How to be a good boss?

Bosses are certainly not born.

First: know nothing. 

It may not be polite, but I can say with complete confidence - the kind of confidence that comes from the rigors of self-righteousness - that I’m a fantastic manager. I’m a stellar boss. And if not for the opportunity to be in the silly situation of having a trusted employer brave enough to hire you to do something that they believe you can do, though you have not ever done such a job before.

That NEVER happens, except when it does, but it did happen to me, and BOOM there I was being introduced as the “manager” by the CEO and CFO to a room of literal experts in things I’d only Googled (AFTER, not before, my interview mind you!). They all looked so nice and comfortable in this well decorated meeting room at a company where they all had worked for nearly a year or more. I was honored. It WAS an honor, no doubt! I was seen and trusted and able to focus my professional aims after a series of jobs where I kinda bopped around with varying levels of apathy and confusion for a good long time.

Neither my skills nor my intelligence took me from that morning meeting moment to the boss and coach I am at present. Fear, I feel, was the fossil fuel in my engine. The fire under my ass. And the deity I danced to in an effort to prevent anyone from getting wind of how deeply inadequate I felt at that job. Like, what the Hell?! Trust is cute, but deadly when it comes to performance and face-saving. So, you know what I did? I invented a thing - wanna here all about it?

Ok, ok, it goes like this: ask questions.

See, when leading people who know how to do things that you do not - they have separate educations, experiences, training, licenses and accreditations - there is no way in Hell you can answer their questions. I mean, shit, if they can’t find an answer for a thing that is in their sphere of expertise, how can you? Now, if “I don’t know” is like the most nonmanagerial answer out there, what can you do?

Annoying as this mind experiment is, come with me a bit further in the theme of curiosity for, why do we presume that being a boss, leader, manager is about knowing how to do all the things in a department or at a company? I mean, sometimes it ends up that way. Many times, extremely frequently in fact, a boss comes up from within a company. The American Dream, no? Where we start at the bottom and move to the top, accruing a cannon of wealth that increases in time with our expertise. Again, this totally happens, but it does not always. For, not to go on and on about something that is not directly our point, but still of note: founding members leave. They get new jobs. They get bored and their lives change and things can occur where they are ‘out’ and there is a need to hire from outside (assuming that there is no plucky up-and-comer seeking their seat).

Back to our timeline:

I was kinda in a panic. It did not start at first. The few initial weeks at the job were spent in meet-and-greets, technology training, setting up my work space, attending meetings where no one expected me to contribute (how could I?! I was new. And that was very much accepted and understood.) However, the glow of newness subsides with time, for a moving animal of a business cannot rest too long before well… shit needs to, like, actually get done. Very understandable, but (oh, no) for you see, I, like, actually don’t know what to do. People (“my staff”) begin to come to me for advice, and strategy, insight, ideas, and grievances, as one does with their boss/manager. And, oh my God, I very much don’t have any answers. Very, very much don’t.

Sure, I could have done some research or taken some sort of training. Read. I could have read. And that is like exactly what I hope reason and reflection shall inspire me to choose in the future. However, in the time of this story my panic and feelings of deep inadequacy led me to another, more foolish, but in the long run beneficial, route. I asked questions and I got really great at it, and they all kinda thought I was wise, and from what experts told me about their processes got them thinking about their thinking and they found the answers they did not know they already knew already. Oh, and I learned a bit about the nuances and A LOT about how they think, what confuses them, their challenges, tactics, and the talents and extra special aspects of their individual coolness. THAT knowledge informed me to do what is, like, the actual job of a leader, and that is to encourage, steer, challenge, and enable staff to work as self-guided, transparent team members vs what bosses so often do – squirrel away aptitude and resources.

Think about asking:

●     Has this happened before to you or another team member? How did you personally handle it? Observe your teammate doing so? What do you think about that? Give me some opinions!

●     I’ve noticed this has come up before, tell me why you think that is?

●     How might the client interpret that approach? If we try it, that is?

●     Tell me, what kind of impression do you give off? At work? And what specifically do you do that gives that impression?

●     What might be helpful right now?

●     Yeah, that is annoying, how might I address that, now and then in the future?

●     Other than blaming or firing someone, what can we as a company do structurally to prevent just this kind of mistake in the future?

Those are so general that they likely are more abstract than hoped, but let them sit in your noggin’ as examples of ways leaders can lead those under their direction to understand their professional selves and reasoning. The other alternative, i.e. just giving the answers, can be dangerous in a way we don’t think about so much. Dangerous in that it continually shackles staff to managers as “experts” vs those who HELP us work better.

If anyone cares to hear, I’ll share that this is why folx frequently fuss about how jobs don’t provide mentorship. Mentorship is about teaching us to think, encouraging us toward challenge, safely and within reason, and comes from seeing the best of us and aiding to work better as the kind of person we are. Otherwise, the boss is too stuck in being some kind of Oz all the way back in the backroom, barking answers that no one ever retains, so they keep coming back to them to “solve it”. That is arresting for staff, but, hell, I guess it feels like power to some and I guess they must like it?

Lessons:

Be curious, and sometimes what we do to save our asses, in the throes of impostor experience, can be pretty damn uncanny!