What Are the Characteristics of a Good Manager?
What are the characteristics of a good manager?
By Carolien Toor
Introduction
Over the years I have worked in many various businesses; large as well as small, from stressful to peaceful environments and during good times as well as bad times. What I learned, through my experience from the various firms I worked for was the role the manager had in the workplace and how it affected me as an employee. When set this task I started to reflect how my past managers acted and how they got me motivated. Some managers succeeded and stayed focused even under difficult circumstances, while others made the workplace a difficult and confusing environment to work in. Why did some manager succeed far better than others when it came to motivation, organising and being a good manager even under bad times? What characteristics had the successful managers, which the others ones lacked? This is what I found when determining what are the characteristics of a good manager.
Characteristics develops from the company’s context
What makes an effective and good manager? According to Cheryl L. Harris, “understanding the context of the organization is extremely vital to determining the characteristics of a successful manager”1 (pg 1) and that should correspond to what kind of characteristics a manager ought to have to organize and develop goals and strategies for the company. I agree that Harris have a point that before choosing a manager we must consider the appearance of the company and aspects of management styles. Imagine if a manager, taking over Steve Jobs role as CEO of Apple, would introduce strict management style, new black suit dress code to the company. He’s characteristics would possible not fit to Apple’s ‘laid back’ culture.
Also mentioned by Buckingham and Coffman2 “an employee’s perception of the physical environment is colored by his relationship with his manager and it is the manager’s task to build the company culture around the blueprint” (pg 4). This
By Carolien Toor
Introduction
Over the years I have worked in many various businesses; large as well as small, from stressful to peaceful environments and during good times as well as bad times. What I learned, through my experience from the various firms I worked for was the role the manager had in the workplace and how it affected me as an employee. When set this task I started to reflect how my past managers acted and how they got me motivated. Some managers succeeded and stayed focused even under difficult circumstances, while others made the workplace a difficult and confusing environment to work in. Why did some manager succeed far better than others when it came to motivation, organising and being a good manager even under bad times? What characteristics had the successful managers, which the others ones lacked? This is what I found when determining what are the characteristics of a good manager.
Characteristics develops from the company’s context
What makes an effective and good manager? According to Cheryl L. Harris, “understanding the context of the organization is extremely vital to determining the characteristics of a successful manager”1 (pg 1) and that should correspond to what kind of characteristics a manager ought to have to organize and develop goals and strategies for the company. I agree that Harris have a point that before choosing a manager we must consider the appearance of the company and aspects of management styles. Imagine if a manager, taking over Steve Jobs role as CEO of Apple, would introduce strict management style, new black suit dress code to the company. He’s characteristics would possible not fit to Apple’s ‘laid back’ culture.
Also mentioned by Buckingham and Coffman2 “an employee’s perception of the physical environment is colored by his relationship with his manager and it is the manager’s task to build the company culture around the blueprint” (pg 4). This
Bibliography: 2Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman, First, Break All The Rules. What The World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently (Simon & Schuster, May 1999) 4“Who says elephants can’t dance” Louis V Gerstner, HarperCollins Publisher, 2002