As manager, do you have to be "the strongest" ? Can you accept that some of your employees are stronger than you (personality and professionally)?

it is possible depending on how they act. And having strong people in your team can never be a problem, its a blessing.

Here are six skills even the greatest leaders still need to practice.

Find great mentors:

This one isn’t so much a skill as it is a phenomenal resource. Who are the people you know or work with that people are genuinely motivated and happy to follow? These are the people you want to learn from. They know that their leadership effectiveness is rooted in their ability to build relationships with people that are willing to follow them, whether or not they have a title that grants them formal authority. Identify the great leaders you know who truly care about your success and have the guts to tell you the truth.

Clarify your leadership vision: 

If you were to die, what would people say about you as a leader? That is your leadership legacy, and it is guided by your vision and your values. You begin defining it the moment you take on your first management position, and it is continuously shaped by your daily decisions, interactions with others, mistakes made, and lessons learned along the way.

Personally, I hope people would say I have a clear vision of a positive future; that I deeply care about and value our staff and our clients; that I am grateful and generous; that I believe in people and the significant contributions they make to achieving our vision; that I have a strong desire to achieve our client’s goals and win; and last, that I did all this with a great sense of humor and didn’t take myself too seriously. Clarifying your vision will help you determine what areas you need to improve and what areas will require more practice.

Be committed: 

Every coach will tell you that hard work tops talent, any time talent doesn’t work hard. Every day, you will be faced with operational tasks that consume your time and effort. Operational tasks are relatively easy, and give you instant gratification as you cross them off your list. Strategic leadership activities, on the other hand, almost always take more thought, can be frustrating because people are involved, and often don’t provide immediate gratification. Great leaders are committed to staying focused on doing the right thing and accomplishing their leadership vision.

Build your Emotional Intelligence:

Your IQ does not correlate with your EQ. Your IQ is all about how intelligent you are. Your EQ, or Emotional Intelligence, is all about building relationships with people. It relies on your ability to identify and manage your own emotions, as well as the emotions of others.  In the leadership business, it boils down to this: if your direct reports had a choice, would they choose to follow you?

Here’s another great test of your emotional intelligence; do your family, friends, boss, peers and direct reports feel comfortable giving you honest feedback about your leadership and communication style? Strong leaders collect informal feedback on a regular basis, and willingly participate in360° Leadership Development Assessments to gauge how others view them as a leader. Most importantly of all, strong leaders act on what they learn from honest feedback, and use it to practice and improve their leadership effectiveness.

Treat people right:

Everyone would agree that treating people right is important. But, treating people right does not mean treating everyone the same. Some team members need a lot of praise, recognition, and feedback, while others may be uncomfortable with that same level of attention. Some team members prefer to focus on producing results by working as a high-performing team, while still others would prefer to produce results by systematically crossing tasks off their to-do list. If that does not complicate things enough for leaders, some people want you to tell them exactly what you want them to do, and then just leave them alone. Others are more comfortable with clearer and more detailed direction. Figuring people out, and treating them accordingly, is a big part of a leader’s success.

Embrace mistakes: 

There is no better teacher than experience, and experience is gained with every mistake. Great leaders know that if you’re not making mistakes, you’re not trying new things. If you’re not trying new things, you’re not innovating and pushing your team and organization forward. Embrace mistakes as learning opportunities, and apply the knowledge gained to future decisions and opportunities.

Leadership takes practice. Leadership isn’t something you practice once and become a master at. But how much practice does it take to become a great leader? Malcolm Gladwell, in his book Outliers, gives us the10,000 hour rule. Based on Gladwell’s research of people who’ve reached an expert level so profound that others would describe them as great, it takes about10,000 hours of studying and practicing the art or the task. That would be more than five years worth of full time work, with each hour dedicated to practicing leadership skills. Even the masters never stop practicing.

Personally I would be so happy to have somebody that can do my job better than myself and he or she is an asset for me and the company.

Not all managers accept that one or more of their team being more professionality in performance efficiency and information than him .

This situation is very common in our institutions, and could lead to generate jealousy between the manager and his staff, more of that it may has the manager to make  a plot to remove these people and keep them away from him

IN General, the administration is a single unit, and that the power of the manager is coming from the power of his staff working with him and vice versa

Thanks

Stronger than me professionally I think could be  accepted but in personality I have to be the strongest.

once you are manager on strong qualified people , that mean your department is strong .

The challenge would be here is how to manage stronger  people than you , and do not let them manage you .

aLL SKILLS ARE NOT KNOWN BY A PERSON IT ALWAYS LETS ROOM TO LEARN NEW THIGS AND IT BETTER TO LEARN FORM OUR OWN EXPERIENCE WHILE GETTING THE WORK DONE.

what a good question that meaning democracy & answering to it may be a best strategy to lead & use of employees concepts . 

No, I don't have to be the strongest, but i have to be qualified enough and have the ability to lead those strong employees in an effective way, they all have to know that the organization's success will return to all of us with benefits. Finally, we all have to work as a team complementing each other to achieve the organization objectives.

When I'm hiring, I'm actively looking for people who are better than me in some way.  What's the point of having a weak team?

Mr Bjames,

It is true as sometimes you come across at times when the employees can be strong

technically & professionally. Since you know your strength so one has to motivate those employees

with the skills and take the maximum out of them and assign more construction role with accountability.