Being Directive and Effective Doesn't Mean Being a Jerk

This resource first appeared in issue #99 on 05 Nov 2021 and has tags Becoming A Manager: Other

You can be directive without being a jerk - Lara Hogan Being Nice and Effective - Subbu Allamaraj

I think one of the hardest things for new managers - especially those coming from the very hands-off collegial culture of research - is determining the right amount of directiveness appropriate for a given situation. The usual failure modes, in order of the frequency which I see them, is the very common laissez-faire absence of direction and the less common tech-lead-becomes-manager “do this, this, then that, and my way of doing it is exactly like this. In fact, why don’t I just…”

Hogan’s article is a followup to an earlier one, fixing a team going in circles. So here it’s a big topic of setting some direction for an entire team at once. But the approach works for a particular team member, too - being specific about whose job is what, focussing on the important thing (the team’s work) and not about individuals, and firmly but kindly applying direction at the level needed - whether that’s on tasks or goals or somewhere in between.

Allamaraj points out that being effective doesn’t necessarily mean not being nice, and being “nice” isn’t necessarily an end in itself anyway; we want to be kind, and sometimes “nice” gets used as meaning sort of inoffensive. Letting someone trudge aimlessly in circles while just smiling and not saying directive may seem from a distance like ‘nice’ but it’s certainly not kind.