I have heard management compared to many things. I personally used to compare it to flying a plane – you need a firm but light grip on the controls. If you grab on too tight you’re in for a bumpy ride. I recently heard of comments about how a real manager does it.

Joe Torre, the very successful manager of the New York Yankees, and now the Los Angeles Dodgers, is reported to have described his traits for successful management. I think he got it right.

Joe said that the time to bear down and focus/work harder is when you are on a winning streak. If you win often, it’s easy to forget how hard it is to win. You start to neglect the little things that got you there. He said that it was when the club was winning that he took a more active and firmer leadership role in how the team conducted itself.

He also said that when the team was not doing as well, he would not necessarily let up; he just wouldn’t bear down as hard. He knew that when things were tough a good team will feel the pressure to improve their performance and apply themselves that much harder. They don’t like losing and are working to do better on their own. Joe would try and maintain an even keel, make sure the proper work would get done and trust his team.

Of course when you have a team of stars with a payroll approaching $200M a year (for 25 players) you should be able to trust them.

The point he made was that contrary to our natural tendency to apply additional pressure to the team when things aren’t going our way, he found it better to ease off just a little and focus on enabling the team to work their way back onto a winning streak. Additional meetings and his intervention and pressure didn’t seem to help as much as his more restrained approach.  He has won a lot of pennants and a handful of championships, so I have come to the conclusion that maybe he knows a good way to apply leadership.