I am reading this book First Break All Rules these days. This book is about what great managers do differently, it’s quite a good read.
One thing about great managers is that they care about their team members – both professionally & personally. I always thought that may be because I am a woman, I have this urge of talking to my manager about my goals & inspirations, but seems to me it’s gender neutral. A manager has to know each of its team members. For every team member he should know what’s her motivation in life, what does she want to do, how she needs to be rewarded, what’s her talent (talent is different than skills & experience).
Once you know her, you have to set goals around her strengths, set her free to achieve those goals & measure her performance in the end. On the way best you can do as a manager is be her mirror and show how she is doing, where she can improve.
For all this, you have to spend time with your team members one-on-one, once a week may be 30 minutes which means average 2 days in a year.
