What makes a great manager and a leader? A compilation of practical applications from experience, great managers, and renowned influencers of our time.
Just like you, you may have heard different comparisons and definitions of management versus leadership. Here’s a simple take: Managers can be leaders. Not all leaders are managers.
And one more detailed take (Sinek, 2011)
I’ve seen a common denominator among the great managers, who I had the privilege of working with, lead greatly. But what makes them ‘great’? They keep an open mind, rise to the occasion, show up, raise the bar, and commit to making their team as great as they’ll ever be.
Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.
—William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Key Points
Key Points
Undeniably, you as a great manager and leader will be known for your:
III. Emotional, intellectual, and physical capacity
V. Innovative yet risk-aware mindset
I. Business Acumen
You Get It
You Get It
An essential trait of every great manager. Either they you have this or you don’t. A deal-breaker if not present.
You thoroughly grasp the job, and understand the ins and outs of management, strategy, the ever-changing customer and market needs. Everyone, including yourself, can vouch for that.
Your priority battle rhythm is to understand the primary objective of your superiors. Your first order of business orbits around this objective. You know this is the primary reason you were hired. The great leader in you assesses the resources, infrastructure, technology, and processes. You then use them to develop milestones toward the primary objective.
II. Purpose and Impact
You Influence
Similarly, an essential trait of every great manager. Either you have this or you don’t. A deal-breaker if not present.
You are raring to go work believing in the company’s mission and what the team can do to support you. You communicate this with clarity.
You know your goals as a leader. You lead your people to the right path, and you get out of their way to get the job done right. Your team accomplishments are making an impact to your organization and customer’s lives. Your purpose is further driven by the challenges of matching people’s work with their ability. People enjoy working with you, and they know why they go to work each day. (Wickman, Boer. 2016)
You’ve earned the trust of your superiors and people as they see you driven by things other than own self-gain. With trust comes a sense of value—real value, not just value equated with money. Value, by definition, is the transference of trust. You have learned to earn trust by communicating and demonstrating that you share the same values and beliefs. (Sinek, 2011)
III. Emotional, Intellectual, and Physical Capacity
You Inspire
This trait exudes the ability to inspire people through an emotional, intellectual, and physical capacity.
Compared to the first two mandatory traits, business acumen, and purpose and impact, these capabilities can be acquired through first-hand experience, investment, and commitment. In lieu of the first two mandatory traits, this might be the last chance for an aspiring great manager.
4 Types of Capacity
(Wickman, Boer. 2016)
We desperately need more leaders who are committed to courageous, wholehearted leadership and who are self-aware enough to lead from their hearts, rather than unevolved leaders who lead from hurt and fear.
—Brené Brown
Emotional Capacity
The heart to feel what others are feeling, the ability to walk a mile in their shoes, to be open and honest with yourself and others, a willingness to be real and connect with others, to be humbly confident, and to be self-aware enough to know how you are influencing people.
Intellectual Capacity
The brains to do critical thinking skills, solve complex problems, forecast, prioritize, strategize, and structure how best to do things — all the same time, and still function brilliantly across the piece with grit and grace.
Physical Capacity
Your ability to follow through and lead the team to the finish line.The heart to feel what others are feeling, the ability to walk a mile in their shoes, to be open and honest with yourself and others, a willingness to be real and connect with others, to be humbly confident, and to be self-aware enough to know how you are influencing people.
Time Capacity
The self-discipline to use your time effectively, to avoid the tyranny of urgency, to structure, prioritize, organize, and delegate in a way that frees up and optimizes the most precious resource of all—your time.
At Amazon, there is a leadership principle that best defines this –the Ownership Leadership Principle– stating:
IV. Delegation Strategy
You Allow People To Lead
Delegation is a vital management skill. Delegating is a simple theory but not easy in practice. To be a great manager, one needs enough time—so it is important to focus your energy and time on strengths. A great manager will not have the time to do everything, and the sooner delegation happens, the better outcomes for the whole team.
9 Delegation Tips for Managers
(Landry, Harvard Business School, 2020)
Know What to Delegate
Not every task can be delegated. For example, performance reviews or any personnel matters should be handled by you. After all, hiring the right talent and knowing each employee’s strengths and weaknesses will ultimately make you better at assigning deliverables and transferring responsibility to the appropriate team members.
Several other day-to-day activities don’t require your oversight, though. Is there a task you regularly tackle despite knowing your co-worker is better equipped to complete it? Would assigning the project to other employees help bolster their careers? If there’s someone who could do the work better, or you think this could be a teachable moment, delegate. It will show you trust and value your team, while also giving you time to focus on more strategic projects.
Play to Your Employees’ Strengths and Goals
Every employee should have goals they’re working toward, and within those goals are opportunities to delegate. For example, maybe you have a direct report who wants to gain management experience. Is there an intern they could start supervising, or a well-defined project they can own the execution of? The type of work you delegate could factor into their professional development plan.
For other tasks, there’s likely someone on your team with the specific skill set needed to achieve the desired result. Leverage that and play to your employee’s strengths. When someone has a higher chance of excelling, they’re more motivated and engaged, which then benefits the entire business.
Define the Desired Outcome
Simply dumping work onto someone else’s plate isn’t delegating. The projects you hand off should come with proper context and a clear tie into the organization’s goals.
Before anyone starts working on a project, they should know what they need to complete and by when, including the metrics you’ll use to measure the success of their work.
Provide the Right Resources and Level of Authority
If the person you’re delegating work to needs specific training, resources, or authority to complete the assigned project, it’s your role as a manager to provide all three. Setting someone up for an impossible task will frustrate both sides; your colleague won’t be able to achieve the desired outcome, and then you’ll likely need to put that work back on your to-do list.
This is also where you need to fight the urge to micromanage. Telling your co-worker, step-by-step, how you would accomplish the task and then controlling each part of the process won’t enable them to learn or gain new skills. Focus instead on what the desired end goal is, why the task is important, and help address any gaps between the outcome and their current skill set.
Establish a Clear Communication Channel
While you want to avoid micromanaging, you do want to establish a communication channel so that the person you’re delegating to feels comfortable asking questions and providing progress updates. Setting up regular check-ins and providing feedback throughout the project can help with this.
Allow for Failure
You need to allow for failure—not because your employees might fail, but because it will enable experimentation and empower the people you’re assigning tasks to, to take a new approach. This step is particularly important for the perfectionists who avoid delegating because they think their way is the only way to get the work done.
If you’re open to new ideas and approaches to the work, you’ll have an easier time delegating when able.
Be Patient
Be quick but don’t hurry.
-John Wooden
As a manager, you likely have more years of experience in your field. Because of this, a task you can complete in 30 minutes might take an employee a full hour the first time they complete it.
You might be tempted to refrain from delegating certain tasks knowing that you can get them done faster, but be patient with your employees. Think back to the first time you completed a specific task early on in your career. You probably weren’t as efficient as you are now; your time management skills have improved.
As you continue to delegate and your employees become more familiar with the tasks that need to be completed, you’ll notice that the work will get done faster over time.
Deliver (and Ask For) Feedback
In addition to monitoring progress, you should also deliver feedback to your employees after the tasks you’ve delegated are complete.
If a task wasn’t completed as assigned, don’t be afraid to offer constructive criticism. Your employees can take this feedback and make changes the next time a similar task is assigned. On the other hand, remember to provide positive feedback and show your appreciation when a task was done well.
To ensure you’re delegating effectively, you’ll also want to ask your team for any feedback that they can give you. Ask your employees if you provided clear instructions and determine if there’s anything you can do to better delegate in the future.
Give Credit Where It’s Due
After you’ve delegated tasks and they’ve been seen through to completion, credit those who achieved the work.
The more you thank and credit those you’ve delegated work to, the more likely it is they will want to help you on other projects in the future.
Valuable benefits of delegating:
You will build extensions of yourself that will enable you and your organization to continue to grow and develop. By not delegating activities to others, you will remain stuck.
You are elevating yourself to do what you love to do and what you do well. You therefore make yourself more valuable to the organization, not to mention being happier and more energetic.
You are freeing up more of your time to spend with them, ensuring they feel more valued. You are giving them more responsibilities and more autonomy. You’ll stop being a bottleneck to those that report to you. Best of all, your team may be more competent that you are at doing the things that you’ve delegated to them.
Appreciate that the return on investing time in their people is exponential to the results that it reaps. The more direct reports, the more diverse their roles, the more tame you will devote to leading and managing.
Ultimately, leadership is not about glorious crowning acts. It’s about keeping your team focused on a goal and motivated to do their best to achieve it, especially when the stakes are high and the consequences really matter. It is about laying the groundwork for others’ success, and then standing back and letting them shine.
—Chris Hadfield
It doesn’t make sense for you to try to do every task yourself, because you won’t be able to focus on attacking the greatest threats. Instead, build a team that can essentially run without you. Then, focus the majority of your time on what will keep the team operating together as long as possible. Many times, this is raising capital, recruiting, or closing sales. By always looking to solve the greatest threats to your business, you build a stable company that can last the long haul.V. Innovative Yet Risk-Aware Mindset
You Build
Risk-averse leaders know their job is to keep the company in business. That means focusing on the greatest threats and letting your team do the rest. Great leaders recruit amazing team members who don’t need much management. Then they focus on the greatest risks of the company.
By its very length, this report defends itself against the risk of being read.
-Winston Churchill
In “Great By Choice”, Jim Collins talks about how great startup founders shoot bullets, not cannon balls. This means they take small risks, instead of putting their company all on the line. It’s never a good long-term strategy to take huge risks that could end your company. Instead, as a leader, you should look to take tiny risks to validate an idea before diving all in. That way, by the time you need to fire a cannonball, you’ve mitigated as much risk as possible.
Great managers and leaders look at more operational and tactical exposures to the business that can be summarized and abstracted to inform enterprise risks. You manage areas such as vendor risk management, audit management, corporate risk and compliance, legal matters that affect risk, and even business continuity risks. This is also the bridge where cyber risks are addressed, using the information to and from the security management layer.
VI. Hiring Decisions
You Raise the Bar
Great companies don’t hire skilled people and motivate them, they hire already motivated people and inspire them.
—Simon Sinek
A great manager plays a matchmaker to the company culture, the right hire, and the right role. Hiring the right people starts by defining your company culture, determining the right role to support goals, and then selecting people who fit that culture and role. At Amazon, great managers raise the bar in the hiring of people who will innovate on behalf of customers, and some of them act as ‘Bar Raisers’ during interviews.
VII. Talent Assessment
You Retain The Right Ones
Even the finest sword plunged into salt water will eventually rust.
—Sun Tzu
As a great manager and leader, recruiring and hiring for the right people for the right role is but the very beginning of the journey. In assessing people, there are four types to consider when delegating, retaining, promoting, and firing: Committed Champions, Silent Killers, Lone Wolves, and Contaminators. (Reynolds, 2022)
Moreover according to Reynolds:
- Keep in mind which people are the A-players or have that potential, which are at risk, and which should be shown the door right now. Reviews should be at least quarterly and should focus on three things: going over your rating of how the employee has performed, discussing what can be done to help the employee in problem areas, and re-recruiting the employee, because if you aren’t showing this person their path within the organization, an outside recruiter will do that for some other company looking for fresh talent.
- Manage for performance by making every employee a Committed Champion, keeping their enthusiasm high for your company’s vision and their role in it. You want the employee to understand that it isn’t all about money but that it’s about doing the work they love in the company of those they love to work with, and you want them to always be aware of what is in store for them if they meet and exceed expectations.
Committed Champions
Hiring someone based on the assumption that they are going to get the job done. We believe this person will align with our company’s culture and values. But businesses cannot succeed on belief alone. We need to follow through and say, “Okay, are they getting the job done now that they’re here?” And after ninety days, “Are they aligning?” This is what we look at using the concept of four quadrants: Committed Champions, Silent Killers, Lone Wolves, and Contaminators.
Silent Killers
Killers—Silent Killers are everywhere. You certainly know some and probably like them. But if they’re working at your company, they are most likely to be the ones who are sneaking by without doing what they were hired to do or not doing it as well as projected. Silent Killers are culturally aligned and generally well liked. They’re fun; people enjoy being around them. Many of those who work with or even lead a Silent Killer will say, “Oh, so-and-so is a great person,” but if you ask how that great person is performing, you’ll usually be told, “Well, uh, they have had a challenging past quarter, season,” or receive a vague “I don’t know.”
Lone Wolves
The opposite of the Silent Killer is the Lone Wolf, someone who performs well and gets the job done but isn’t aligned with the company’s cultural values and is a far cry from being a team player. Lone Wolves simply don’t connect. We consider Lone Wolves to be at risk; that is, you’re in danger of losing them. These people often aren’t the “popular” ones; they don’t try to be. They might be into the work itself, but they are not into the team or the environment. They will leave you if you don’t identify them and succeed in bringing them into the team dynamic. Remember, people tend to leave the people, not the company. It’s about relationships.
Contaminators
The Contaminator, like the Silent Killer, is not performing and, like the Lone Wolf, is not aligned. Who are they? For one thing, they are not aligned with the company values. Consider the values of integrity and accountability. Perhaps they neglected their own work and began blaming everyone and anyone else for why they didn’t get it done. So they were dishonest and not accountable. They are a Contaminator. Why are they there? When someone is grossly or consistently underperforming and lacks the humility and teachability to grow and change when it comes to behaviors around the company values, there is little hope for them. You need to get rid of Contaminators. They are a cancer that must be cut out. If not, it will spread and be extremely costly.
How Amazon Leaders Hire
How Amazon Leaders Hire
Amazon’s hiring process is rooted in the company’s Leadership Principles to ensure the hiring of people who will innovate on behalf of customers, and Bar Raisers are a critical component.
What is a Bar Raiser?
A Bar Raiser is an interviewer at Amazon who is brought into hiring loops as an objective third party. By bringing in somebody who’s not associated with the team, the best long-term hiring decisions are made to ensure the company is always serving, surprising, and innovating for customers. The role of the Bar Raiser is to be a steward of Amazon’s 16 Leadership Principles.
Who are Amazon’s Bar Raisers?
In addition to their day jobs, Bar Raisers are skilled Amazon interviewers who undergo lengthy training after being nominated and accepted into the program. They are passionate about our hiring process and serve as objective advisors during the interview process. Their craft is the guidance they provide during the evaluation process with our candidates. Because Bar Raisers hold positions that are typically outside of the business for which the candidate is being interviewed, they see aspects of a candidate’s strengths and learning opportunities that we might otherwise miss. They are experts in evaluating talent against our Leadership Principles, identifying candidates who have long-term potential at Amazon and who raise the bar.
How do Bar Raisers help with the hiring process at Amazon?
Bar Raisers have three responsibilities as part of the hiring process. The first is to assess candidates for the specific role and for long-term success at Amazon. The second is to make sure there is an open, accurate, and fair assessment of the candidate with every member of the interview loop participating in the discussion. Finally, Bar Raisers are responsible for helping hiring managers and others prepare for interviews, ask questions related to the Leadership Principles and the competencies needed for the position, assess the candidate, and provide written feedback. Although Leadership Principles are the foundation and culture of Amazon, in any role, certain Leadership Principles will be more pertinent than others. Bar Raisers work with the hiring and recruiting team to understand the most relevant principles to which the candidate must naturally index or those that can be learned and developed over time.
What should people know about how Amazon hires?
Amazon is focused on hiring well, rather than hiring quickly. Teams identify candidates who can best deliver on behalf of customers, personify the Leadership Principles, and are the best long-term fit at Amazon. Recruiters, hiring managers and Bar Raisers alike are passionate about finding the right person for the job and what that means for the future impact of the business they support. That hiring legacy is something that all Amazonians take seriously. It has a broad and long-lasting impact on the livelihood, creativity, and viability of the products and services created for customers.
More at https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/workplace/how-amazon-hires
Bibliography
Wickman, Gino; Boer, René. 2016. How to Be a Great Boss. Dallas, TX: BenBella Books. Kindle Edition.
Sinek, Simon. 2009. Start with Why. London, England: Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
Reynolds, Jonathan. 2022. Right Seats, Right People: A Leader’s Guide to Hiring and Developing Top Performers. Charleston, SC: Advantage Media Group, Inc.. Kindle Edition.
Agrawal, AJ. 2014. Why Great Leaders Are More Risk Averse Than You ThinkAre you a risk taker? It may not be such a good thing. Inc.com
Landry, Lauren. 2020. How to Delegate Effectively: 9 Tips For Managers. Harvard Business School Online.
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