How to Become a Great Boss

• Great bosses are always great leaders. But great leaders, can be frightful bosses, terrible managers.
• The great boss makes people believe in themselves and feel special, selected, anointed. The great boss makes people feel good.
• The Great Boss Simple Success Formula
• Only hire top-notch, excellent people.
• Put the right people in the right job. Weed out the wrong people.
• Tell the people what needs to be done.
• Tell the people why it is needed.
• Leave the job up to the people you've chosen to do it.
• Train the people.
• Listen to the people.
• Remove frustration and barriers that fetter the people.
• Inspect progress.
• Say "Thank you" publicly and privately.
• Companies do what the boss does.
• Great bosses position the organization to succeed, not with politics, but with posture and presence.
• Because the company does what the boss does, the boss better perform, or the company won't.
• It is the customer's money that funds paychecks, bonuses, health insurance, taxes, and everything else. Because it is the customer who pays the employees, then the employees--all employees, including the boss--work for the customer. Therefore, every single job in the company must be designed to get or keep customers. Without exception!
• If there is a job that does not directly get or keep a customer, that job is redundant and should eliminated or outsourced.
• A responsibility of the great boss is to teach the employees how to get and keep customers.
• The customer is the real boss. And the dissatisfied customer fires employees every day.
• One of the biggest macro problems is that environments change and companies do not.
• Great companies and great bosses are constantly training, teaching, improving, and growing their employees.
• If an employee can't or won't generate a positive return on all the investments made in the employee, then the employee must go.
• The careful boss listens and observes before making any decisions about people.
• Mediocrity is an insidious disease that saps the vitality, innovation, and energy of any organization.
• Once mediocrity infects an organization, it is extremely difficult to cure.
• Mediocrity starts when weak managers hire even weaker employees.
• Tolerating mediocrity is management malpractice.
• The cost of a mishire goes up as responsibility level of the hired person goes up.
• To reduce mishiring costs, hire slowly and with care.
• The fact is that no matter how careful the hiring process, how glittering the recommendations, or how rich the resume, you will never really know if you have hired correctly until the person has been on the job awhile.
• If you have made a hiring mistake, fix the mistake fast.
• Treat people the way you would wish to be treated. People understand reality. Treat people with dignity, and even the most difficult of circumstances goes better.
• Getting good people into an organization, and keeping mediocre people out, is absolutely critical to success.
• The right ability plus the right attitude adds up to an A player. A players are winners. They are smart, savvy, and get the job done. They are motivated and hardworking. A players have a nose for the goal line, and they go for it.
• Only hire A players or people with A potential. Never hire a C or D player.
• You can groom an A- player to an A. You can make a B+ player an A. But you can never make a C player a B or an A. Never.
• A players usually cost more, but they deliver more.
• A players are often more difficult to manage because they have lots of energy and move fast and don't wait for the organization to catch up. A players need to be challenged, so the great boss gives them challenges.
• Ability plus attitude: the more of each the better.
• When the boss understands the root cause of an employees performance problem, he or she can begin an action plan to remedy the situation.
• Great bosses learn from mistakes.
• Have principles. Live them. Teach them. Keep them.
• Solid principles are to a boss as a compass is to a sailor.
• The great boss remembers his or her roots and remembers who helped along the way. Never forget that your success was not earned by you alone.
• The hiring moment is the time for employer and employee to clarify employment issues and conditions.
• The great boss eliminates future problems on the day of hiring. Be exceptionally clear on compensation, benefits, work product, hours, company culture, and behavior. Be certain the new employee understands with concomitant clarity.
• If you are delegating without without clear direction or without providing appropriate training, you are not delegating, you are relegating--relegating the employee to error making and misperformance.
• Give the task, job, or project to the least senior (possibly the least paid) person who can do the job properly.
• Don't let employees delegate to you the decisions they are responsible for making.
• If you hire an employee to do a job, train the employee properly, and let the person do the job.
• Don't meddle with how someone is doing his or her job.
• Delegation is about trusting the experts expertise.
• Good people in lean companies are busy.
• The great boss gets what he or she inspects, not what he or she expects.
• When in a meeting with an employee, or employees, pay attention.
• Employees know when you are not paying attention.
• Listen to what everyone says. Everyone has experience.
• The great boss makes sure everyone keeps every promise.
• The cost of broken promises is insidious and enormous.
• Successful organizations keep their promises.
• Your employees must know that they can freely tell you what you have to hear, not what you want to hear.
• One goal of the great boss is to teach people how to think for themselves, to stand by themselves.
• The great boss is not afraid to not know everything, or to not know something.
• Challenging good and able people to perform is sometimes as simple as asking a question.
• Seven common words ("I don't know. What do you think?")--and the courage, self-assurance, and modesty to use them--make for uncommon wisdom.
• The great boss encourages food-based mini-celebrations.
• Smart shooters don't shoot from the hip. Smart bosses don't shoot from the lip.
• Heed what you say. Heed how you say it. Your words carry weight; speak with discretion.
• To an employee, a boss's whisper is like a lion's roar.
• Surprise bonuses are most appreciated and long remembered.
• Be mentally tough. Be emotionally tough. Make the tough decisions. You can care and be tough. You can be tough and nice at the same time.
• Bullies, tyrants, autocrats, ranters, and ravers are weak. Their authority is a function of job position, not personal character.
• To belittle someone is to be little. Don't belittle; be big.
• The great boss cares only about the quality of the idea, not the source of the idea.
• Listen. Consider. Decide. Then do what you think is best.
• People with honor don't need an honor code. People without honor won't heed an honor code.
• If someone falsifies expenses, fire that person.
• Having to check expense reports means you have the wrong people.
• Being lucky is an outcome of thinking, research, listening, preparation, and taking reasoned chances.
• Being lucky is a function of doing things: not just talking about, but actually picking up the shovel to start digging, or picking up the pen to start writing, or picking up the sales literature to start selling.
• The great boss is friendly, but not a friend.
• The great boss does not quit and does not let the organization quit. They may lose, but they don't quit.
• Every boss is measured on the combined output of his or her people.
• The great boss understands his or her ascent is a function of the output and contribution of good and able employees. The great boss also knows that a de-motivated, demoralized, disorganized workforce will pull him down. The great boss appreciates and pays close attention to this crucial source of energy.
• The great boss, although lifted by his employees, never looks down on them. To do so is to soar no more.
• Spend your supervisory time with your best people.
• Taking personal accountability is such an increasingly rare phenomena that it is a point of difference.
• The boss who takes responsibility stands out.
• Employees respect a boss who takes responsibility and gives credit. Employees doubly respects a boss who takes responsibility to protect someone else and who is overly generous with credit.
• The great boss takes public responsibility when he or she errs or when the team makes a mistake. The great boss also gives public credit to the employee for any success.
• Teach or train something to someone everyday.
• Teaching and training is part of the continuous grooming that improves the employee and strengthens the company.
• Teaching generates a high return on a low investment.
• The bigger the "policy and procedures" manual the duller the company.
• Innovation and entrepreneurship go down as the number of policies goes up.
• The best policy is to get the job done, and get the job done well.
• Weak bosses hide behind policies. Great bosses are leery of policy.
• Great bosses don't make policy; they make performance possible.
• Abundant policies are a warning signal that the company is hiring weak people, people who can't think for themselves.
• The great boss protects his or her good people.
• Quirky bosses break the stereotyped mold of the buttoned-up executive. They signal to their organization that it is okay to be different; that it's okay to be nonconforming and nontraditional.
• People want energetic, vigorous, go-getting bosses.