You're my manager and a leader in my organization. Could you please:

1. Understand my Work
2. Recognize great work when it is done by myself and others
3. Listen more, ask more questions, talk less
4. Be willing to have hard conversations (with me and with other leaders), when necessary
5. Be a defender of positive energy, in all situations
6. Bring energy and enthusiasm to spare so that you can lift up the whole team, when things are difficult
7. Help to find solutions in difficult situations
8. Predict the Future
9. Create a balanced space where I can be a whole person, but be protected from too many messy impacts from other people
10. Allow me to innovate and create room for innovation within our organization
11. Help non-specialists understand my special work and what makes me special
12. Offer feedback at the right moment - hitting me with constructive criticism when I am walking out of successful meeting takes away from the success of the meeting, find a better time even if you have to wait
13. Encourage me to stretch
14. Pick me back up again, when I have failed, encourage me to try again.

I work in technology, so maybe some of this stuff is specific to the tech world, but I don't really think so.

I have been asked for number 8 on multiple occasions, and I've also been asked to help people get better at predicting the future. We came up with a system for it, but of course it was imperfect.

Number 9 may be the hardest one to do. This is more difficult than predicting the future (if you work in a rational organization people will understand that you're doing your best to predict the future and that it is hard).

Even rational organizations may struggle with understanding why we need to let people have rooms to be their whole selves at work.

We need whole people to show up at work because we need their energy and innovation and you get this most effectively when people feel comfortable being who they are. You also have to have some order and some sanitizing and professionalism. This can be a tricky balance. Sometimes people's whole person is messy.

There were several things I deleted off this list that fall under the category of hard conversations.

Setting realistic goals is one of those things. We are often put under pressure to pursue unrealistic goals, a manager needs to push back on the unrealistic and make sure other leaders understand the trade-offs.

Another thing I removed was focus on the long term. Long-term sacrifices in favor of short-term gains are something we should consider carefully. A good manager will daylight the long-term costs and push for what will make his teams lives better in the long run.

Five and Six are different. Defending positive energy may not be a completely positive act. Once the act of defending the positive energy is done, you need to then supply positive uplift to bring everyone back up. The defense and uplift require two different approaches.

Vision is not on the list because this is a list about management.

Almost all leaders are managers, and all managers are leaders in some fashion.

But not all managers are visionary leaders. That skill can be learned, but it isn't required to be a great leader of people.

Is this hard to do? It is very hard to do everything well on this list, but then many things worth doing well are hard.

Providing everything on this list as a team is OK - it may be too much for any one person to do all of it. If you work with a great leadership team it may be that

Even still, you will probably feel a bit like the leader in the picture, at times. That is, isolated. Seeking other managers and leaders with whom you can share your insights and challenges is critical.

You will probably stumble. You will make mistakes. Being resilient isn't on the list, because we all need that in the VUCA world, not just managers.

Managers have to be resilient for others, as well as themselves, that is why we have 14.