You Don’t Know Everything
May 12, 2009 by Phil Gerbyshak
Filed under Business
One of the hardest things to accept as a manager is the fact you don’t know everything.
Once you become a manager, your team becomes the expert. They do what you did, day after day, week after week, year after year. They know it inside and out, because they do it every day.
You don’t know everything.
If you don’t like not knowing everything, don’t be a manager.
Because you CAN’T know everything.
It’s impossible. You can’t possibly know everything about every aspect of the job anymore. You don’t do it enough.
Sure, you may understand the business behind the job better, or the big picture better, but you need your team to be experts in what happens every day.
If you know more than your team, you’re working way too hard, or you’re not letting your team do what they do best.
You have to trust your team to be experts.
Ask them questions to understand what they know, so when someone asks you, you can answer intelligently.
But don’t think you’re going to know everything. That’s why you have a team.
That’s why you hire people smarter than you.
You pay your team to be experts.
You get paid to make sure it gets done.
That’s a big difference.
You don’t know everything.
Photo credit to dano
As manager you need to make sure you hire knowlegable people. The higher you move into management the more soft-skills you need rather than the hard-skills. It comes with the territory.
Brilliant post, Phil. As an engineering vp recently said to me, “I don’t know much design anymore, just enough to know when someone is BSing me.”
Do your job—not theirs; that’s what you’re paid for.
Congratulations! This post was selected as one of the five best independent business blog posts of the week in my Three Star Leadership Midweek Review of the Business Blogs.
http://blog.threestarleadership.com/2009/05/13/51309-midweek-look-at-the-independent-business-blogs.aspx
Wally Bock
Phil,
Great post. Really to the point. Your thoughts struck me today, and I don’t really have anything to add. I wrote a post recommending people read this one. Thanks.
A refreshing reading of the day. Yep, I ask my subordinate/team mate on skills she is good at. Others are good at what you are not. So everyone is good at a certain activity (a recurring activity only to that person). At times I helped my co-worker with certain technical issues, they asked me why so and so, I just have to say “I don’t know.” And they said “I like that answer.” Other people, such as friends from non-IT field who asked me why so, what really happened, I tried to explain abit and say “I don’t have a more intelligent answer. Just accept the solution.” Being able to say “I don’t know” and ask for help requires some skills and characters.