Monkey-In-The-Middle

Marjorie Kaplan is the president of the Animal Planet and Science networks - - offers the following thoughts on management:

It's easy to be somebody's friend.  It's harder to be their manager.  And that was kind of baptism-by-fire experience.  You have somebody whom you like enormously, whom you had a real relationship with, and then you have to help them make the decision not to stay.

Management is also lateral.  In the agency business, so much of the job is about engaging with people who don't report to you, but you have to manage them anyway.  As an account manager, you were kind of the monkey-in-the-middle who had to manage everybody without having authority.  I think that, on some level, managing without authority is a life skill.  People do it in other parts of their lives.  I think the ability to manage really comes from being true to yourself, and treating people respectfully.