If you haven't managed people before, management looks like a mystery to you. You don't quite understand why your manager - or managers in general - choose to do and say the things that emanate from them. Management as a whole may look arbitrary, capricious, incompetent to you, as if there is a secret plot to take the hard work you do and turn it to dust.

In particular, you may wonder how rewards are meted out, be it bonuses, salary increases, promotions. Sometimes it just seems that management has favorites, and that it's always the favorites that get rewarded, while your contribution is ignored just because your manager doesn't like you.

Well, I've got news for you: while there certainly are managers that are arbitrary and capricious, the vast majority of them has real logical reasons for doing as they do - you are just utterly unaware of them. Read on if you want to read one manager's experience...