This website is about how to be a manager. Especially if you never wanted to be a manager in the first place.

Perhaps you studied science or engineering. Or accountancy or law - or some other "technical" subject - and found that it appealed to you. Something in you responded to the structure, the discipline, the logic, the beauty of it. You loved it so much that you wanted to make a career of it.

Perhaps you were a little shy - perhaps not. You might have thought, or taken it for granted, that as a specialist you didn't need to worry about communicating or being good with people. A profession is about facts, logic and truth. Emotions don't come into it.

Now, you find that your boss wants you to do management. He recognises how good you are at what you do - but he can't promote you to a higher grade or pay you any more unless you take on more responsibility - a bigger job.

This means management of some sort. Budgets, plans and people to look after.

At first, you think that it's only a matter of supervising the work that others are doing. If you know more than them it should be easy to do this.

Later, you find that you're expected to operate a performance management system of some type. Assessing performance and conducting appraisals. This is more difficult - you'd rather not be doing it. Some of these people were your peers a while ago - you worked alongside them. Now you have to judge them. Their pay depends on what you say!

You also have to support them in their careers. This can get messy. They may expect to advance faster than you can accommodate. Perhaps they're not that good. Perhaps they're so bad that disciplinary action is needed.

How do you manage this situation? What do you say to them? How do you cope with their emotional outbursts? Why can't they see the logic of what you're telling them.

Or perhaps you agree with them! You think they should be paid more yet your department budgets won't allow it. Or your own boss says "No". How do you communicate an unpalatable message that you don't actually believe yourself?

This site is NOT about systems or processes that will magically transform your management ability without any effort. Those are things that you probably LIKE to deal with. They're a bit like your technical specialism! This is about the things that you DON'T LIKE to deal with. The things / situations / people that you always try to avoid because they make you feel uncomfortable - even afraid.

Why concern yourself with things that you don't like doing? Because these are the keys to your future success as a manager. Even if you never regard yourself as "just" a manager - but always as an expert in your own discipline - you know that your career will go further if you can "do" management as well.

The flip side of this is that these things that you don't like doing will limit your progress, frustrate you, cause you stress and generally impair your own performance and hence your value to your employer. They will also make you unhappy.

Whoa! Hold on a minute! You might be wondering what this is all about. "I don't let this get to me. I just get on with my job (and I'm good at it) even if some people around me can't do theirs. I tell them what to do but it's up to them how hard they try or how well qualified they are." Is this you? Then you may be one of those people who are immune to the kind of emotional damage that I referred to above. Good for you! But does that mean your performance as a manager is OK? Maybe. Maybe not. Your immunity to personal hurt may stem from a low level of empathy: you don't recognise what others feel and you don't feel much yourself.

This is not good for a manager. The team members that you are responsible for will probably regard you as "cold". They won't confide in you and they won't feel supported by you. Some of them won't care. Most of them will suffer to some degree. Either from the effects of personal problems that they can't leave at home, relationships at work or stress resulting from being overstretched (or under stretched). If they can't come to you for help then their problems will continue unresolved and their performance will suffer.

So, whether you personally feel any distress or not, you can always do better when it comes to management. And if you are sensitive, then you can be happier and more fulfilled in your job.

"But I just can't do some of these things. I can't just come out with it and tell someone that their work is unsatisfactory. Nor, for that matter, can I tell them that their work is very good! It's just not me. I'm not a natural 'people person'."

"I don't do small-talk!"

"Why should I bother to change the way I work just because someone else is a bit slow or inexperienced."

"Their personal lives are none of my business."

"I don't want to be too friendly - but I do want them to like me!"

Have you attended management training courses, learnt the theory and then found it made absolutely no difference when you got back to the "real world"? You might have tried out some of the ideas or techniques that you learnt about but found that they didn't work, or they were too hard, or they did make a difference but then you quickly lapsed back into your old ways of doing things.

The problem here is about changing HABITS. I strongly urge you to presuppose that there is no such thing as a "natural" in anything! To all intents and purposes, the skills, abilities and talents that people express have all been learned at some stage in their lives. They may not remember learning how to chat to complete strangers unselfconsciously, or how to give bad news in a positive, supportive way, or how to receive praise graciously or how to inspire a team that was struggling. But can you remember learning to talk? To recognise faces?

If you believe that you don't have "people skills" because you weren't born with them then you condemn yourself to never having them. This is a direct result of those beliefs. They disempower you.

In contrast, if you presuppose (act as if it were true) that "If one person can do something then anyone can learn to do it", then you empower yourself to find out HOW to do it. From this position you are likely to make progress. From the "need to be born with it" mindset, you won't even try.

So, the way you deal with people now is just a set of habits that you have learned and set in place by repetition. They aren't necessarily very effective - just good enough for what you've needed in the past. Now you need to do better.

Just as you've needed to understand your technical discipline in the past, so a manager needs to understand people - including themselves.

We are emotional beings! As much as we might like to think that we are objective and logical, especially at work, we are actually driven by feelings much of the time - especially at work! Some people are extremely aware of their feelings - others less so. And many try to keep them hidden.

Our brains are incredibly complex, multi-tasking, biological computers. Somehow, the complexity of our brains gives rise to consciousness or self-awareness. Philosophers and biologists struggle to explain what consciousness is - and yet we all know what it's like! We are aware of ourselves and of some of the processes going on in our brains. These are our conscious thoughts. We also have unconscious thoughts - or, if you have difficulty with the label "thought" for something you're not aware of - then unconscious brain activities.

We call the thinking brain the "mind". It's convenient to divide it into two sets of functions and to label them "conscious mind" and "unconscious mind". Everything in the conscious mind is in our awareness, and everything in the unconscious mind is not.

The unconscious mind controls all of our "automatic" physical functions such as breathing, walking, blinking and so on. Research has shown (Miller, G A The Psychological Review, 1956, vol. 63, pp. 81-97) that the conscious mind can only hold about 7 different things at once. If new information pushes its way in then something else has to drop out of consciousness.

We can move processes or activities into the unconscious mind through repetition. If you can drive a car you'll remember what it was like learning to drive. First time behind the wheel you probably found that it took all of your concentration, all of your resources, just to control the car. Clutch, accelerator, gears, handbrake, steering. Then "mirror - signal - manoeuvre". Never mind trying to think about where you were going - still less chatting with your instructor about last night's TV!

After a few lessons though, all of these actions became unconscious, i.e. you became able to do them with little or no conscious thought. This left your conscious mind free to think about the next level of driving complexity: other traffic, lane positioning, thinking ahead, and planning the route.

Later, much of this also became unconscious - particularly on familiar journeys. So, you eventually got to the stage of being able to drive to work and then not being able to remember anything about the journey. It had become possible for your conscious mind to be completely disengaged from the physical process.

Can you imagine what life will be like when you've mastered the principles and techniques in these pages and associated products?

• The previously difficult, messy, unpleasant, stressful parts of management will become just some of the things you do, very effectively, in your enjoyable, fulfilling days at work.
• Relationships will be professional and as friendly as you want them to be.
• You'll never again find yourself feeling nervous dealing with one of your own people.
• You'll be confident in giving bad news, as you'll sometimes have to, as well as good news.
• You'll feel comfortable in assessing peoples' performance and in giving them clear, honest, constructive feedback.
• You'll be able to speak in front of groups with confidence and with authority.

Have look at the Free Downloads or the Newsletter Archive to get an idea of how these ideas can be applied in practical, everyday situations.

Or get started straight away with my new e-book "Leadership": a practical programme to transform your skills.

Remember though, in the end,

You Already Have The Resources You Need!