Advice from 1517: How Do I Manage Employees Older Than Myself?
We get lots of email from founders asking for tips — it’s about time that we turn some of that into content!
Sbj: Advice for young founders managing people more experienced than them?
Jan 1, 2018
Hey you two,
Do you have any advice/resources/or people I could talk to to learn how to be a better manager of people who are more experienced and or knowledgeable than I am? Particularly advice targeted at young founders.
Hey!
Great question. I have to say that it’s often tough for me to think about what might be specific to younger founders when that’s just the group we work with most regularly.
One major thought that comes to mind is from the realm of education and it’s called modeling. Modeling is just what it sounds like, and it’s how we learn behaviors through others — by watching them do what they do.
One thing that I’d guess is harder for younger founders in particular is that they probably haven’t been managed by that many people, so it’s harder to model your own behavior off of experience. That said, I didn’t have a lot of managers in my career since so much of it has either been self employed or as a founder/founding type. So the way that I learned was through trial and error, reading, and talking to friends who had been managers at larger growing companies (for example, a friend of mine worked at a big tech company a number of years ago when it was getting off the ground, so we had great conversations about management and growing teams when I was just getting started).
A few weeks ago I went to talk by the author of Radical Candor and I’m about to get the book. I really liked the talk and am already putting into practice some of the methods — basically being loving but firm and clear in my criticisms. I’d recommend picking it up! I believe there is a section in there on goal setting/expectation setting too which is something you’ll want to do with your hires.
As far as managing people who are more experienced/have expertise, I think making them a part of the review process and goal process is extremely important. When I was at the Thiel Foundation, I worked with Bohdanna Kesala (now running Global Programs at Singularity University — which are amazing, check them out!) who had real event planning experience, is an accomplished artist, was about 8 years older than I am, and a mom to boot — so a lot of school of hard knocks learning and expertise that I couldn’t hold a candle to. We would meet once a week to talk about her goals, what she needed from me (the goal of a really great manager is to remove obstacles from one’s team members so that they can do their best), and also just catch up.
It’s amazing what people will do for you when they know that you truly care about them and their families (which is more likely the case when you’re working with older people). So we’d talk about professional and personal stuff for an hour, develop a plan for the next week, and get back to it. It was also extremely important to have regular time set aside so that if something did need to be talked about, we had time scheduled for it and we didn’t have to have a “scary” meeting about something bad building up over time.
Lastly, I think that when you’re working with people who are older and more experienced (and really with anyone) it’s about engaging them in a way that makes everything about serving the mission/vision/product and not about serving you as their manager/founder. This way, both of you are serving the same master — the mission of the company — and you can both take a look at what is going on in your relationship together to do that. Another way of saying this is that it’s not about you or them personally, but about those acts of service and how they are going.
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Please comment with a great management pro-tip! What’s something that you wish you started doing with your teammates earlier? Or who was your favorite manager and what made them great? If you’re a young maker, hacker, or founder, get in touch with us.
Danielle
