The #1 job of a manager (in all fields) is to keep his people working. It doesn't matter if it is engineering, manufacturing or the local burger joint. A managers #1 job is to keep his people working.
To keep their people working. Women can be managers as well.
Edit: I understand other languages might have gendered nouns for words like Manager, and when learning English it can be difficult to break these habits.
In English, we have gender neutral pronouns to use when were talking about "generic people" where the gender isnt known. Managers are not just male, so when a sentence is gendered like that I struggle to parse it because I think I've missed a the reason why this hypothetical manager is male.
Maybe we should lighten up a bit and not bring in politics into everything. The writer could be a male and this would be natural for them just like it would be for a female and her.
Using male pronouns instead of genderless/more inclusive pronouns in your speech is indicative of a bad managing style (or just bad style all together). As a manager you should be inclusive of all genders both directly and indirectly, which includes how you use whatever language you speak.
The people you manage could easily identify with a gender that is not physically obvious and using incorrect pronouns leads to a less inclusive and potentially more hostile workplace. This is Management 101.
I think that is still poor and confusing English when not talking about a specific person. I notice people do this when trying to make speech more inclusive, and I still struggle with parsing the sentence because of the unnessisary gender being mentioned.
Oh but not trans of course, so polite of you to leave them out in your heteronormative take on the world.
I would have hoped most were aware of the pressures the transgender community is under and would offer more care than such casual takes on gender in the workplace.
Trans people can be women as well, so saying "Women can be managers as well" does not exclude trans people because female-identifiying trans people are still "women".
It's not totally inclusive of people who identify outside of the binary genders, but saying "women can be mangers" does not exclude men or people who don't identify as either. I hope my point still remains though that using "they" as a gender neutral pronoun is a perfectly easy way to be inclusive.
> your heteronormative take on the world
I mean i am a (cis) gay male, so I don't think I have a heteronormative take on the world, but you do you.
(acknowledging this comment seems to be puposefully trolly, like a "false flag" troll)
Oh so now you get to decide how they should self identify; how very generous of you.
At this stage you really need to stop and think about what you are doing and who you are hurting; they're just words to you but they're a lifetime of hurt to others.
Be . Better.
> I mean i am a (cis) gay male, so I don't think I have a heteronormative take on the world, but you do you.
You really want to call upon the equivalent of the "some of my best friends are black" excuse? I can't even...
If you have some constructive feedback on how I could have worded what i said to be better, I’m definitely open for it. I’m always trying to be better.
Perhaps it would be been better (for a number of reasons) to say “not all managers are male” instead?
But you need to take a very long position on this.
Someone's beloved cat died? That's your problem, because it's affecting the way they work. You need to help them through it.
Someone's working well? That's great, but you can't rest on your laurels. You need to help them grow into a more senior position so they don't get bored or disillusioned.
That’s a “utilisation” view, and it’s a terrible model.
People who already have work to do are not responsive to new input.
By ensuring everyone is working all the time you also ensure nobody can respond to the unexpected.
The counterpoint to utilisation thinking is latency thinking (“how fast can our team respond to requests”).
An instance of utilisation thinking: “Our roads are not always full of traffic, how can we get more cars onto them?”. This is clearly absurd; why is “developers have work to do” a goal when “roads have cars on them” is not?
What to do when people dont deliver ?
In my current company mgrs say “we did our best”, when in fact I see ppl slacking as hell (days of doing nothing).
I didn't say that it was the only part of the job, just that it was the most important thing. Hopefully you have some knobs you can turn. At my current company if people can't deliver you try to hook them up with more mentors and if they still can't deliver, you stop giving them direct labor to work on and eventual force them out because they don't have any work and they stop getting pay raises (or you fire them usually they push them out).
Hmm. I think the #1 job of a manager is to hire, motivate and let go of people the right way. It's up to them to keep working, and it's up to the manager to figure out how to do that no more often than required.
If you do it right, it's like 90% teambuilding and 10% line management, IMO. When that ratio is inverted is where you see mediocre management.
