Durrant Pate/Contributor

Transitioning from individual excellence to leading a team has been cited by Bank of Jamaica (BOJ) Governor Richard Byles as the primary stumbling block for middle managers of today.

Addressing yesterday’s start of the 2-day Make Your Mark: Middle Managers Leadership Conference at the Jamaica Pegasus Hotel, Byles said middle managers often fail to make the critical transition from being great at work to being great at leading the people who do the work. This is it is entirely understandable, he explained, because nobody taught them how to make that shift.

According to the central banker, “the skills that made them (middle managers) excellent as individuals, precision, personal discipline, the ability to work long and hard, the focus on getting it right, those very skills can become liabilities when you are managing a team. Because now the job is not to do it yourself. The job is to create the conditions for others to do it excellently. That requires a completely different orientation.”

Governor Byles told the conference that as a leader, the job is no longer to do it yourself but to create the conditions for others to do it excellently noting that the most important thing a middle manager can develop is not another technical skill or certification but the ability to nurture team members to perform their best.

Two kinds of ambition

The BOJ Governor has come to believe there are two kinds of ambition. One that focuses on the destination, the title, the corner office, the name on the door and the other that is focused on the quality of what is being built right now, today, with people and the resources available. 

“The first kind produces people who are always slightly elsewhere. Always measuring their current position against where they want to get to. Always a little impatient with the present because its is not yet the future. The second kind produces something different. It produces people who are genuinely present. Who are doing the work with everything they have, not because of where it might lead but because the work itself deserves it,” Byles reasoned.

He emphasised that these people are the ones who tend to end up in remarkable places, not because they planned it but because they earned it, one fully committed piece of the work at a time. In conclusion, Byles encouraged conference participants to play the long game and be excellent at what is in front of you.

Finally, he also encouraged them to build the people around them with real commitment and trust that, by doing that, day after day, will open doors you cannot yet see, saying it has worked well for him.