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"Try being a manager yourself before you go too far off into your 'they're all idiots' zone." That was Jim's feedback on an earlier note of mine, and not the first time I've had this sort of feedback.

I've had "manager" titles pinned on me, which certainly is different from actually being a manager. I'm also a parent, which is somewhat like being a manager. There too, there are occasions when you can do nothing right.

When you have the "manager" title pinned on you, you also inherit, by way of culture, a repertoire of behaviors, most of which are idiotic. For instance, you might inherit the model that a manager's job is to make decisions; to be an arbiter. In many cases, this is actually the case, and actually a useful function you can perform for the business; but far too often, the model is implicitly held, never questioned, and inappropriately applied to all sorts of situations.

Unlearning these "model manager" behaviours is the hard part of that job. So in that sense, managers are all idiots; and subordinates are all incompetent in that same sense. The "manager/subordinate" structure carries with it these assumptions. So do "parent/child", "husband/wife", etc. come with theirs.

If you are lucky, you will have at some point the opportunity to actually train for the kind of situations you will encounter as a manager (or a subordinate, or a parent, etc.). In many of these roles "training" is quite unlike the sort of formal training we are familiar with, but it takes place anyway.

By training, I mean a context in which it is safe to experiment, and discard what the model says you "should" do, and come up with behaviours that a) fit the situation at hand, b) make effective use of your individual skills and abilities, and c) are considerate of the other persons involved in the situation.

When we pull that off, we're definitely not idiots. The more we build up our repertoire of behaviours that fit these criteria, the smarter we become. And the smarter we are, the farther away from stereotype roles such as "manager".