[Closed] Tell me how to be a manager

epi - can you explain what shepherding means?

and we're back to herding cats 😉

buzz-lightyear - Member
epi - can you explain what shepherding means?

"trying to control a flock of sheep from behind without a dog"

Yeah that doesn't work!

Sod the job, get yourself down to Austin for SXSW music festival.

Let the people do their job and make sure you steer them in the right direction should they falter in your eyes.

Learn and gain respect too. I love leading and when you hear others praise you by accident even better.

Arrange a meeting and fire someone on your first day. And make a move on the secretary, if she isn't attractive, fire her too. If she's a hottie, tell her to wear something more revealing (even if it's revealing anyway - more revealing never hurt anyone).

Then they'll know who's boss.

Never ask anyone to do something you wouldn't be prepared to do yourself..............................

Thread ressurection!

Going to have to kiss goodbye to mountain biking for the foreseeable future. I've accepted a promotion to a management position in Houston. Will miss Aberdeenshire greatly.

So how do you manage? There's a team of 8 plus secretary. Welding, materials and NDT engineers in the oil and gas industry. I've never had to manage anyone before, so this is a mystery to me and there's going to be no chance for me get any management training. What's the best way to start off on the right foot? Start authoritatively or first spend time asking lots of questions of my new slaves staff?

I'm a little worried also that my age is a factor, being (only!) 32. But actually not entirely worried as I am the most qualified for the position and the team is relatively young anyway. Anyone remember Doogie Howser MD ?

Well, I'm here in Houston now and been doing my best at management for 3 months now. I [u]thought[/u] I was doing a good job. The department I inherited turned out to be in a real mess. All the engineers were doing essentially the same task, but doing it in a different manner. This was creating a lack of direction within the department, extra workload and our clients were being badly managed as a result. The engineers also had a very bad relationship with the manufacturing site - they were essentially banned from visiting.

I implemented some changes very quickly. I standardised a lot of practices and smoothed over relationships at site. I asked for a bit of give and take from both parts. Initial feedback from clients and site has been overwhelmingly positive.

Now the problem. My engineers seem to have hated it! I find this out today when one decided to resign. It has left me really in the lurch and a bit personally offended that I'm his #1 reason for leaving (he didn't tell me this directly but via my manager).

So have I gone in too hard and too fast with my changes? Should I be worried about what my staff thinks about my changes if the changes have proved to be successful so far? How do I recover the situation?

Most people hate change.

At our place, it goes like this (communicated by mid / higher level management):

1) There's going to be a change, there needs to be a change because of XYZ.

2) There's going to be a change, here's what it is.

3) There's going to be a change, here's some training on the new process.

4) Lets make the change.

I'd go for a period of letting everyone settle back into regular work, getting used to the new processes etc. The disruption from change means people have to learn, get through their existing work slower for a while and generally get very stressed out.

Add in uncertainty and "let's try this, no let's go that way" type changes and people get very very stressed out.

Now the problem. My engineers seem to have hated it! I find this out today when one decided to resign. It has left me really in the lurch and a bit personally offended that I'm his #1 reason for leaving

That's not a problem. Some people are grumpy buggers. He/She didn't like being told what to do. Tough!

By resigning it means you didn't have to sack them, that's a result.

some people hate change. Could be any number of reasons for his decision, it could be that you are an outsider, age, nationality, etc. It could be that your perfectly sensible actions mean he has to do more work now.

What i want from a boss is support but not interference, and an explanation of what is going on and why. I accept that change happens, but make sure that the change doesn't affect my life, i.e. far more working hours etc. I work to live, i do not live to work.

This. My manager called me in yesterday to offer me a 'new position'. The position was in something i'd never done, no inclination for and no training for. It would also have meant going from 8.5hr shifts mon-fri to 12hr shifts thurs/fri/sat/sun for £30 a week extra.

Turns out i was way down the list of people he'd offered it to and they'd all turned it down - i wonder why?

So have I gone in too hard and too fast with my changes? Should I be worried about what my staff thinks about my changes if the changes have proved to be successful so far? How do I recover the situation?

So have I gone in too hard and too fast with my changes? Should I be worried about what my staff thinks about my changes if the changes have proved to be successful so far? How do I recover the situation?

The situation may well not need recovering - your changes may well be exactly what's needed - but it's possible you need to work on the communications (why, why now, why this speed etc etc).

Then again, every management role I've had (the last 2 decades) has involved me sorting out a department in one way or another. A lot of the time, people don't like change - they were happy plodding along in their own world and something new is to be feared. Some level of pushback is to be expected, and you'll often get someone leaving because they hate your plans. That doesn't mean that your plans were necessarily wrong, and it gives the opportunity to recruit someone who is more on your wavelength.

Do you have a mentor, whether formal or informal? A senior manager or director who you trust, and who you don't report to? If so, pick their brains on this; people have been in your shoes and are usually willing to provide advice, even if all they're doing is acting as a sounding board.

And never get personally offended at someone's reactions - you simply can't allow yourself to get emotional about it.

Was he a good engineer ? Competent, bright, personable, flexible ?

is it with KBR?

A mate (seriously a mate) of mine used to work for one of the local councils here and whilst there they went through all sorts of this "management team building hoooharr" anyhoo's one of his last courses was based around humiliation.. I kid you not. The course module was based around how to humiliate your subordinate into feeling guilty and then working harder. So when my mate had his turn at describing a technique for implimentation he used the "Dunces Chair" complete with dunces hat and a small ditty to accompany the worker who found themselves the target of this "technique". It went like this:

Subordinate sits in the corner of the room, places dunces hat on head, faces into the room so thier face can be seen, whilst all co-workers stand around, point and sing this song.. "You're thick, you're think, you're thick....you're thick...your thick..etc."

The report of my mates attendance was duely send back to his Boss, who read it and actually thought about implimenting this "technique", no seriously he did consider it.

Councils eh..

You could try this route if you are pushed for more mundain techniques.

Or you could just go along to Waterstones and buy up all the 1980's "how to be a....." technique books/manuals that seem to be still used all this time later by the David Brents of this world.

One of the best things I ever did was accidental.

We were required to go on a team-building course with a dreadfully positive and happy-clappy/touchy-feely 'thought facilitator', which was predictably awful, and culminated with a group session where we had to summarise our thoughts on the course. In rap.

I looked at the faces of my team, who were to a man/woman unhappy, recognised my own cringing at the awful thought of middle-aged white folk trying to sound like we were from the 'hood, and called a halt to the thing.

The response from the team was so overwhelmingly positive that I was practically carried from the room shoulder-high. I then took the team to the pub where we bitched about the course, and the in-joke for the team thereafer was to drop bits of sub-MC Hammer rap into conversations and emails.

Get some help by reading a few things. Try the "One Minute Manger" books, they are cheap easy to get through and contain really good advice. A copy of "The One Minute Manger Meets the Monkey" is very good. They are written in an American style so should help a little with the culture of work over there. Also I found a mentor very helpful, if it's a good company this may be encouraged.

If you can try and lead a team from the front but make sure everyone takes there share of responcibilities (see the monkey book).

The very best of luck.

Surely the One Minute Manger should meet the donkey rather than the monkey?

As others have said, implementing any sort of change is often challenging. I'm not one for too much management bo11ocks, but the change curve below (there are various versions all on the same theme) is quite apt I reckon.

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Thanks guys for your positive feedback. I was beating myself up a bit about it, but I'm looking it in a different light now.

I did spend some time at the start talking to everyone about their thoughts on the situation the department was in. My team didn't really give me any constructive feedback, mostly just a lot of whinging. Nevertheless, I spent the first month doing not much in the way of change, just listening. All new changes I implemented were introduced first at a team meeting. Again, I was confronted by a lot of negativity. This continued negativity is just hard to understand, because the results of the change have already proved positive and it has only been 3 months.

So now I have had time to sleep on it, I'm thinking loosing one person may not be the end of the world. I'm sad because he was actually my favorite (he wasn't the worst when it came to negativity). I fear I may loose another person who is way more miserable, but he'd be no great loss if it wasn't for the fact that I'm already short on manpower. I actually think he has poisoned the atmosphere. They all go for lunch together and I imagine they spend the whole time bitching

Cést la vie. I'll survive.

he used the "Dunces Chair" complete with dunces hat and a small ditty to accompany the worker

That HAS to be bullshit. Councils are usually the most careful employers when it comes to HR and all that chair would do is have each sitter wandering off to a solicitor to (quite rightly) successfully sue for constructive dismissal.

For the OP - Whenever you change things, people get annoyed. Some threaten to leave, some actually do leave. Honestly, even if they're the best person in the team, you'll get past it and the team will probably be better for not having someone in it who doesn't want to be there.

And just in case anyone thinks maybe my changes were a bit too radial (e.g. dunces chair), here is a complete rundown:

1) Introduced a formal document review protocol. Previously there was nothing in place to allow for a document to be checked before they got sent to a client.
2) Standardised a lot of working practices (e.g. how a welding inspector should visually inspect a weld). We were in a ridiculous situation where we had about 8 standard practices that were being carried out at site level, but each engineer would be asking them to be done in slightly different ways.
3)Tried to homogenise our philosophy to mechanical testing of welds (we're welding engineers by the way). We were doing a variety of mechanical tests in various different ways with no clear reason for it being done in one way or another. I tried to instill some engineering principles and logic to get us doing the mechanical tests the correct way.
4) Made them submit holiday request forms and created a personnel planner. I had no idea who was where on a particular day.

I really don't think there is anything radical in there. I think items 1 and 4 were pretty unpopular, but how am I supposed to manage a team without having any control over the output (documents) or where they are on a given day.

I was chucked in at the deep end too. I organised 1:1 meetings with all 14 of them in my first 2 weeks there. And, like another poster explained to them why I'd been brought in, what my background and experience was and how they could help me, also asked how I could help them and what had been missing from them not having any line management.

Had a great (well not always) relationship with them after that. most of the first meetings were bitch-fests about other staff so sorted all those issues out first and got a happy team. Consulted staff are happier good communication up and down is a must.

Good luck and congratulations on your promotion

Be an utterly irritating twerp.

Seems to work for my boss.

@fanatic - it sounds like your doing a great job. You can never please everyone. The changes might filter out the dead wood in the team and help everyone move on.

On the other side of things - my manager never makes changes and it drives me mad. I identity a problem, manager dwells on it, takes strange actions and then reverses, repeats every 6 months. Solution - change manager, they're leaving and I will be left to run things.

One word ''consistance''.

Have been a Manager for 10 years myself and made all the mistakes and then some.
The one thing I have learnt is to be consistent.
As soon as you loose that people will spot it and standards will slip, if you want a report or something by Thursday make it clear that there is no adjustment. Come down hard if you dont get it. Slip once and everybody will know Thursay means Friday.
Lastly, dont say ''I want that by Thursday'' Say ''Can you get that to me by Thursday''. If they agree and you dont get it they have let you down on what they promissed not what you asked for.