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Leadership | Management
I’ve Managed People for 20 Years. Here Are Five Things I No Longer Care About.
I wasted years making the job much harder than it needed to be
Most people think the value of experience is what you gain: knowledge, skills, and reps.
But there’s something else experience teaches you too — something many people miss.
As a new manager, I was desperate to prove I was dependable, effective, and someone worth listening to. That’s what I thought it meant to be good. My younger self probably imagined that, two decades later, I’d simply be better at all those things. Perhaps effortlessly.
I assumed that as the years went on, I’d add more and more skills to my repertoire. The reality was I learned to be better and better at cutting things out.
The tricky part was recognising that some of the best things to stop caring about were exactly the things I’d imagined made me a more effective manager in the first place.
Winning every argument
Authority often feels like an energy, especially when you’re new. The reality is it’s more like a currency.
