Becoming a Successful Manager, Second Edition, 2nd Edition

2Defining Your Role

Sensitivity is as important to managing people as music is to dancing.

A professional manager is an effective teacher, a sensitive counselor, and a master gardener.

BEFORE YOUR PROMOTION, YOU MANAGED only one person: yourself. In this limited managerial function, your efforts and effectiveness alone determined your success. You must have been good at what you were doing or you wouldn’t be in your current position of departmental manager. But your “doing” skills that were once admired and rewarded are not the only ones you get paid for now. The new rules for succeeding are substantially different.

In your role as departmental manager, your two main responsibilities are:

• To stimulate the members of your staff to be the best ...