The Information and Knowledge Professional's Career Handbook

10

Making the leap to a managerial role: being the boss

We have heard – and lived – several variations on the comment ‘Of all the things I did in my career… managing people was the most difficult’ – and we agree that being the boss – that is, having the responsibility to make decisions impacting the work lives of our staff members – entails a great many situations whose resolutions are anything but straightforward.

In Chapter 15, we describe some major learning points in our careers, touching on the theme that skills required of those who are in charge of teams are not always covered in graduate programs and must be acquired on the job. In that context, we recognize that even though someone might have sat us down at an early stage and said ‘now ...