Managing the Manager, Part 1

by Yvonne LaRose

August 25, 2002 —

While there are a lot of dimensions to managing an IT professional,
there is one aspect that is high on the priority list but often
overlooked. That is making certain the manager is in tune with their
responsibilities as a manager and a leader.

Three things a manager should do are:

1. Communicate ideas and goals
2. Encourage teamwork
3. Motivate with challenging and varied assignments

Communication
It's difficult to get people to buy into a plan and follow through on it
with the desired results if they don't know why they're doing it and
what purpose it will serve. This is true for not only major projects
that involve all of your department members but also when assigning
projects to individual members.

The best way to get the results you want for actualizing a project is to
let those who will be doing the work get a view of the overall plan or
some prototype of what's to be achieved. Without that type of vision,
individual tasks that are the incremental development steps may be done
out of order or omitted because their rationale is not apparent. People
also have a heightened interest in working on a task when they can buy
into what they're doing because they know what it is they're doing --
what goal is to be achieved.

Likewise, when assigning a project to an individual, make certain there
is time set aside to meet with the person. This time should be used to
carefully outline what you want done, what is to be achieved, when it
should be delivered and to whom, and how. The "how" of this equation
means whether it is to be a written report, a written report with oral
discussion, an oral report or demonstration. It can be extremely
frustrating to a person to find they only have part of the information
needed to complete a task, no matter how sweet the project seemed to be
when assigned. If your delegate needs to keep returning to you for
clarification or additional information or if they need to keep doing
revisions because what they're delivering isn't what you'd envisioned,
stop to make an outline of what you want done and discuss it with them
in your office.

Communication has many aspects. Effectively communicating overall as
well as individual goals and objectives is one. It goes a long way
toward getting your IT professionals on the same page so that you
achieve your long-range goals and objectives.

ITworld