Know Yourself
I would like to say that I am a natural servant leader whom people follow out of sheer respect. But in reality it is my nature to be a borderline pushover who values the favor of his employees entirely too much. People might think of me as a friendly manager most of the time but I know that things could be run a lot more efficiently if I could just bring myself to put my foot down more often.
Isolate Your Weaknesses
Recently I have analyzed myself in order to uncover the reasoning behind this bad practice. What I discovered probably won't come as a shock to anyone. An unconscious habit of attempting to control how people perceived me, an irresistible craving to be accepted and a constant search for approval. This desire to befriend every person I worked with put me in a very compromising situation. Every decision I made now had to be weighed against my work ethic and its potential social damage. Giving me the distinct disadvantage of being only as effective as my relationship with my employees allowed.
Take Action
It took a serious priority reboot to override my natural instincts and I often still have to make a conscious decision to reorder my priorities. I always knew when I was sacrificing efficiency for approval so there was never any struggle to recognize these situations. All that was left was to simply take action. There aren't many of us who are a perfect fit to management straight out of the bag. But knowing where we fall short definitely helps fill those gaps.
In Summary
I don't believe there are people who simply "aren't cut out for management". I believe there are those who aren't willing to give it the time or effort and therefore fail on their own accord. But just like any problem, once identified it's simply a matter of applying the proper remedy. In this case it was the awareness to recognize when a decision was being affected by my social insecurities, the resolve to act on that observation and the willingness to reorganize my priorities accordingly.
