Dear new manager
Most likely you have been placed in this role without most of the tools you will need. Over time you will learn. Do your best to avoid learning at the consequence of another person’s career.
You are in a role that you should consider and honor. Every person has the right to quit your team tomorrow. Be a manager people love to work for.
Hold lightly. You are never in control of another person. Don’t try to be. You get to set direction/business need, expectations and accountability. They get to decide what they ultimately do.
Every time you manage an new person you are new to being their manager. They know themselves better than you ever can. Don’t try to use your experience to decide what’s best for them. Partner with them, have their back, and you will be granted all the information you need to be a great manager for them.
Learn as much as possible before or on the side. Get a mentor or a coach. Get the easy stuff figured out early so that you can handle the tough stuff.
Once when I was hiring managers, one of the guys on the team expressed interest. He explained that he had mastery of the area, loved people, and loved to help them grow. That’s a good start. But it wasn’t enough. He was missing a lot of experience that is easy to get before being a manager. He thought he was ready, but accepted that I didn’t. We set up some project lead activities and I gave him a few opportunities to get the basics. Ultimately he became a manager on my team. He had done the work, was eager to learn, and seemed to have the right motivations. His first 6 months as a manager were still extremely overwhelming for him. It was the hardest 6 months of his career. We joke now that he had absolutely no idea how much he didn’t know about managing people when he first started.
Whenever possible, find ways for people to work on what they love. A second best is to help them find ways to love what they work on.
People love to be productive and successful. I’ve found that it’s one of the fastest ways to generate happiness on the team. Help people be great at their jobs.
Morale events are fun if the team is happy. They can be a way for bonding and adding some great memories. I think morale events are a horrible idea for unhappy teams. It just makes people feel like they have to waste time when they already don’t want to be there.
Give all of the credit away and take some accountability for every failure.
Delegation is easy if you’re genuinely excited to see how other’s approach things. One of the most valuable things as a manager is that we get to see the inner workings of how others approach problems and execute. I’m forever fascinated by how others work.
Figure out what signals, at what point, along a project are necessary for you to be informed and support your team. Discuss those ahead of time. When someone is new, learning, or struggling, have more agreed upon checkpoints. If you send someone to do something without agreeing to checkpoints and then you later check-in a lot before the deadline, that’s one form of micromanagement.
When something doesn’t seem right, ask questions to figure out what’s going on. Maybe it’s fine, maybe it’s not. Better to check than to guess. It’s rarely what you expect, so just have a conversation.
Learn to get feedback. Learn to give feedback.
When giving feedback, avoid applying your emotions to it. Would you be delighted or devastated to get that feedback? It doesn’t matter. If you have a strong emotional reaction to feedback you need to give, work out why and what your deal is with it before you have the conversation. They get to decide what the feedback means. When you mix your emotions into it, that only makes it harder for both of you. Don’t put the burden of your feelings on them. Give them context. What’s the behavior observed? What is the impact? Is there a consequence now or if it happens again? Give them the opportunity to give you the context you’re missing. If you have suggestions of how they should behave or change, it’s sometimes best to let them process first. I always like to ask if they’d like some ideas or not before sharing. This is about them, not you.
Never surprise people at review time. Inevitably some people will be disappointed (it’s rarely the ones you expect so don’t bother anticipating), however it should never be a surprise.
Communicate often and transparently. In the absence of information, people often assume the worst. This is especially true during reorgs or other big changes. People can handle changes when they know they will get the necessary information.
If in doubt, treat humans like humans.
