Are you sitting comfortably?

The story about the ginormous spreadsheet

A few years ago I was a trainee on a project with Luis (not his real name either), the manager.

Luis was armed with one of the biggest spreadsheets I've ever seen: six sheets of A3.

He highlighted four rows in yellow pen.

It took a while.

He told me to complete those four lines, then report back to him.

I did the tasks within the next hour or so and brought them to him, and he was angry I'd done it so quickly!

He said I must not have put enough effort in.

So I took it away, did something else for a couple of hours, then sent it to him.

This time, he was happy.

Great! My ordeal was over! Or not...

He highlighted the next four rows, and told me to now complete those.

That left me grumpy.

I like to understand where I'm heading before completing detailed tasks, but Luis was a micromanager.

He wanted to check every detail at each step before delegating the next task.

Another story about the opposite problem

This project was in a technical area I knew nothing about, led by Sarah.

The first time I met Sarah she said to me, 'I hate micromanagement.'

That would normally have been fine - I hate being micromanaged - but I didn't know what I was meant to be doing!

I was muddling along, not doing a very good job - all I needed was for someone to check every detail at each step before delegating the next task.

What I learned about management

Micromanagement is way outside my comfort zone, but it would have helped me in my experience with Sarah.

Different management styles are needed depending on the situation and the people involved.

Good management is so important.

We have a large number of teams at Redeemer that need managing:

Prayer team leaders
Meetup leaders and coordinators
Band leaders
Redeemer Creatives
Events team leaders (like for our Carol Services)
Lots of others

Because of all of them, we're constantly on the lookout for existing and potential managers - and we're committed to investing time, energy and resources in developing them!

Are you, or could you be, a great manager?

To put your hand up as a potential manager, to find out more, or just to say you're interested, please email hello@redeemerlondon.org and come to our next leadership gathering!