Years ago, shortly after taking responsibility for a new team, someone told me:
SHORT STORIES
Years ago, shortly after taking responsibility for a new team, someone told me:
“A manager who doesn’t come in and make changes is not a manager.”
That sentence bothered me.
I hadn’t made any major changes.
I was still watching.
Still listening.
Still trying to understand.
And suddenly I wondered:
Maybe I’m doing this wrong.
Throughout my career, I’ve had the luck—or perhaps the curse—of taking responsibility for several newly created areas.
No predecessor to observe.
No example to follow.
Just a new title, more responsibility, a better salary… and people suddenly reporting to me.
Nobody had actually taught me how to be a manager.
So, like many new managers, I improvised.
And the new position made one thought dangerously easy:
They chose me.
Maybe because I know better.
Maybe my job is to tell others what to do.
So we check.
We follow up.
We ask for reports.
We make decisions.
And when things don’t happen, we check even more.
It feels like management.
It took me years to understand something much simpler:
My team’s results were my results.
But my job wasn’t to do their work better than them.
It was to create the conditions for them to do it well without depending on me.
Maybe that’s the paradox:
The easiest way to feel like a manager is to make yourself necessary.
The harder job is to build a system that needs you less.