Who is a Good Manager ?

Managing people is always important task for any company or if we talk about IT, a project. We Indians (Managers) though we are still on learning curve, but still have a long way to go. Not many are efficient and know the perfect way to manage. But this is not a art or rocket science.

I have come across many managers in my career, but hardly I could find a perfect manager, who is supportive and yet strong enough to lead. Many in India still feel that Manager is there only to BOSS over their team. I happen to see some of very good speech on Satyam Summit on Leadership, which really inspired me, the way some of eminent speaker spoke about Good and Bad Leadership (though practically I don't know how good they are)

In one of my projects me and one of my colleague were working for Dell project in their campus and project was doing a detailed Usability Study and improvising and Elliminating the loopholes in their present tool. Task was straight forward, in Project Manager's words this was a simple UI enhancement project, but in Dell it involved people in all geographies, so Dell appointed Mark as representative to coordinate between us and the end user. I was completely bowled over by his dedication and professionalism. He turned out to be perfect manager everyone is looking for..... How ?, first of all he used to listen to us and appreciate our approach, he patiently used to go through all the UI documents and used to schedule interviews for us through LIVE Meeting. As India and US timings were tough to work, he used to come at 6 in the morning and also at times 10-11 in the night so that team in India (i.e. we) don't get over worked. He used to schedule meetings (live meeting) and would ensure that person attends it. At times when a person doesn't turn up, he used to apologize to us gracefully. As the project went on for months, our comfort level became much more higher and we simply loved working with Mark. So well was his managerial skills that we were able to achieve the Task smoothly and also got lots of applauds from all of Dell as well as our management.

That is what I call a Good Manager. A person who stands by his team in Bad and Worse phase and one who supports them in a Good Manager. Perfect Manager is one who gains respect and does not demand respect.