Question: Develop your Career Potential

Interview Two Managers

Welcome to the first "Develop Your Career Potential" activity! These assignments have one purpose: to help you develop your present and future capabilities as a manager. What you will learn through these assignments is not traditional "book learning" based on memorization and regurgitation, but practical knowledge and skills that help managers perform their jobs better. Lessons from some of the assignments-for example, goal setting-can be used for immediate benefi t. Other lessons will obviously take time to accomplish, but you can still benefi t now by making specifi c plans for future improvement.

Step 1: Interview two practicing managers. In her book Becoming a Manager: Mastery of a New Identity, Harvard Business School professor Linda Hill conducted extensive interviews with 19 people in their first year as managers. To learn fi rsthand what it's like to be a manager, interview two managers whom you know, asking them some of the same questions, listed below, that Hill asked her managers. Be sure to interview managers with different levels of experience. Interview one person with at least 5 years' experience as a manager and then interview another person with no more than 2 years' experience as a manager.

Ask the managers these questions:

1. Briefly describe your current position and responsibilities.

2. What do your subordinates expect from you on the job?

3. What are the major stresses and challenges you face on the job?

4. What, if anything, do you dislike about the job?

5. What do you like best about your job?

6. What are the critical differences between average managers and top-performing managers?

7. Think about the skills and knowledge that you need to be effective in your job. What are they, and how did you acquire them?

8. What have been your biggest mistakes thus far? Could you have avoided them? If so, how?