You Don’t Know Everything

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