After several years of being a manager, I know these things to be true:
– no matter how many leadership or coaching books you read or courses you take, people are still people and you can’t mold them into the shape you want them to take
– even bosses need some positive re-inforcement now and then – if you have one, make sure she/he doesn’t just hear criticism all the time
– you can’t make a group of people act like a team if they don’t want to be a team
– conference calls are a waste of time if only one or two people do all the talking
– no matter what good idea you have (or another person on the team has), someone will pour cold water on it
– some people DELIGHT in pouring the cold water
– it’s nearly impossible to lead people who don’t think they need to be lead
Sometimes I wonder why I still do it. Today, I’d rather be working all alone with just a computer screen to keep me company. But instead, I steel myself to lead yet another waste-of-time conference call that I keep insisting we have because it’s the only way I can imagine we’ll begin to build a team out of a bunch of “I’ll do things my way” people spread across the country.