Full disclosure: I'm a manager, and there are days when I wish I were nearly anything else.
So it was reassuring to see a recent i4cp survey - to which there were 675 respondents - showing that most folks agree that being a boss is tough. What wasn't so reassuring is that a lot of employees just aren't impressed by their current management teams.
Overall, six of 10 respondents to the April 2009 survey said that managers tend to have "tough but fulfilling" jobs, while almost nobody thinks managers have easy jobs. One respondent clarified, "It can be tough and fulfilling or just tough."
But management isn't an Olympic event where you get a lot of points for degree of difficulty. Too much is riding on managers, and they have to earn the respect they get. Slightly fewer than half of respondents think that the overall management in their organizations is above average, and that number drops to two-fifths when you're asking only non-managers.
