Being a manager is neither a reward for years of service nor a logical progression in any expert’s career. It is a distinct role that is far from a good fit for everyone. If you want to understand who is standing before you—a true leader or simply a solo superstar—you need to look past their personal achievements and focus on their attitude toward other people’s results.
The Responsibility Instinct
The core difference of a true manager is a genuine desire to achieve results through the hands of others. This is the baseline, and it implies a readiness to deal with people: to align them, to hold them accountable, and to drive their efficiency. Yet the most critical and challenging part here is the willingness to take ultimate responsibility for another person.
Unfortunately, modern culture does not foster this idea. Today’s Western trend centers on the cult of the “super-champion” and the “lone wolf.” I have deep doubts that the younger generations will excel in management, precisely because they are not taught to be champions of motivation. A manager, on the other hand, is required to be a champion at energizing people and getting on the same wavelength with them. If a person possesses this drive, you can give them the tools, and they will succeed. If that drive is missing, no amount of management technology will help.
Stripping away all the complexities, who is a manager? It is someone who ensures that their subordinates perform at their absolute best. To achieve this, you need to inspire, to push, and occasionally to slam your fist on the table. You need to establish order so that employees do not compete against one another, and instead harness their talents to reach the goal.
What is in Your Toolkit?
A manager’s toolkit is a classic one, and it is fairly straightforward:
- Functional structure: A clear definition of who is responsible for what.
- Control and analytics: Tracking whether results are rising or falling, and determining what needs to be done to improve.
- Planning and coordination: The team must have plans that are aligned with one another. This requires regular meetings.
- Feedback: Inspiring them during victories and course-correcting during failures. Crucially, correcting them in a way that does not crush the individual, because you need them to keep moving forward.
When interviewing candidates for leadership positions, I always ask one favorite question. Simply hearing that a department under the candidate’s management met a quota of 12,000 units or became market leaders is not enough. Those are basic answers.
My question is this: “What tools or actions did you use to achieve that result? What exactly did you do?”
I listen intently. If they are a true manager, they will start listing: “I gathered the team, motivated them, held weekly meetings, implemented a bonus system, and tracked metrics.” It is vital for me to understand what the specialist worked with. If a person names management tools, they possess a managerial mindset. As for specific tools, I can always train them to meet my standards later.
The Trap of “Soft” Management and the Right to Be Yourself
Small and medium-sized businesses face a major issue: smart people are chosen for management roles, but no one explains to them exactly what they need to do. As a result, endless debates about management styles begin.
I have often seen a funny picture: a capable, natural leader goes to a training seminar where they are told they need to be a “coach” and a “soft psychologist.” But a psychologist is always on the individual’s side; their job is to make the client comfortable. A manager, however, is on the side of the result. And when a normal, moderately firm leader turns into a spineless person asking vague questions, it becomes a catastrophe for the employees. They lose their anchor.
People value integrity and stability in leaders. You need to be yourself. There are straightforward leaders, and there are “dynamos”—both styles work if they are authentic. I, for instance, genuinely admire my entrepreneurial friends who radiate energy from early morning. I cannot do that; I manage differently.
The styles differ, but the tools remain the same. Both the motivator and the systems analyst need to look at plans once a week, study dashboards, and encourage subordinates to bring ready-made solutions instead of problems.
Why “Star” Hires Fail
It is a classic scenario: an entrepreneur grows a company to a certain level and decides to hire an experienced external director with an impressive resume. The entrepreneur themselves never graduated from any management academies, yet everything worked fine under them. But they bring in a pro—and disaster strikes.
Global business practice offers a textbook example of such a failure: Ron Johnson at J.C. Penney. Johnson was an Apple superstar, the creator of their brilliant retail stores. When he was hired to save the J.C. Penney chain, he attempted to impose his “star” style of a solo visionary onto a system that had operated on entirely different principles for decades. He failed to account for the company’s internal order, eliminated the discounts customers were used to, and tried to force a foreign vibe. The result was billions in losses and his dismissal.
Let me explain why this happens. Imagine a creative person’s workshop. To an outsider, it looks like absolute chaos: papers, tools, random pieces of metal. But the moment you ask for a document, he instantly pulls it from the right stack. For him, it is not chaos; it is his own, organically created order. He knows every single nail there because he drove it in himself.
When an outsider steps in, they find themselves in someone else’s chaos and cannot navigate it. The problem of transferring power is solved in only one scenario: when you turn your “creative order” into a simple, clear system that any other person can grasp. Only then can a hired manager pick up the process and deliver results.
Alexander VISOTSKY,
business management expert
