What it is like to be a manager?

I started my professional career as Assistant in a private company. I felt ecstatic and happy as long as I had worked with my first employer. I was happy at doing what I did and what was assigned to me from time to time.

I never thought what it was like to be a manager. After I had worked for two-and- a-half years, I jumped the job to a new company where I had spent more than two decades of my life. Time and my exposure to new avenues and responsibilities helped me in my pursuit of learning more and more new things and doing them in right earnest and with efficiency. I gradually kept pace with time and the responsibilities that devolved upon me. I gradually realized the importance of work and job and the significance of how glamorous and responsible a manager’s position is. I began to think and realize that every employee aspires to become a manager in his/her professional life. Initially, I didn’t know about it; nor, did I ever give a second thought to what it was like to be a manager. I was happy at what I was doing. I was satisfied with all that I did in my office.

In the course of – well – discharging responsibilities, I began to realize the importance of a manager, his/her official and social status, his/her command over juniors, his/her authority, power, rights.

Questions like what it was like to be a manager and what it takes to be a manager began to haunt me only after I had spent – well – ten years in the labyrinth of professional life. That education – no matter whether it is linear or non-linear – training, job-specific knowledge, skill, job-specific experience, efficiency, commitment, eagerness to do new things, skill at handling manpower, et cetera are all that are required for a man to be a manager. Over the period of time, I developed within me these sorts of traits and many other things that could help me to be a manager – a manager who could run an organization independently, a manager who would have his say in the management decision, a manager who has take on the pro’s & con’s, do’s & don’ts, what is crucial and what’s not, how to manage the workplace, and a manager who could boast of having the confidence of managing and running an enterprise successfully and efficiently.

I’m not even a bit ashamed to confess that I’ve no linear academic qualification. Despite having a non-linear academic background, I have come a long way and in the process of my professional journey and in my pursuit to better my professional career and life, I’ve developed an unwanted habit of reading newspapers, newsmagazines, books on management, et cetera and this has helped me a lot to enrich my knowledge and help me to bring what is helpful, crucial and indispensable into practice. Well, reading is my passion and this intensifies my interest in literature and aids me in my latest thirst for writing.

To be a manager – an able, efficient and proficient in languages and trades – one requires the traits and the ability to manage a system where people from different social backgrounds, traditions, cultures, economic backgrounds work in unison with one another and to achieve organizational goals at the same time. I realized what it was like to be a manager when I ultimately took over as manager and thereafter, as Sr. Manager and could manage companies by virtue of what I had learnt during my association with several companies, by virtue of what I had learnt through my perusal from different books and by virtue of my exposure to new areas where challenges were abundant.

I have now felt a new kind of vigour. I have now felt a new kind of zeal to do what I can do to scale the height of professional ladder.