There are specific qualities you spot quickly after years reporting to the good, bad and mediocre. Qualities that stand out to me are: empowerment, defense and support.
Empowerment means a lot of things: not getting in your way (removing roadblocks), making sure you're content (tools and otherwise) and the most important - trust. If you don't feel like your manager trusts you, it will never work. But that road is (or should be obviously) bidirectional.
Defense is when you know your leader is on your team. Not making excuses for you but making sure you're not getting steamrolled. Good managers do this with foresight and take them on the chin when and where appropriate for team failures or misses (Extreme Ownership is a great book outlining this).
Finally support is a culmination of the other two. Knowing you can get help without undue recourse or that your leader will take over a problem distracting you from your main task and complete it with totality and not hold it over your head after the fact. Good leaders are unsung heroes and the two best I've had have also been highly charismatic on top of those other things. I don't hand out the charisma badge easily because I think people self-proclaim being charismatic far too often. But if your leader isn't a people person they can turn people away, shame them inappropriately or even worse.
A friend, who's an engineer asked me for advice the other day as he was considering moving up into a management role beyond his individual contributor slot he had been fulfilling for years. I went through these things and also said that his new role was not to be super-engineer now, but to help them get their jobs done more efficiently and take on battles he has little experience with. I think that surprised him slightly so I offered up another great book: Zapp. It's trivial, short and old. But the context is 100% relevant today and a big miss by many "managers" who think their role is something other than supporting and fostering their team.
Empowerment means a lot of things: not getting in your way (removing roadblocks), making sure you're content (tools and otherwise) and the most important - trust. If you don't feel like your manager trusts you, it will never work. But that road is (or should be obviously) bidirectional.
Defense is when you know your leader is on your team. Not making excuses for you but making sure you're not getting steamrolled. Good managers do this with foresight and take them on the chin when and where appropriate for team failures or misses (Extreme Ownership is a great book outlining this).
Finally support is a culmination of the other two. Knowing you can get help without undue recourse or that your leader will take over a problem distracting you from your main task and complete it with totality and not hold it over your head after the fact. Good leaders are unsung heroes and the two best I've had have also been highly charismatic on top of those other things. I don't hand out the charisma badge easily because I think people self-proclaim being charismatic far too often. But if your leader isn't a people person they can turn people away, shame them inappropriately or even worse.
A friend, who's an engineer asked me for advice the other day as he was considering moving up into a management role beyond his individual contributor slot he had been fulfilling for years. I went through these things and also said that his new role was not to be super-engineer now, but to help them get their jobs done more efficiently and take on battles he has little experience with. I think that surprised him slightly so I offered up another great book: Zapp. It's trivial, short and old. But the context is 100% relevant today and a big miss by many "managers" who think their role is something other than supporting and fostering their team.
edit: mobile removed my formatting, fixed