"If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea." -Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Imagine how wealthy our society would be if all the claims of by all managers about management success were actually true.
So far as I can tell, nearly all inter-management communication is useless and has, at best, zero impact. Only at the extreme margins or with select relationships does anything useful result. Like you find the IC SME who actually understand the target market, who is willing to sit with your team to set a vision.
Otherwise, nearly all managers you interact with are careerist.
And yet, actual shipbuilding operations look, and have historically looked, much more like the former than the latter.
And boom! That someone is a manager.
To do otherwise ensures that if the ship gets built at all, it will sink in short order.
The frequent incompatibility between morality and business, even down to simply shipping a shitty product to release at all, right up to building products that are designed to force purchasers to buy a replacement, is a matter that leaders must weigh.
A similar issue also applies to the people they lead. The line of professional detachment, between being too friendly and too military, is very thin indeed.
Generally speaking, while I fully agree with the parent that protecting, developing and coaching team is of paramount importance, I would say that, at the very least, hiring is equally important.
Hire the right people and your job as a manager is the easiest thing in the world.
Of course, in order to be good at any of the above, you must have a solid understanding of the business. It isn't simply a matter of being the people's champion.
That sounds like the philosophy of a tumor. Clearly, a manager has to care about other things as well, such as - how can my team contribute to the business in the most valuable way?