I've known for some time that I am not a very good manager. Not awful but not good. Haven't got much training for it and almost no organizational support in the management skills side of things, but I also don't confront those weaknesses as much as I should. In the week since I got back from being away my boss has been expressing his displeasure with those aspects of my performance more openly than before. That is unpleasant on the one hand, especially when done in front of other people,* but on the other it's kind of a relief, and today he finally called me into his office to have a discussion in which he actually gave me some direction about how to manage my team and concrete suggestions for how to do that. He's a delegator, and in some ways a really good one. He empowers his senior staff to make decisions, improvise, do what they think is best, and only steps in when asked or when he sees an urgent need. In other ways not so good: He sometimes doesn't communicate as clearly as he thinks he has, and he probably waits to long to micromanage or offer advice or support when people aren't performing as well as they could or should (hello).
Now, there are other parts of my job that I am good at.* I am a good writer and editor. I'm confident and lead meetings well regardless of audience or purpose, I'm quick to grasp new concepts and read a room, I'm knowledgeable enough about a range of topics to be credible talking to different kinds of people. I can think through problems to solutions clearly a lot of the time, which helps when designing a project. All of those traits make me good at writing proposals. However, being good at writing proposals doesn't always translate to winning lots of proposals. Since I moved to Pakistan, my success rate has been very poor. I have led the development and submission of many proposals that I am proud of, that were worthy of funding, but that did not win. The latest blow came today, one that my colleagues in Canada and I all worked really hard on and felt good about. No dice.
What I'm saying is, when even the parts of my job that I like, that I feel good at, and that ultimately are the measure of my success, aren't panning out, then the parts of my job that I dislike and feel bad at just loom so much larger.
Rough week.
*This only happened during a meeting in which he was calling a bunch of people out.
**NB: There are other things I'm not great at, like event planning (in that case mostly because I fucking hate event planning). Asking for help when I need it, which is a serious flaw that I intermittently overcome. The list goes on.
Now, there are other parts of my job that I am good at.* I am a good writer and editor. I'm confident and lead meetings well regardless of audience or purpose, I'm quick to grasp new concepts and read a room, I'm knowledgeable enough about a range of topics to be credible talking to different kinds of people. I can think through problems to solutions clearly a lot of the time, which helps when designing a project. All of those traits make me good at writing proposals. However, being good at writing proposals doesn't always translate to winning lots of proposals. Since I moved to Pakistan, my success rate has been very poor. I have led the development and submission of many proposals that I am proud of, that were worthy of funding, but that did not win. The latest blow came today, one that my colleagues in Canada and I all worked really hard on and felt good about. No dice.
What I'm saying is, when even the parts of my job that I like, that I feel good at, and that ultimately are the measure of my success, aren't panning out, then the parts of my job that I dislike and feel bad at just loom so much larger.
Rough week.
*This only happened during a meeting in which he was calling a bunch of people out.
**NB: There are other things I'm not great at, like event planning (in that case mostly because I fucking hate event planning). Asking for help when I need it, which is a serious flaw that I intermittently overcome. The list goes on.
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