How should a department manager get along with a subordinate who is higher than him?

01 My subordinate’s technical level is higher than mine, how should I manage him?

It seems that there is no solution, because it is a dilemma. You are his manager, and you must carry out necessary management, but his technical level is higher than yours, are you embarrassed to give orders? It’s really difficult to do it, but it’s impossible to do it, and I don’t have the confidence to do it.

For example, if you are a sales director, you are also involved in front-line sales while leading a team. After one month, your subordinates' sales performance is better than yours, and you obviously feel that you are inferior to him. For another example, if you are a technical director and lead your subordinates to overcome technical difficulties, and your subordinates come up with a better solution than you, you may feel a little embarrassed.

Many managers will fall into this situation and don’t know what to do. Therefore, they are very uncomfortable with subordinates being more powerful than themselves. Their high achievements can overwhelm the boss. They always feel that once their subordinates rise, their status will be in jeopardy.

In fact, such worries are completely unnecessary and purely unfounded.

02 The most common way to divide managers’ abilities is into three types: technical abilities, interpersonal abilities, and conceptual abilities. To explain these three abilities in one sentence, technical ability refers to professionalism, whether the work done is good or not; interpersonal ability refers to emotional intelligence, whether one can get along with others in harmony; conceptual ability refers to cognition, whether one can see far or far away.

All three of them are indispensable abilities for managers, but their proportions and changing trends are different. As you move up the management ladder, technical skills become less and less important, interpersonal skills remain important, and conceptual skills become increasingly important.

In other words, when you are just a lower-level manager, technical ability is very important because it is proof of your competence; when you reach a middle-level management position, interpersonal ability and conceptual ability will occupy As for the main position, as for technical ability, you only need to understand the essence of general control; when you become a senior manager, conceptual ability will become your greatest value cornerstone, and the proportion of technical ability will decrease again.

From this we can easily deduce that once subordinates are better than themselves, they feel difficult to manage. The fundamental reason is that managers themselves have not jumped out of their limitations and focused too much on the technical level. Other aspects are ignored, leading to mental disorder.

In fact, since you take a management position, you need to pay attention not only to your technical abilities, but also to your interpersonal and conceptual abilities. They are the key points for you to go further. This is the key indicator that differentiates you from ordinary employees. If you have been focusing on technical capabilities, it means that your structure is not enough and you have not jumped out of the circle of "team leader". Technology changes so quickly that it is difficult for you to stay ahead unless you only read the books of sages and become a person who specializes in technology.

Since you want to break into a new world and advance in your career, you must strengthen your comprehensive abilities, especially your interpersonal and conceptual abilities. As for technology, leave it to people who are better than you. young people do it.

It is a great thing that your subordinates are more powerful than you, so why worry about it.

03 I have always advocated a point of view: when recruiting, you must recruit people who are better than yourself. Only such a team has hope.

I remember that I once went on a business trip to the branch. After investigating several teams, I immediately knew which teams were full of hope and which teams were bleak. My judgment standard is very simple. If everyone in a team is inferior to the supervisor, then the team must have no hope.

The supervisor has become the ceiling of the team. There is nothing more desperate than this. Because the development trend of things is obvious and unique, the overall level of the team will only become worse from generation to generation.

So it can be said conversely that managers who ask the question "how to manage subordinates who are more powerful than themselves" are themselves the biggest problem for the team. If you cannot resolve your own knots and start working with such doubts, it will be very harmful to yourself, your team, and your company.

04 These three abilities of managers can actually be combined into three in one. They are actually one kind of ability, learning ability.

Because technical skills are obviously acquired through learning; interpersonal skills or emotional intelligence, although related to personality, can also be improved through learning. Scientific research shows that at least half of emotional intelligence is acquired; Conceptual ability relies even more on continuous learning that keeps pace with the times. It is like sailing against the current. If you don't advance, you will retreat. The higher the senior manager, the higher the pressure and enthusiasm for learning.

Nowadays, the Internet is full of things like "Jack Ma announced..." and "Ren Zhengfei said..." Where do these big guys get so many profound insights and unique perspectives? There is only one source, learning.

Therefore, the most basic task of managers is to learn how to learn and improve their learning abilities. Only on this basis can we gain other abilities. You might as well take a look at the people who can succeed in the end. Except for a very few lucky ones, the vast majority of them have slowly accumulated through continuous learning and come out step by step.

As for how to learn, everyone has their own understanding and their own method. There is only one thing to remind you: to learn, you must both learn and practice. Learning without learning is not learning.