Managers are not Super-You's...

Nancy McCall wrote an interesting post about somebody's thought that “Your boss should do your job better than you.”

Her points were:

- Managing people requires different set of skills than developing software, or whatever the job is of the group being managed.
- Proficiency in any area is worthy of respect, regardless of whether is it your area.
- It is not all about you.

She goes into further detail, feel free to read the full post.

I commented further:

Agree. I’ve modeled my management career path after those managers that were best at enabling their team to do something great with their collective powers. This typically meant that the team was collectively much smarter than the manager, but it was the manager that helped them get there.

If I had to be a better coder than the people I help manage, I’d be out of work. Instead, I’m a valued person in my organization because I can do things they can’t… and they come much more naturally for me than for them.