I have been reading a lot of PM discussion boards, blogs, comments and individual recommendations lately, and it seems to me that lots of individuals want to love and admire their managers and leaders. I guess they expect a perfect work world. Maybe that’s a need to replace our messy social, personal and community lives with one of perfect order. Lots of these commenter's were looking for a perfect “holy’ person to look up to. A manager who they would follow to the death.
Sorry folks! you should expect an imperfect human for a manager, and if you are lucky, he or she will act as professionally as possible for the greater part of their working lives. They will make mistakes, and they will sometimes make you angry or upset. If you are lucky you will get a 90% plus perfect manager.
It is difficult for us to set aside the bad things and look at the positive. We want to live and work in a perfect world, and when we have time on our hands we often focus on bad rather than positive. We expect positive, so bad sticks out.
I never wanted to be loved as a manager, just respected. Respected for what I was able to accomplish not who I was. Who I am, is for my personal life. I had employees for ten years of more who didn’t believe I was married when then finally met my spouse. I gave 110% to my job, but I never gave my wife to my job.
I suspect that I was at least a 90% er. I made some whopping errors in judgment, and had character lapses (I still do) over my career and I am sure that I made individual employees, vendors and even clients uncomfortable at times, but I am certain that I tried hard and mostly acted in a positive manner.
The take away:
Don’t expect your boss to be perfect, look for the over arching trend.
Don’t expect to be perfect yourself,try and be at least a 90% er.
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