand the problem. They should instead try to understand what is making the delivery hard and make sure that you do not have any blockers.

Goal oriented

Does not have a personal agenda. Their agenda is the common goals and they know them by heart.

Selfless, gets out of the way so that their team can do what they do best.

Is crystal clear with their expectations of you. The expectations are reasonable and directly related to the goals.

Gives you their attention

When you are talking to them, they are not multitasking. When you are giving a presentation, they are not multitasking. They listen and will ask follow-up questions.

They ask for your input and care about your point of view.

Does not use hierarchy

They will not pull rank to justify a decision.

They believe that everybody’s view is equally important and they will make an effort to understand your point of view.

Prefers team decisions over hierarchically based ones. The team should be responsible for their decisions and actions, not one single person.

Informed

They know the ins and outs of the project. In the case of a software project, they know the technology involved, how it works, how it interacts with other systems and what dependencies it has. It does not have to be on the level of the developers directly working with it, but deep enough to be able to understand problems and their impact, and enable them to contribute meaningfully to problem-solving.