How the Pros Really Learn About Management

Management Insights From Some Unexpected Places

Successful business managers must have learned their trade from years of school and lots of reading, right? Wrong. Education, no doubt, is vital to all professions, but the vast majority of managers may have been educated by some sources you may not expect.

Bosses
Bosses are your top sources of management knowledge. Staff who make unrealistic expectations or stereotype their bosses as good or bad will probably miss out on learning how management, business and companies actually work. Also, positive lessons can be learned from bosses whos personalities conflict with your own. This isn't limited to your boss, but any colleague with management styles and ideas you can benefit from.

Competitive Markets
Next to bosses, the most useful source would have to be doing business in the real world. Actually winning and losing business by negotiating deals, creating and promoting your product and serving your customers is the main part of your business. A manager who attempts to run a company without ever actually engaging directly with a customer or creating and delivering a product will be missing the key part of the equation. As you should probably expect, managers can learn more from making mistakes than from doing things right.

Teachers
Teachers have taught you a lot about management, and you thought you were only learning long division or Canadian history. How the great teachers manage a classroom can teach you how to spot and encourage talent; how to hold people accountable; and the importance of humour and humility in motivation.

Life
This should be no surprise, but management insights should come from the real world. The business world, just like the rest of your life, is about interacting with people, not rustling through paperwork or working on your computer. Your life experience has taught you how to socialize with people and no doubt how to motivate employees as a manager.

Yourself
Some of the most important lessons you can learn about leadership will not come from others, but from yourself. What interests and motivates you will be a defining point of your management style. The more comfortable you are with yourself, the stronger the image you will convey of yourself and of your whole business.

Specific qualities are important assets to any successful manager. Strong people skills and a motivation to succeed will definitely help, but without a thirst to gain knowledge you may have the will, but not the way. The better you can listen and learn from these sources, the better a manager you'll grow to be.