Can your crew manage just fine without you?
Are you the glue that holds the team together, the cornerstone, the one with all the answers? You can have a very successful team and be extremely productive and profitable. In fact, your team can be a leading producer of beautiful floors (or whatever) and the envy of all others around you. Your staff can look to you with ultimate respect and admiration, and your knowledge can be deep and broad. This model can produce multi-award-winning results, and you may be feared by your competitors. However, even if you are all this, you may also fall into the category of being a terrible manager. Management is not about what happens when you are there; management is what happens when you are not there.
Are you indispensable to your business? Do you (and everyone else) know that you cannot be fired? Does the world turn to poop if you have a day off? Can you have a day off? Can you imagine having a day off? Does everyone have a day off if you have a day off? If you get taken away in an ambulance from the job site, are you texting instructions with your good arm, freaking out about the job? If you answered yes to any of these, you have not been acting like a good manager.
The best managers in this world make themselves redundant … well, to a degree. If you can walk out for a day, a week, or a month and the team does not miss a beat, you have done your job well. Some managers’ egos won’t let this happen. But for a business owner, a boss who can develop a team (or many teams) that can be autonomous and productive with few hang-ups is priceless. This person is simply on another level beyond the manager who is needed every second of every day, often juggling several problems simultaneously and constantly putting out fires rather than never having any.
Coming in Part 2: How to become the good manager (you should read that!).
See more from Greg Ceglarski:
Wood Flooring Salesmanship: How I Make My Customers Money
Sales Tip: Becoming ‘My Friend the Wood Floor Guy’
I’m the Prime Minister of Timber Floors (and So Are You)
One Way We Avoid Trouble: The 10-Board Measurement
An Easy Way to Get More Business While Doing a Job
Another Easy Way to Get More Business
