I am a tough but fair manager! I like this line, I hear it a lot amongst the managers I work with, amongst the managers of some of my clients, from some of my clients playing a management role in an organization. I used to be one of them managers considered by me and some of my colleagues tough but fair management style.
Well, I am not sure if this is actually a style, but I do consider it is a good start for growing into a good manager. I wouldn’t consider for the purpose of this article different degrees of good, I’ll define in a bit the term as well.
Now, every time I hear someone describing oneself as tough but fair I have a few questions which come to mind: how do you define tough? How do you define fair? How do you behave with your team when you succeeded? How do you behave with your team when the team succeeded? Or just a few team members succeeded? How do you behave with your team when you failed? When your team failed? Or when a few team mates failed? How do you motivate your team to succeed? Do you consider each individual team member’s motivation? And the list goes on, of course.
As I said, I used to be myself one of the tough but fair managers, even when I was learning how to be one I was considering myself a tough but fair manager. And in all fairness, based on my understand and my team mates, I was tough and fair. But that didn’t actually make me a good manager.
Now let’s define a good manager. Or at least what can be considered a good manager in my current understanding.
A good manager is well, a manager who delivers what is asked of them with any team. A manager who understands their team and has their team deliver at full potential at any given moment. You can use your own word to describe this type of manager. Some options would be amazing, great, impressive, etc 😊
Does it matter if the manager is tough or fair? Well, generally no. A team is comprised of different people, with different characters, with different personalities, with different motivations, with different goals, with different styles of working, with different strengths, should I continue? All these also translate to the fact that each individual has their own definition of what is tough and what is fair. Not to speak about what each of them considers a good manager for themselves.
How can one attitude like tough but fair can meet all of the different variations of team members in one place, the one of successful deliveries?
I learned the hard way, this tough but fair description of me as a manager didn’t do me too many favors, didn’t help me, didn’t reflect my personality and definitely didn’t make my teams deliver any better. What I have learned is that one can be a tough but fair manager, but not to every team member and not in every situation. And also, what constitutes as fair to some team members is not the same for each team member. Of course, giving credit where it is due, recognizing effort and value in a public forum, nominating each individual team member for their successes or contribution to a team’s success is always seen as fair. But never criticizing a piece or work, a failure from any of the team members in a public forum is also seen as fair. And in my book it should be fair for any manager, of any type, any style, any age, any team – and I am talking about both formal managers (with the title of some sort) or a team member acting as a manager without the formal role.
But now, let’s consider a project where 10 team members were involved, 3 of which went above and beyond and drove the project to success and another 6 members doing their job average in this project and one colleague who did the bare minimum. How would the 6 +1 team members not being considered to be nominated as exceptional would consider this being fair? I mean they had all it took to do more than average and yet they did not. And this is the easy one. But how about if we consider 3 of them were involved in another difficult project before this one started and they gave their all there – they are still amazing, but they cannot always deliver to their highest value. We are all human after all. What if the one individual who did the bare minimum was facing a very difficult situation in their personal life but they still showed up and they did what they could to support this project being delivered successfully?
How would the 3 colleagues who did an exceptional work feel if they were not nominated individually for this project? What is fair to them? What is fair to the entire team?
I took this example because as far as I’ve seen it is way more frequent than most managers imagine. What is the actual solution here? Well, the solution actually depends on knowing your team. Knowing what motivates each individual team member. While it might be considered fair across the board to nominate each star member of each project, there are situations when not even this is fair. And all this leads to what makes your team excel? What makes each individual team member to continue working in your team even when things get tough and push their own limits to deliver and support your goals and targets?
I believe knowing these is what makes anyone a good manager. I don’t believe in someone being born to be a good manager. I believe in highly skilled individuals who care about their teams, who are kind to their teams, who push their own boundaries to learn more, to achieve more, to be kinder every day.
*I add this note in most of my discussions on the leadership/management topics – for me there is no difference of people management skills between a leader and a manager, it is just an hierarchy and a terminology. I don’t consider the difference in terms of leadership skills – the one available on most media communication where the leader is a good human being and the manager is a bad carrot and the stick type of human being.
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