it's not easy being a sports manager, it's management in the public eye, which is a very dangerous place to manage anything.
There are also thousands of Joe Soaps with endless opinions, which you will hear ad finitum if the manager fails but will be buried deeper than a brookside character if he succeeds.
So what really is the managers job, well as you may know I run lots of management development programmes and I try to listen to to find out what makes some managers effective and some others fired.
The factors of success are...
1. Understanding how you affect / influence others.
This is a vital place to start, it's about having the respect of the individuals involved, some managers bring this with them and some create it as they go along, but any manager who does not have this gravitas, who cannot get the ears of his team is doomed from the start. Some managers use fear to create this, which is fine if you have endless resources, but for most manager they need to earn that respect.
2. Creating the vision.
No team has any chance unless they are pulling together, there has to be a common goal that everybody is pulling towards, this process of helping people to seperate the professional team goal from thier own personal goal is vital to success as a manager, although it is not a guarantee of getting there.
3. Creating the environment.
It's the managers role to create an atmosphere where staff find it easier and more enjoyable to operate than it used to be. A manager with good organisational skills who makes life easier and disassembles the obstacles in the way of his staff will gain the favour and respect of his players. They might still fail (which is sooo frustrating) but they have a better chance of you take care of the small stuff.
4. Communication skills.
The key thing here is to define what each staff member needs to do, and if they are not doing it, to find out what's in the way! If a manager can't discover and solve what's stopping team members doing their job, then it's totally impossble to improve that performance, and the manager will be judged on the collective performances of all the team members.
5. Exercising democratic authority.
You have to reserve the nuclear option, staff must know that you are "tough but fair" in otherwords, you will stretch people to the best of thier performance, but if after many efforts to improve that performance it's still not working out, managers must be able to be assertive and decisive in changing the team member because the managers job is to create the best team possible to deliver the best possible results.
6. Dealing with setbacks.
It's simply a fact of life that there will be setbacks, in fact it's the most difficult thing for many managers to accept, as a worker you are simply being judged from above and supported by your peers. As a manager you can get attacked from anywhere, staff, peers and senior management, as it becomes more high profile it can even be the media and anyone who can blog or get through to a radio show. The mental fortitude to keep going, to be tough, to see it through, even if half the country disagrees with you is necessary to be a good manager, but then is knowing when it's time to change... it's about how you deal with stress really, as the man said hundreds of years ago. "if you can keep your head while all others are losing thiers"
7. Keep developing and ressetting the vision.
A dedication to continual improvement is the only was to keep managers and teams fresh, whatever can be done can be done better, and although recovery, rest, and relaxation are absolutely vital, it's terribly important that teams are not allowed to sit back on thier achievments (it's the easiest thing in the world to happen, human nature and all that) so teams must be kept fairly on thier toes at all times.
8. Be lucky!
