The habits of highly successful bosses.

Some things you may not think about when you think of a great manager:

Great bosses get the small picture.

Great bosses never forget that employees experience things locally, from the trenches of IT or accounting or sales. In words and action, great bosses take account of those perspectives.

Great bosses make people feel smart.

Great bosses, when presented in a meeting or in private conversation with some enthusiastic but misguided bit of twaddle, listen carefully for the tiniest germ of potential. Seizing that germ, they talk it through--teasing it, tweezing it, rearranging it--until they produce something workable and smart.

Great bosses know who does what.

There is no i in team, but there is an i in underappreciated, which is how people feel when their individual contributions disappear into the common collaborative slurry

Great bosses know when they're not wanted.

Good bosses delegate. Great ones don't hang around in the background monitoring how that delegation is going.

Great bosses remember.

Employees' hobbies. Their families' names. Who plays what position on the company softball team. Who is terrified of flying. Who has expressed interest in a leadership role. And employees, in return, remember them.