Do we expect our managersto be super heroes? We want them to be best in communication, establish strong trust model to work with, provide opportunity for growth, willing to put his badge for us, listen actively, appreciate and reward good work, be excellent decision makers, build strong high performance teams and what not. May be, such high expectations is probably one of the reasons, why they always fall short in meeting our expectations -:)

These expectations get driven strongly by individual needs, which are hardly the same across the board. For example a new graduate joining the workforce, expects his manager to show the ropes of working in the company culture and growth path moving forward. A mid-career level employee expects a lot of independence to do the right thing for the company and seeks counseling only if required. Another person might have growth ambitions and expects his manager to give him the visibility path for the growth.

Some of the expectations can and should be met half way (For example,communication is a two way street - You should contribute equally to make the communication effective with your manager). Here are my top three expectations from a manager. These expectations cannot be met half way and strongly requires that a manager takes accountability for these. Also, it is an area for constant improvement, no matter which position the managers hold. They are:

• Strong sense of priorities- A manager should possess a strong sense of priorities. The priorities should be balanced across the various needs of projects, employees,customer and shareholders. It is this sense of priority that would lead to a strategic vision of what the group is going to deliver in the upcoming months and why it is important for the company, customers and shareholders. Sense of priorities allows them to establish goals and make the team work towards the goals. Having achievable goals and measurable progress towards goals is an important element for feeling successful and happy.
  
• Awareness of self and others- Self awareness of strength provides the confidence and intuition required to make right decisions. Self awareness of weakness directs one to seek help when needed. Self awareness in a way serves as the internal compass for managers to seek the right solution to every problem. Awareness of others strength and weakness is also equally important. Delegation can work successfully, only if you are aware of what each person is capable of. Managers can best align the interest and needs of the people with the awareness of others. You can bring the best in people, if you are able to best align the interest of projects,company with the interest and needs of people.
  
• Decision making- Managers should posses a keen sense to look for things that matter to make a decision and make them stick. Like Warren Buffet is able to make the right call most of the time with certain key parameters for investing in a company, each of the managers should have these measures that allow them to make the right call in their own domain that lead to correct decisions most of the time. However ironic it might be in the world of information age, managers are typically faced with lack of right information to make the correct decision. The question then becomes, how you go get the information required to make the right decision.
  
  At the end, we should all realize, managers are just human. Give the best of what you have and other things have a way of working out automatically.

  Please do write to me on three things, which you feel are important for the manager to have.