The most important thing every manager should list as their number one

Imagine that you are in an interview, and you’ll be a manager of a team, and the interviewee asks you, ‘What is your number one priority if you are working here?’

Take a moment, and think about what you would say.

The most common responses I hear from people when I ask them this question is, the highest priority objective, meeting deadlines, achieving company objectives.

These responses are the safe nonsense that we have come accustom to saying because it is non-threatening to our boss and our boss just hears that they’re going to look amazing. To most it will make us sound like a star candidate, that we are result driven, we’ll get a lot done and in return make whoever is hiring us look stellar.

Using these responses and looking like a star candidate might be acceptable for a position that doesn’t have anyone reporting to them, but for managers, this should be a massive red flag.

Don’t hire these managers and fire them if you have them.

In the short term managers who operate with objectives as their number one priority will deliver and have results to back the original decision to hire them. In the long term, these managers will begin just to have teams that deliver half of what they should be delivering.

People should always be the number one priority

Caring about them, retaining them and showing them how their work matters in the company.

Nothing else will matter in the long term game of the business. If the company ends up with a revolving door of its high impacting talent leaving it will struggle. Without these high impacting individuals the business will struggle to innovate, and the market punishes those that stay stagnant.

Stagnant businesses are dead businesses.