What Would It Be Like If You Didn’t Have To Be A Manager?

Editors note: This is a guest post by Tim Brownson from A Daring Adventure.

Several years ago after being hired by one of the largest sales organizations in the UK, I was taken into an office by Nic, my new manager. He hadn’t interviewed me for my job because he was new in his own role, having been internally promoted the same day as I was recruited.

He sat me down and after checking I was okay and pouring me a drink asked, “Tim, how do you like to be managed?”

After I picked myself up of the floor, closed my gaping jaw and recovered the ability to speak I gave him my answer. “I like to be hands-off most of the time and to be left to get on with the job. I respond to encouragement and genuine and open feedback”

To say I was somewhat cynical about whether he would actually take what I’d said on board would be a huge understatement. I was skeptical of any manager asking me how I wanted handling because in my experience that wasn’t what managers normally did. Okay, so they would sometimes ask the right questions and make the appropriate promises regarding their style of management, but they never actually meant it – and that would always become evident in the fullness of time.

So what did Nic do?

Over the following months however, Nic proved good to his word by treating me exactly the way I‘d asked to be treated. He was encouraging when I was successful and helpful and supportive when things weren’t going according to plan. And possibly most amazing of all, he was constantly looking for creative ways to make my life easier and reduce my workload. He made me believe he wanted to see me succeed almost as much as I did, and he did so because it was true. He helped me to smash every sales target that was put in front of me and then some.

What Nic did was take the time to get to know me. Not my performance stats, what my time keeping was like and whether I could hold a sales meeting or not, but what I liked to do and what motivated and engaged me. He understood my values and what really made me tick. He knew that a volley of abuse or threat of objectives would have little beneficial effect on me, so he didn’t bother. In other words, he knew me as a person and not just as a sales person.

You could easily say that he managed me really well, but I don’t see it like that. It felt at the time like I was being led. In fact the entire team felt that way to the point where we smashed our targets on one campaign to such an extent that the company had to change the commission structure nationwide to avoid having to pay out such insane bonuses again. People don’t perform like that when they’re being managed.

What if we drop the idea of “managers”?

I don’t like the title manager. I held it for a number of years and at the time thought it looked cool on my business cards, but it was purely an ego thing. The word itself ‘manage’, gives off a vibe of organizing or worse still, coping. And neither of those inspires me, not like the word ‘leader’ does.

The reality is that great managers are also great leaders. They get the people who work for them to feel like they are working with them. They get to know the people directly under them as individuals and they manage the person according to their values and personality.

Everybody is different and if I tried to operate as a Life Coach by having a regimented script and treating everybody the same way, I wouldn’t have many clients.

Imagine if you were given a managers post but instead of saying manager it said Sales Leader or Office Leader on your business cards and all the other relevant paraphernalia. What difference do you think that would make to how you viewed your roll within the organization?  How would it change the expectations of those around you? Suddenly you’re not there to manage you’re there to lead people, how cool would that be?

What if you’re a solopreneur?

It may be that you’re a solopreneur and think this doesn’t apply to you, but that’s not true, you can be a leader even if you work for yourself.

You can lead your competitors to higher standards and you clients to grander expectations. You can lead by being solution driven rather than problem orientated, by connecting people without the expectation of reward, by sharing information, by smiling when things get tough, by listening, by asking questions and most of all by being the person that you aspire to be.

If you want to really make a difference at what you do and in the lives of others, start to be a leader. It doesn’t matter if you don’t actually have the title yet, that will come when others quite rightly recognize your abilities.

Tim Brownson is a Life Coach, NLP Master Practitioner and author from England now living in Orlando, Florida. He is currently involved in a huge project to give away 1,000,000 copies of a book he co-authored called, How To Be Rich and Happy.