Anything you do must be based on a thorough understanding of your legal responsibilities. Not all editors have the power of ‘hire and fire’ (although purists would insist that if they don’t, they’re not really doing the job). In some cases this is a task for the personnel department or some other higher authority. Nonetheless, the way you deal with people, as their immediate boss, will have legal implications should later disciplinary action be necessary for writing editing. You will also be expected to assess people’s progress, make recommendations about their level of remuneration, put them forward for training, and so on. Anything you can learn about these areas before you start will pay dividends. Leadership expresses itself through the way you communicate with your staff, whether in meetings, in writing or in brief conversations in the corridor. There are techniques which can be learned. If you are offered the opportunity to attend any such training, you should take it. Beyond that, another set of ‘people skills’ is required for dealing with your peers, your readers and the general public. Those who lack confidence in such settings will find their progress blighted as publishers grow ever more PR-conscious. Anything you can learn to enhance your public confidence will be invaluable. Personal qualities and attributes Beyond the skills that you will require for writing editing, there are also your personal qualities and attributes, your ‘character’. Self-reliance may well be the quality most needed by new editors. It is hard to overestimate the sense of isolation that descends on you when you first take charge. If most of your friends have also been your workmates, you can find the distance which must now exist between you and them extremely difficult to bear. The fact that you now have new colleagues among your peers in management is of little consolation. You may feel you have nothing in common with them, but everything in common with those whose ‘boss’ you now have to be. At the same time, everyone immediately expects you to know everything. It is no surprise that so many new editors disappear into their offices and close their doors, communicating only by memo and trusted messenger. Once there, however, it is difficult to emerge. You must get used to the new realities of writing editing. Throughout your career as an editor you will have to take unpopular decisions and you will not get much sympathy: most journalists are, naturally, convinced that they would be better at your job than you are. Determination will see you through these things. It is no good being self-reliant if you don’t have the necessary determination to take the magazine in the direction you think right. This is a quality that comes from within but you may be able to learn techniques for demonstrating that determination in a way that won’t threaten everyone else.
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