What would be the characteristics of your ideal manager? The answer to this question might depend on whether this manager is one you report to or one that is reporting to you. After all, many managers have to balance employee satisfaction with the business needs of the organization. They are held accountable for the productivity of their teams, but managers can blunt employee commitment if they do not give employees a degree of freedom in meeting deadlines.

Many of your Learning Resources this week examine the challenges managers face when creating and sustaining positive work environments, and the consequences when managers fail to do so. Ensuring the business success, establishing consistent processes, fostering a productive, positive environment, and building a shared sense of purpose within the organization is no easy endeavor. Review the Learning Resources and consider the key competencies to being an effective manager.

For this Shared Practice, assume you are in upper management of the hypothetical United States-based company Walden Consulting Inc., (WCI) and you need to hire a new Director of Worldwide Consulting. This director will be responsible for teams of consultants that provide various management consulting services to organizations of all sizes and industries based all over the world. The director you hire will manage these teams while working out of the home office in the United States. The director will be responsible to create a productive and positive working environment and implement processes to sustain it.

Post by Day 3 a job announcement for this position that describes the desirable characteristics and key competencies of someone who would be successful at creating a sustainable, positive, and productive work environment. The announcement should include experience, behaviors, and attitudes one would need to acquire as a manager to fulfill this role?

Read a selection of your colleagues’ postings.

Respond by Day 6 to two or more colleagues’ posts in one or more of the following ways:

• Share a key competency or characteristic a colleague posted that you may have overlooked in your initial posting. Be specific about why that competency or characteristic would (or would not) be a necessary qualification and give examples from your experience that support your observation.
• Using one of your colleague’s job announcements, suggest an interview question to evaluate potential applicants during the interview process. Then, explain how that question would help elicit ideas for how the applicant would create a sustainable, positive work environment or improve a work environment to enhance job satisfaction and performance.