I encourage you to take a look at Scott Berkun’s recent blog on the top 10 reasons managers become great – it’s good stuff, well considered and an interesting read.
Of course, it’s impossible to boil down the characteristics of a good manager into a shopping list of 10 items, and a notable strength in one business context may well prove to be a weakness in another.

Scott wrote this piece as a counterbalance to his previous blog on why some managers are idiots (or words to that effect). This negative post dips into pop psychology a little too much for my liking, but he’s definitely asking some probing questions about why certain people are just unpleasant to work with.

Scott’s “bad boss” post is inspired by Robert Sutton’s book about Building a Civilized Workplace, which has been on my reading list for about 12 months. Alas, there are about 15 books ahead of it still so I’m not likely to get to it anytime soon.

The challenges associated with managing people (and being managed) are fascinating. Business is all about people — combining variable personalities, motivations, and fears. It’s inevitably personal, often disjointed and messy, but great companies, like great managers, can navigate these choppy seas and strive to get the best out of their staff.

Time and again we’ve seen how spectacular results can emerge when people are aligned to work towards a common business goal. This is particularly true in the world of software startups, where so many stakeholders and disparate skills are blended together to take an idea to its logical conclusion and execute it well. But don’t kid yourselves — despite the shiny workplace awards, there are some bad bosses at Google too!

What kind of manager are you? Have you ever dealt with the angry boss sporting a chip on both shoulders? Share those war stories - we’d love to hear about them…

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