What makes a good manager? Is it charisma? Drive? Old-fashioned stubbornness?
It could be as simple as being able to say sorry.
We all say things we don’t mean under pressure, says Cogs and Marvel COO Jane Gallagher, but a strong leader will apologise if they’ve gotten short with a staff member unfairly.
Jane, whose company organises events for some of the world’s biggest tech firms, believes that even the best can snap when they’re up against it.
“[Running a big event] is so stressful, you do make mistakes, particularly as a leader,” she said on this week’s All In.
“You will snap, you will have times where you’re quite abrupt because you’ve got 15 things to get done.
“I feel once you acknowledge it and you go back and you go ‘sorry if I was short with you there, I was just really under pressure, I just needed to get that done. I’m really sorry’.
Subscribe for free to hear the full interview here.
“That probably is one of the biggest things that I’ve learnt because we all do it, we’re human… [but] you have a team member who will go off and could be extremely upset. You don’t realise how they feel so you have to be very conscious of how you actually conduct yourself, particularly on site, and manage the team there.”
A good leader will also set the mood for the rest of their team, Jane added.
“You have to have a bit of fun because it is so stressful. I think if you’re seen running around like a headless chicken that transfers right the way down so if you can stay calm and deal with one thing at a time I think it empowers the team to go, ‘this is OK, we’re under control’.”
Jane features on this week’s episode of All In, JOE’s brand new business show.
