The Making Of The Manager: What To Do When Everyone Looks To You - Julie Zhuo

The Making Of The Manager: What To Do When Everyone Looks To You

What is management, and what makes a great manager?

The crux of management is the belief that a team of people can achieve more than a single person going it alone. It is the realization that you don’t have to do everything yourself, be the best at everything yourself, or even know how to do everything yourself. Your job as a manager is to get better outcomes from a group of people working together. It’s from this simple definition that everything else flows.

The author used to think judging whether a manager was great looked like: Are they well regarded by other people? Can they solve big, strategic problems? Do they give killer presentations? Can they knock out twenty important tasks in a day? Reply to emails while waiting in line for coffee? Defuse a tense situation? Etc. These are all wonderful qualities to have in a manager, but the litmus test of whether or not a manager is excelling doesn’t need to be so complex.

If the job is defined as getting better outcomes from a group of people working together, then a great manager’s team will consistently achieve great outcomes

“This is the crux of management: It is the belief that a team of people can achieve more than a single person going it alone. It is the realization that you don’t have to do everything yourself, be the best at everything yourself, or even know how to do everything yourself. Your job, as a manager, is to get better outcomes from a group of people working together.” ~ Julie Zhuo

If the outcome you care about is educating children, then a great manager’s team will better prepare students for the future than an average manager’s team. A bad manager’s team fails to give kids the skills and knowledge they need to thrive.

You can be the smartest, most well-liked, most hardworking manager in the world, but if your team has a long-standing reputation for mediocre outcomes, then, unfortunately, you can’t objectively be considered a “great” manager.

The three things managers think about all day are.

1. Ensure that your team knows what success looks like and cares about achieving it.

Getting everyone to understand and believe in your team’s purpose, whether it’s as specific as “make every customer who calls feel cared for” or as broad as “bring the world closer together,” requires understanding and believing in it yourself, and then sharing it at every opportunity — from writing emails to setting goals, from checking in with a single report to hosting large-scale meetings.

2. People otherwise known as the who.

Are the members of your team set up to succeed? Do they have the right skills? Are they motivated to do great work? If you don’t have the right people for the job, or you don’t have an environment where they can thrive, then you’re going to have problems.

3. Process.

Which describes how your team works together. You might have a superbly talented team with a very clear understanding of what the end goal is, but if it’s not apparent how everyone’s supposed to work together or what the team’s values are, then even simple tasks can get enormously complicated.

Your first three months when you join the management team

No matter how you arrived at your new role, congratulations are in order because this much is true: Somebody — more likely many people — believed in you and your potential to lead a team. That’s why you’re holding this book.

Your path here probably took one of the four routes below.

Apprentice: Your manager’s team is growing, so you’ve been asked to manage a part of it going forward.
Pioneer: You are a founding member of a new group, and you’re now responsible for its growth.
New Boss: You’re coming in to manage an already established team, either within your existing organization or at a new one.
Successor: Your manager has decided to leave, and you are taking his place.

The apprentice. As teams grow, so do opportunities for new managers. If you have been asked to be a part of the management team going forward.

What to take advantage of? This is usually the easiest way to transition into being a manager. Because your own manager has been looking over the team and knows everyone involved, you’ll typically have more guidance than in the other transition scenarios.

What to watch out for? It can feel awkward to establish a new dynamic with former peers. Before, you were just another individual contributor on the team. Now, you are the boss, which means your relationship with teammates might feel altered.

It can feel awkward to establish a new dynamic with former peers. Before, you were just another individual contributor on the team. Now, you are the boss, which means your relationship with teammates might feel altered.

The pioneer. You were among the first to take on a challenge that is now turning into a bigger team effort. Growth is a sign that things are going well, so take pride in what you’ve accomplished! You might be a startup founder going from three people in a garage to ten full-time employees, or the first accountant hired into an organization that’s now building out an entire finance department. As you grow your team, keep in mind the following.

What to take advantage of? You’ve done the job, so you know what it takes. You were the first, the original, the alpha; no one knows better than you what the job entails because you helped define it. Now it’s time to take it to the next level. To be successful, you’ll need to unearth all the values and know-how in your head and pass them along to others.

You get to build the team that you want. One of the privileges of being a pioneer is that you’re able to choose the people you want to work with and how you want to work with them. Instead of inheriting a team, you get to create a brand-new one.

What to watch out for? You may not have much support. The life of a pioneer is filled with adventure and solitude.

Think of the first designer at a company being asked to grow the user-experience discipline. Whom does she turn to if she has questions about how to hire and onboard other designers? She’s the only one of her kind! As a pioneer, you continually find yourself alone in new, unfamiliar terrain. But that doesn’t mean you can’t seek out help. Though you may be the only manager doing what you do at your organization, there are two other groups you can lean on for support: other managers in your organization who support related functions, and managers in your area of expertise outside your organization.

The new boss. A team is welcoming you as its new leader, which is no small achievement! If you find yourself in this situation, you probably have past management experience. Organizations rarely hire untested managers to oversee already established teams. Assuming that the job isn’t completely new to you, there are still some nuances to be aware of.

What to take advantage of? People cut you slack in the beginning. The biggest advantage of being new is that you have a window of time, usually about three months when everyone recognizes that you’re the new kid on the block. You are not expected to know anything at first, from what everyone works on to what the current strategy is. Mistakes you make will be brushed aside, and you’ll find that your colleagues are usually quite willing to help you get up to speed.

What to watch out for? It takes a while to adjust to the norms of a new environment. No matter how talented you are, learning how a new team works take time, whether you’re joining a different company or changing roles at an existing company. One of the biggest mistakes new bosses make is thinking they need to jump in and exert their opinions right away to show that they are capable.

The successor. The successor transition is like the apprentice’s but with a twist: because your manager is leaving, you’re taking on supporting the entire team yourself, not just a portion of it. Though most successors have prior management experience, it’s still a significant increase in responsibility, and you may feel you have big shoes to fill.

What to watch out for? It can feel awkward to establish a new dynamic with former peers. Before, you were just another individual contributor on the team. Now, you are the boss, which means your relationship with teammates might feel altered.

You may have the following challenges.

1. The increase in responsibility can feel overwhelming. It’s not unusual to go through periods of feeling that you bit off more than you can chew. After all, you’re now being asked to do your former boss’s job.

2. You feel pressure to do things exactly like your former manager. Because the memory of how things used to be is still fresh in your team’s mind, it’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking you need to preserve the status quo. You may feel as if everyone is looking to you to be just as good at everything as your former manager, even though you’re different people.

Leading a Small Team: how to make your team do good work

Remember our definition of management? A manager’s job is to get better outcomes from a group of people working together through influencing purpose, people, and process. With a small team, maintaining a shared sense of purpose is straightforward. You don’t get many crossed wires when your team can still fit around one table. That leaves people and process to focus on. Of those two, people are by far the most important.

What leads people to do great work? It feels like a complicated question, but it really isn’t, as Andy Grove points out in his classic High Output Management. He flips the question around and asks: What gets in the way of good work? There are only two possibilities. The first is that people don’t know how to do good work. The second is that they know how to, but they aren’t motivated.

Let’s go one step further. Why would someone not know how to do great work? The obvious answer is that she might not have the right skills for the job. If you needed your house painted and you hired an accountant, you shouldn’t be surprised if the paint job is splotchy.

Someone trained in bookkeeping doesn’t necessarily have the right experience to be a first – rate painter. As the manager, you can do one of two things here: help your report learn those skills or hire somebody else with the skills you need.

Feedback are suggestions for improvement that transform people in ways they’re proud of

Think of the best feedback you’ve ever received. Why was it so meaningful to you? I’m willing to bet that the reason you remember it is because the feedback inspired you to change your behavior, which resulted in your life getting better.

Feedback, at its best, transforms people in ways they’re proud of. So what constitutes “feedback”? According to the author, “it is suggestions for improvement.” feedback doesn’t have to be critical. Praise is often more motivating than criticism. And for another, you don’t always have to start with a problem.

Below, you’ll find the four most common ways to inspire a change in behavior.

1. Set clear expectations at the beginning.

Imagine that you decide to hire a trainer to improve your workouts. Does she immediately ask you to do some push-ups before giving you any pointers?

No. The first thing she’ll do after introductions is sit down with you to discuss your goals. Then, she’ll tell you what you should expect from training and how you can make the most of it. Though her advice won’t yet be specifically tailored to you, it’s what she thinks you need to know given her experience training others.

It may seem counterintuitive, but the feedback process should begin before any work. At that point, you should agree on what success looks like — whether for a given project or for a given time period — get ahead of any expected issues, and lay the foundation for productive feedback sessions in the future.

During this phase, make sure you address the following:
a. What a great job looks like for your report, compared to a mediocre or bad job.
b. What advice you have to help your report get started on the right foot.
c. Common pitfalls your report should avoid.

2. Give task-specific feedback as frequently as you can.

As the name “task-specific” implies, you provide this kind of feedback about something that someone did after the fact. For example, after your report presents an analysis, tell her what you thought she did well and what could go better in the future. Be as precise and as detailed as you can.

This is the easiest type of feedback to give because it’s focused on the what rather than the who, so it feels less personal. If you find yourself struggling to get into the habit of giving feedback, start with this category.

3. Share behavioral feedback thoughtfully and regularly.

When you zoom out and look at many examples of task-specific feedback for a report, what themes emerge? Does he make decisions quickly or slowly? Is he a process wizard or an unconventional thinker? Does he gravitate toward pragmatic or idealistic solutions?

Asking this question about themes helps you reflect on your report’s unique strengths or areas of development, as shown in his patterns of behavior.

Behavioral feedback is useful because it provides a level of personalization and depth that is missing from task-specific feedback. By connecting the dots across multiple examples, you can help people understand how their unique interests, personalities, and habits affect their ability to have an impact.

Collect 360-degree feedback for maximum objectivity.

Three-hundred-and-sixty-degree feedback is feedback aggregated from multiple perspectives, which means it tends to be a more complete and objective view of how someone is doing. For example, if your report led a brainstorming session, instead of sending just your task-specific feedback, you might collect and share what the rest of the room thought as well. Or if it’s time for your report’s annual performance review, instead of relying on just your own observations, getting behavioral feedback from a handful of colleagues, she works closest with will result in better insights.

The imposter syndrome, how to manage yourself

Everybody feels like an imposter sometimes. Imposter syndrome is what makes you feel as though you’re the only one with nothing worthwhile to say when you walk into a room full of people you admire. Imposter syndrome is what makes you double – , triple – , or quadruple — check your email before hitting Send so that nobody finds any mistakes and figures out you’re actually a fraud. Imposter syndrome is the sensation that you’re teetering along the edge of a sheer cliff with flailing arms, the whole world watching and waiting to see when you fall.

Here’s the thing to remember: feeling this way is totally normal. Linda Hill, a professor at Harvard Business School, has spent years studying the transition into management. “Ask any new manager about the early days of being a boss — indeed, ask any senior executive to recall how he or she felt like a new manager. If you get an honest answer, you’ll hear a tale of disorientation and, for some, overwhelming confusion. The new role didn’t feel anything like it was supposed to. It felt too big for any one person to handle.”

Why does imposter syndrome hit managers so hard? There are two reasons. The first is that you’re often looked for answers. I’ve had reports tell me about difficult personal issues and ask for my advice. I’ve gotten requests for permission to do things that the company has never done before, like spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on a new initiative. I’ve received emotional inquiries from people about countless decisions that I didn’t make myself but that I still had to explain. When the sailing gets rocky, the manager is often the first person others turn to, so it’s common to feel an intense pressure to know what to do or say. When you don’t, you naturally think: Am I cut out for this job?

The second reason is that you are constantly put in the position of doing things you haven’t done before. For example, say you have to fire someone. How do you prepare yourself for such a task? It’s not like improving your skills in drawing or writing, where you can invest time on nights and weekends to sketch or compose short stories. You can’t just snap your fingers and say, “I’m going to practice firing a lot of people this month.” You must actually go through the real thing in order to gain the experience you need.

Management isn’t an innate skill. There is no such thing as an “all-around great manager” who can transition effortlessly between different leadership roles.

The following techniques will help you to deal with the inevitable doubts and discomfort that arises from imposter syndrome.

1. Get to brutal honesty with yourself: understand your strengths and weaknesses they will directly affect how you manage the syndrome. Know your strengths —the things you’re talented at and love to do. This is crucial because great management typically comes from playing to your strengths rather than from fixing your weaknesses.

2. Understand yourself at your best and worst: Beyond strengths and weaknesses, the next part of understanding yourself is knowing which environments help you to do your best work and which situations trigger a negative reaction. This helps you design your day-to-day to respond to your needs.

Plan Ahead To Hire Well

When you are buckling under the strain of a short-staffed team, it can be very hard to resist someone who seems available and ready to do the work. You might well overlook the fact that they aren’t exactly what you want — similar to how, when your stomach is growling, and you’re raiding the fridge, pickles, ketchup, and bread seem like an acceptable meal. The solution to both a healthier diet and a better team is to plan ahead. If you go to the grocery store on Sunday and buy what you need for a wholesome meal every night, then when hunger strikes Wednesday evening, you’re more likely to reach for the chicken and veggies.

The author carries out one exercise every January, to map out where he hopes his team will be by the end of the year. He creates a future org chart, analyzes gaps in skills, strengths, or experiences, and make a list of open roles to hire for.

You can do something similar by asking yourself the following questions:
• How many new people will I add to our team this year (based on company growth, expected attrition, budget, priorities, etc.)?
• For each new hire, what level of experience am I looking for?
• Which specific skills or strengths do we need in our team (for example, creative thinking, operational excellence, expertise in XYZ, etc.)?
• Which skills and strengths does our team already have that new hires can stand to be weaker in?
• What traits, past experiences, or personalities would strengthen the diversity of our team?

Having a thoughtful, one-year-out organizational plan allows you to stay ahead of hiring needs and gives you a handy framework for evaluating candidates so that you won’t fall into the trap of saying yes to the next person who comes along.

Even if things change — your organization restructures, an employee abruptly leaves, priorities shift — you can modify your plan as you go along so that there’s always a clear picture in your head of what your team should look like.

This exercise will look a little different if you’re at a company without a lot of hiring needs. In that case, the size and composition of your team a year from now might remain pretty similar to today. Still, it’s useful to consider the possibility of attrition and where you’ll look if someone on your team leaves. Where did your best employees come from? What new skills, if any, would you want to add? And who specifically might you love to bring on board if a spot opens up?

“People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel, goes the popular saying.” ~ Julie Zhuo

If you have the good fortune of working with a dedicated recruiting team, you may be tempted to believe that you can lean back and expect top candidates to be delivered to your door. No recruiter can possibly know what an ideal candidate looks like for your team. They also can’t help you assess for specialized skills like reading X-rays or writing code. At the end of the day, you are the person who ultimately owns the team you build. Successful hiring managers form close partnerships with the recruiting team to identify, interview, and close the best people.

It’s the hiring manager’s job to identify when a role is open and what kinds of people would be the best fit. Write the job description yourself and be specific about the skills or experiences you are looking for. Once you have a good sense of the kind of person you want, it’s helpful to sit down with the recruiter and brainstorm where to look for your ideal candidate.

Deliver an Amazing Interview Experience. Even when you don’t end up extending an offer, an amazing interview experience tells prospective hires that you care about the people who might be the future of your organization. When you decide to extend an offer, it’s as much your job as it is the recruiters to make the candidate feel that you want her to say yes. The more distance you create in the process — for example, letting a week lapse between communications — the more likely the answer is no

Leading A Growing Team

Your team’s culture is like its personality. It exists whether or not you think about it. If you’re not satisfied with how your team works together — maybe the vibe feels hostile instead of helpful, maybe it takes a long time to get things done, or maybe there’s constant drama — it’s worth examining why this might be and what you can do about it.

Remember the exercises from Chapter Five: Managing Yourself when we wrote down your personal strengths, growth areas, and aspirations? It’s time to do the same with your team. The key is to find the intersection between what your team does well and what you hope the team values. When you have an hour or so, grab a pen and jot down your answers to the following questions.

1. Understanding your current team.
• What are the first three adjectives that come to mind when describing the personality of your team?
• What moments made you feel most proud to be a part of your team?
• Why?
• What does your team do better than the majority of other teams out there?
• If you picked five random members of your team and individually asked each person, “What does our team value?” what would you hear?
• How similar is your team’s culture to the broader organization’s culture?

2. Understanding your aspirations.
• Describe the top five adjectives you’d want an external observer to use to describe your team’s culture. Why those?
• Now imagine those five adjectives sitting on a double-edged sword.
• What do you imagine are the pitfalls that come from ruthless adherence to those qualities? Are those acceptable to you?
• Make a list of the aspects of culture that you admire about other teams or organizations. Why do you admire them? What downsides does that team tolerate as a result?

Understanding the difference.
• On a scale from one to nine, with nine being “we’re 100 percent there” and one being “this is the opposite of our team,” how close is your current team from your aspirations?
• What shows up as both strength of your team as well as a quality you value highly?
• Where are the biggest gaps between your current team culture and your aspirations?
• What are the obstacles that might get in the way of reaching your aspirations? How will you address them?

Depending on what’s within your control, some of your aspirations may be doable and unrealistic. For example, if you want your team to operate with utter focus and zero distractions, you might prefer they sit in a remote area and avoid interacting with other groups. But if the broader company values openness and collaboration, your preference would be hard to achieve.

Once you’ve identified the values you want to nurture within your team, the next step is to develop a game plan to help those values flourish.

a. Never stop talking about what’s important: Talking about your values makes you a more authentic and inspiring leader.

b. Always walk the walk: People watch their bosses closely to understand the team’s values and norms. Our radars are fine-tuned to spot instances where someone in a position of authority says one thing and does another.

c. Create the right incentives: Rewards people who behave according to your team’s values and holds people accountable when they don’t.

d. Invent traditions that celebrate your values: There is power in rituals. Beyond slogans or speeches, they create actions around which team members can bond. And they can be as unique, quirky, and fun as your team.

Conclusion

Running a team is hard because it ultimately boils down to people, and all of us are multifaceted and complex beings. Just like how there is no one way to go about being a person, there is no one way to go about managing a group of people.

And yet, working together in teams is how the world moves forward. We can create things far grander and more ambitious than anything we could have done alone. This is how battles are won, how innovation moves forward, how organizations succeed. This is how any remarkable achievement happens. Great managers are made, not born. It doesn’t matter who you are. If you care enough to be reading this, then you care enough to be a great manager.

When delivering critical feedback or bad news, avoid the following feedback:
1. You’re such a screw up. What am I going to do with you?
2. Your work is terrible, and I need to know how you’re going to fix it.

Instead, try using:
3. I’m concerned about the quality of work that I’ve been seeing from you recently. Can we talk about that?
4. Your last few deliverables weren’t comprehensive enough to hit the mark, so let’s discuss why that is and how to address it.
5. I have a few questions about your latest work — do you have a moment to walk me through it?

The best way to give critical feedback is to deliver it directly and dispassionately. Plainly say what you perceive the issue to be, what made you feel that way, and how you’d like to work together to resolve the concern.

You can also use the template below:
a. “When I (heard/observed/reflected on) your (action/behavior/output), I felt concerned because...” or
b. “I’d like to understand your perspective and talk about how we can resolve this.”

Don’t start with a long preamble. Don’t try to sugarcoat a tough message or pad it with “softer” points.