The Best Manager I've Ever Had

As a teen I can recall a special quality in a manager of mine that I truly relish-- he let us work independently as long as we carried out our tasks properly. Years later, I had a manager who took the same approach while letting team members independently train one another and learn from one another, while she helped us when we needed the assistance.

However, the absolute best manager I had was the managing editor at a small newspaper some years ago. I had just completed my college course work and needed an internship in order to receive my diploma. The managing editor not only accepted me, but also paid the tuition fees.

Arriving at the quaint building on my first day, I remember being more nervous than usual and he had this natural way of alleviating that feeling with his calm and casual manner. He assigned me to stories covering the local school board meetings, the police blotter, and all of the feature stories. Regarding the feature stories, I knew that with time I would develop story ideas, but with his assistance I probably got a lot more writing opportunities than otherwise.

Another quality I found appealing in him was his practice of not actually editing articles; he relied on his small staff to proofread their own stories and he in turn would give a quick proofread and into the newspaper it went. Just to add, the stories came out polished just fine, and we enjoyed reading what we ourselves had written.

Although I was a novice, he occasionally still complimented me on my work, and although that seemed a bit unusual, to me anyway, I certainly didn't mind! He also knew somehow (I don't recall mentioning it to anyone) that I aspired to eventually find a career at a larger publication and he encouraged the ambition, though he himself was a strong advocate of small newspapers.

During a massive rain flooding in the area, the staff photographer was on vacation somewhere tropical and I took the initiative to brave the storm, photograph the floods and release the film over to to my editor; he developed them and sent the prints to a California book publisher that wanted to publish the best newspaper stories and photographs. Needless to say, I was estatic to receive notification that one picture had indeed been published in the book, while he voiced the same sentiment.

All in all, I was at least lucky enough to have worked there for one year, and as usual the proverbial dollar was calling , so I accepted a position with the National Guard in the personnel department because of the financial and job security.

What I think potential managers should know about dealing with their employees is taking an extra effort with trying to interact positively with all employees who work hard and show an interest in learning as much as possible within a realistic realm; employees appreciate and respect this attribute in managers, therefore improving morale and staving off employee turnover. This concept saves company profits and cuts waste in terms of time spent on reems of paperwork, as well as having to hire and retrain new employees.