Preface
Why am I writing good vs. bad comparisons for various roles? In short: Because it helps me on my recruiting & feedback reflection process and it makes the game more transparent for anyone working with me. The long version can be found in Why am I writing good vs. bad comparisons for various roles?
Good vs. bad manager
A good manager has a clear understanding of his long term goals and breaks them down into daily/weekly deliverables. A bad manager will do what is fancy today.
A good manager has a clear understanding of the priority of his objectives – from mission critical to third level. A bad manager will claim he/his team did great progress because they achieved that third level goal.
A good manager will deliver a pitch what he has achieved with the current resources and how much more he could achieve with more resources. A bad manager will claim he cannot work with the current resources.
A good manager understands that people are motivated by the five factors (team, mission, environment, salary, title) and work long-term on all of these. A bad manager will claim this guy left because of a higher salary.
A good manager understands the long-term ambitions of all of his team members and enables him to grow into that direction. A bad manager helps on escalations.
A good manager understands that he is there to take unpopular decisions on the short term to become successful (and popular) on the long term. A bad manager shy’s away from unpopular decisions.
A good manager has a good understanding of leading and trailing KPIs and how to quantify the success of his and his teams efforts. A bad manager will argue this specific work is not measurable.
A good manager will take written positions on larger topics. A bad manager will verbally express what drives him in the moment.
A good manager has mapped his organization and understands who he needs to fulfil his mission. A bad manager will work with his team and complain about other teams not doing their job.
A good manager will thoughtfully escalate topics to the senior management when he could not solve them himself. A bad manager will just complain in random rounds.
A good manager will have a clear prioritization and follow up process. A bad manager will come into the office and do what’s there.
A good manager will constantly iterate and improve in an ambition to be smarter tomorrow than he was today. A bad manager is happy if anything stays the same.
A good manager has a reflection process for him personally and his team. A bad manager will just believe everything goes into the right direction.
A good manager will think of himself and his team being a machine within a greater machine and optimize the output based on the “mechanics of the machine”. A bad manager will everything we do is great just the others need to ramp up their game.
A good manager has a good understanding of his and his teams strengths and blind spots and will organize support to address the blind spots. A bad manager will feel everything should be the way it is.
A good manager will have a good balance of giving to his team and asking from his team. A bad manager will refrain from asking because he still needs to give.
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