Where did you attend ‘‘boss-school’’?

When debating leadership, or how to be a good boss, there tend to be a miss-conception that there
are several (completely) different ways you could embrace. From time to time I get the question
from newly appointed bosses, where and how they shall start their intake on how to do “bossing”…
Far too often they already got ideas on what colleagues to get rid of based on old merits and bias, but
never an idea on whom or what skill they would like to add to the team.
Anyhow, they never ask for advice on how to be a good boss … they tend to get stuck in the
powertrip of being `a boss´… As if that is the crown of your career. This leads me to some uncomfortable,
but hopefully debatable insights …
First, there are not different schools with completely opposing ways on how to manage a team
towards success, as there´s not that many ways to be a good parent. Well, you say, Japanese leadership
differs a lot from what where used to … at least from what I´ve read and heard. No, it doesn´t differ,
you´re comparing you´re own, closest boss, at your company with a Japanese top-executive telling
a story on how leadership worked pre-internet in a society-model that no longer exist. Totalitarian
hierarchies did the thing for Europeans as well. So, there are no schools, there are merely slight
differences.
Second, if you are a newly appointed boss and don´t know what to do, or how you got there,
you´re probably in the wrong place. To be a boss, manager or executive is far too often the equivalent
of success in your department, which is absurd. A good boss (or parent) is a peoples-person,
which should be the strongest incentive when recruiting a boss. That´s right, a boss is recruited, it´s
not the same as being promoted.
The best technician, accountant, sales-rep or whatever is the best at what they do, but remember
that bossing in itself is a discipline like any other expertise…
Example: Our Swedish king … is he a boss or a sales-rep? You know the answer …
Enter your email to reset your password

Enter new password.