Posted on: October 14, 2009 by Jordan Hardy
In my opinion trust, confidence, extensive experience, and training are necessary for a manager to become a mentor. In my working career (which started before high school and really got moving after graduating college) I’ve worked for companies the least being one and most being nine years.
Trust and Confidence
I’ve always had the perspective to trust that a direct report would not be able to take my position. If they did, I was confident that it would help me move to a better position there or at another company. Still today, after managing more than a hundred team members in my career, I haven’t ever had someone have the ability to replace my position while I was there. My generous team working attitude has helped me consistently work on growing my experience while also focusing on growing team members as much as possible. With that, and helping team members to grow, I’ve found people go home at the end of the day or weekend content and with hope. And then they bring more enthusiasm to their next work day. Having strong trust between the employee and manager is essential.
Experience
Experience I had after college vs now is very different. When a person is a manager and has managed many other people in the past, they can know well how to deal with situations that again arise. They can easily improvise if needed. The learning curve grows so a manager has enthusiasm in quickly learning new things. Most importantly, the manager needs the experience to be an expert in everything they manage so that their team has someone who can manage what they do, have realistic expectations, and do everything as well if needed.
Training
I believe in offering not only training and mentoring, but also support in the way of possible career advancement and salary increase opportunities for performance. I would think most people like to look forward to good things. If someone can go through their work day knowing they not only have the training they need, but that they can grow from there, that can make their attitude for the day that much better.
Posted on: April 27, 2009 by Jordan Hardy
For more than 15 years, I’ve managed teams, trained and hired, and done public speaking. In that time, I’ve managed teams of 2 vendors to over 50 employees at each company. I’ve often asked myself if I managed because I’m good at it or I love managing. I believe the answer is both.
To be a great manager, I believe it is important to:
- Have experience
- Be open
- Care about people
- Like being around people
- Be able to sell, whether internally or externally
- Read and take classes about leadership constantly
My view on ideal leadership of a team is to lead by example. It is not to worry about an employee ever moving up and taking your position. I believe in training employees, and most importantly letting them have great quality of life. In my experience, if an employee wants to work late or on a Saturday rather than having to do so from guilt, there is a huge difference in the quality of work just from their mindset. It is important to be clear on goals, their next steps to take, and expectations. Having employees that all feel they have been given the tools to succeed, balance their lives, learn, and grow can bring ideal results.
I feel the least effective form of leadership is one of insecurity. Letting employees feel they may be laid off any day, or that they cannot move up over time, can very much change their motivation. Not being clear on what needs to be done for a project, or playing games with employees, can hurt morale and just isn’t fair to do to them.
In the past, my leadership has built teams that help grow a business and also start work in the morning refreshed. This isn’t just something I can do, but rather something so many leaders out there do when they are secure in treating others well, with integrity.
Posted on: April 10, 2009 by Jordan Hardy
About Managing
When I was young, I had the opportunity at the age of 14 to manage staff members for my parents. Ever since then, I have been in leadership positions, managing anywhere from a couple of vendors to teams of over 50 people. Now that I’m in my 30’s and many years ago graduated from college, management and building of teams and strategy is something I’m very familiar with. In the last couple of years I have become a VP, a temporary consultant for other companies, and a temporary director to help other companies.
If you would like to learn to manage, I would suggest getting started somewhere by reading, taking classes, locating a mentor, and most importantly putting yourself in a position to learn to manage people. It may just be that you start by managing one person, and even that may help get your foot in the door to learning.
About Sales and Marketing
Before and during college I had many opportunities to manage staff, sell to clients, and work with customers. After college I was extremely interested in selling and marketing. To bring this to a new level in my 20’s, I spent a lot of time reading books and magazines from experts, taking extra classes at local colleges, and most importantly selling and marketing my own products and services. Within months of graduating college, I was hired by the world’s largest Orchid company where I then managed, trained, advised, wrote for trade journals, and gave seminars to the public to sell Orchids and teach. A few years after that I grew to another opportunity and kept selling, marketing, and managing.
