What is the toughest part of being a manager?

 

When I was younger, and worked in travel and tourism as a tour operator, all I ever wanted to be was a manager. The glory. The adoration. All the dollars rolling in month after month. Ahhhh, the life of power.

 

And then, I left travel and tourism, and I came to join VCA. 20 years ago. Within the first year, I was a manager, as we were so small, and growing. So the people that came in needed to be trained, and so I grew and I moulded and I became management. Within 3 years I was a director and had shareholding within the business. I HAD ARRIVED.

 

Funnily, the plaque on my office door just never arrived. Nor did the office. Nor the door. Nor the gold tea set and 6 figure salary. How could this possibly be? Did everybody not know I was a DIRECTOR. Not even a simple manager. I was important.

 

I had always been the life and soul of any office I had ever worked in. Friends with everybody, always up for a laugh, keen to play silly bugger with the best of them. Pranks were what sustained me. I was great at my job but could multitask exceptionally well. This was the same at VCA. Until…. The people I had been out with on the Friday night now needed a letter of warning. My best friend in the next office hadn’t come in to work for a few days and I had to start disciplinary proceedings. Oh dear… this was awkward? And so I learned the very hard lesson that once you are a manager, it becomes a vey lonely road that you travel.

 

That your colleagues will have private jokes. You will stop being invited out, and you need to stop inviting them out with you. Work and home lives need to be kept separate or you will have endless heartache. For an extrovert like me, who is gregarious and needs people around her all the time, it has been the toughest part of being a manager. Being around people you genuinely like every day, and having to keep them at arm’s length. Letting them in just enough so that they don’t think you are a snob or think you are good for them, and keeping them at bay enough so that there can never be that familiarity. So that when work has to become a place of conflict,  or when you need to step into your manager’s hat, there can be no confusion.

 

This is why its invaluable to have a supportive spouse, or a best friend that you can chat to, or even a mastermind group, but people who understand and can give you advice or even just an ear. Being a manager is tough. We don’t get compliments. We don’t get the increases we deserve. We don’t get bonuses, because our bosses are tough man!

 

It is similar to being a parent in so many ways, and is definitely something that gets easier over time. think carefully before you long for the title and all that goes with it, because it is definitely not all that it seems! Be kind to your manager.