How to Manage Managers

From Harvard Business Review: When you’re managing managers, your responsibilities are two-fold: you need to make sure they’re producing good work (as with any employee) and that they’re effectively supporting their teams. You might know how to do the former, but how do you do the latter? Do you need to provide training? Coaching? And how do you serve as a good role model?

In some ways, managing managers is similar to managing anyone else — you need to align their goals with yours, provide feedback, and help them advance their careers, says Sydney Finkelstein, professor at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business and author of Superbosses: How Exceptional Leaders Manage the Flow of Talent. But there is one important difference —managing managers also requires leadership coaching: you have to coach “managers to develop the culture and capabilities that their team members need,” says Linda Hill, professor at Harvard Business School … (click to read more)