There's an old joke: a man in a hot air balloon realized he was lost. He reduced altitude and spotted a woman below. He descended a bit more and shouted, "Excuse me, can you help me? I promised a friend I would meet him an hour ago, but I don't know where I am." The woman below replied, "You're in a hot air balloon hovering approximately 30 feet above the ground. You're between 40 and 41 degrees north latitude and between 59 and 6 degrees west longitude."

"You must be an engineer," said the balloonist. "I am," replied the woman, "How did you know?" The balloonist answered, "well, everything you told me is technically correct, but I've no idea what to make of your information, and the fact is I'm still lost. Frankly, you've not been much help at all. If anything, you've delayed my trip." The woman below responded, "You must be in management."

"I am, but how did you know?" replied the balloonist. "Well," said the woman, "you don't know where you are or where you're going. You have risen to where you are due to a large quantity of hot air. You made a promise which you've no idea how to keep, and you expect people beneath you to solve your problems. The fact is you are in exactly the same position you were in before we met, but now, somehow, it's my fault."


I bring this up because here we can see the same answer given by two people, a manager and a(n amateur, non-performing-outside-of-this-forum) comedian. The manager says:
Quote Originally Posted by truemane View Post
As a long-time manager in a variety of environments, I can tell you with 100% certainty that the answer is: maybe, sometimes.

Effectively managing human beings is a game of very few clear lines.

Admitting that a new rule is stupid but needs to be done works sometimes, with some people, often depending very much on how you say it and what your relationship is like. You can't use that line all the time, with every rule you disagree with (or every rule they disagree with) because it causes active mistrust of the organization, which breeds discontent and is bad for morale. But, similarly, you can't ardently defend every decision made by higher-ups because that causes them to mistrust you and that also breeds discontent and is bad for morale.

Sometimes you have to say "Do it because I say so" and sometimes you have have to say "This is why we're doing this." And often which one you choose differs from day to day, rule to rule, employee to employee, conversation to conversation.

Machiavelli said "There is no other way to guard yourself against flattery than by making [people] understand that telling you the truth will not offend you, but when all [people] may tell you the truth, you lose their respect."

I remember reading that when I was a teenager, long before I had ever been in charge of anyone, and I spent a lot of time thinking about it. And it made me realize that there's no one single path, no simple rules, no one-size-fits-all way to go about thing where other humans are concerned.

People joke about managers who can't do the jobs of the people the manage, about "failing upwards" and the like, but managing people is really its own skillset, completely separate from whatever skillsets you're managing. It's challenging but I also find it very rewarding.
The comedian says:

Know your audience.