Individuals

Throughout our working lives, we work with people, and every person we work with is different. They each react differently to us, and we react differently to each of them. This makes life interesting.

It is important that you recognise that different people do need to be treated differently and indeed that the same person needs to be treated differently in different situations.

Three things will help you to navigate through this complexity:

• authenticity - people want to be led by a real person. Try to lead like someone else and you will fail. It is essential that you retain your authenticity, that you are yourself. This can be really hard when different people ask different things from you
• strategic clarity - this is about knowing where you want to take your work or your team. If you have a clear sense of this it will be much easier for you to respond to individuals with the necessary decisions
• emotional intelligence - this term is still the source of considerable debate, but for us it's about understanding your own feelings and the feelings of those around you, and using this understanding to promote the achievement of the task, the operation of the team, and the development of the individual.

These three aspects of your role inform all the following parts of this section. They can all be addressed through your own reading about these concepts, or through engagement with your institution's staff development team. This can be through courses or, often more powerfully, through coaching or involvement with action learning.

Managing individuals

As we said above, people are different and they are different in many different ways. But how does this affect the management of the individual?