Learning to fly as a new manager
5 levers for managing individuals
Pushed out of the nest
Baby birds are not taught to fly. Instead, they’re pushed out of the nest and expected to work it out for themselves, leveraging their natural instincts. Becoming a manager can feel about the same, except that we’re not born to it. Instead, we rely on our experiences. We copy the managers we’ve had and work it out as best we can. We often copy the motions, without understanding why.
In this piece I share some of my experience in managing people, focusing on the principles I’ve learned. I’ve had good and bad managers, I’ve read books and blogs and I’ve mentored others in their journey as a manager. I hope something here will help you in your journey too.
As a manager, your success is in the success of your team. You can drive strong outcomes by making decisions for your team and even doing the work for them, but this is the success of an individual contributor. As a manager, you are successful when your team is unleashed to be creative, autonomous and deliver strong outcomes without your individual contribution.
There are a number of areas you can focus on at a team level: process, efficiencies, decision making, planning and collaboration as examples. Here, I want to focus on the individual and the levers you can work with.
- Remove Obstacles — One of the simplest and most effective things you can do is to remove obstacles and unblock your team members.
Ideally, your team has a growth mindset and is constantly improving through retrospectives or similar processes. Impediments and inefficiencies are surfaced and addressed internally. The team develops itself. In reality, there will be sensitive issues and frustrations that you can unearth and address. Keep your ear open for frustrations, delays, red tape and the like.
I remember a fantastic team lead who was dedicated, driven, curious and led a team that was growing from strength to strength. And yet I started to see signs of frustration and exhaustion. Together, we tackled the topic head-on and realised that the core of the problem was not at work, it was in his personal life at home. His family situation had changed and he needed to adjust accordingly. He also had a ridiculously long commute into the office. A week later and following a few questions and conversations with the rest of the business, we had him set up to trial remote work. Within a month he had his mojo back and was as strong as ever. Plus, the tangible demonstration that we cared about him and were willing to change and grow as an organisation meant the world to him and resulted in long lasting loyalty.
Work-life integration
As a side note, we often talk about work-life balance as though work and life should be kept separate. In the example above you can see that events and circumstances in our personal lives have a strong impact on our work lives and vice versa. When I regularly visit the gym and have good sleep hygiene, my mind is quicker and more creative and I have more energy and focus in all aspects of life. In this always-connected and always-on world we should help each other with the big picture. Work and life are, and should be treated as, integrated. Pretending they are not will restrict what you can achieve together. Caring about the whole person is far more powerful.
2. Clarity — For an innovative and autonomous team, having a clear direction is essential.
You want to provide clarity in everything from the organisation’s mission, values and goals down to the team’s own objectives. Show your team members the problem and trust them, empower them to solve it. In the creative economy, we should be driving outcomes rather than just implementing solutions. Make sure you surface mis-alignment and clarify objectives. Repeat your mission and your objectives until you’re sick of hearing them, then continue to repeat them.
I once worked with a team whose progress was slow and relational tensions were rising. At one point, a small decision around testing took 2 days to make and the frustration was turning into a lack of trust between team members. It was tempting to deal with the symptoms, to take control and make their decisions for them; get them moving again. Instead, we stripped away layer after layer to get to the root cause. “In this proposal, what is making you uncomfortable? What concerns do you have? Why? What risks do you see? What are you trying to achieve?”
In the end we realised that some individuals were preferring a safe, risk free approach. “The existing structures have stood the test of time: we should reuse them. The outcome won’t be as strong, but it’ll be safer, quicker and we can move on. The business cares about stability and reliability.” On the other side, we had individuals who were driving change. “The old structures are holding us back. We cannot be successful in the mid to long term if we don’t change and grow. The current feature provides the perfect opportunity to create a foundation for the future and we should run with it. The business cares about innovation and setting ourselves up for the future.”
Both statements were true. Neither side was wrong or incompetent. But their objectives were misaligned. Next step: clarify the business’ priorities. We agreed that minimising risk is important, but in this case, it was more important to create a new structure that could set us up for greater success. With the underlying misalignment resolved, the team was able to charge forward.
3. Purpose — People want to make a meaningful difference in our world.
Make sure you can articulate your organisation’s purpose in a way that resonates with individuals. You have to be authentic; if you don’t believe it and live it out yourself it will come across as false and hypocritical. If your stated purpose is to ‘change the world’ but all your decisions are focused on revenue it will quickly become apparent.
Every individual’s values and purpose are different. Help your team members to articulate their own purpose and help them craft their own statement on how their work matters. You want the ‘Why’ to resonate within each team member.
4. Personal Growth — As well as alignment at the level of purpose and values, people need to feel that their career trajectory is aligned with and supported in your organisation.
Nobody wants to feel that they are stagnant or have hit a ceiling. There are two elements at play here: performance expectations and development plans.
Performance Expectations
In order to have an effective conversation about career development, you need to provide clear performance expectations. Use your department’s career ladder as a reference. Take the time to evaluate your team members critically for strengths and weaknesses. Help your team members understand how they measure up to expectations. Clarify the gaps they should focus on in order to take the next step.
Give open and honest feedback, remembering that your success is in the success of your team. If you don’t deal with issues then your team members will remain in the dark, your team will be hindered and you stifle your success. On the other hand, sharing constructive, critical feedback opens the door for coaching, growth and resolution. Most people are desperate for meaningful input to help them improve.
Development Plans
I prefer the phrase “personal roadmap” to “development plan”. Either way, it is helpful to have a view of where your team member is going and how they might get there. Together, you might plan out a series of milestones that will be refined and adjusted to take them in the right direction.
Before you start planning, you need to understand what makes your team members tick. Make the time to understand their strengths, interests, experiences and potential. Don’t settle with surface level, clichéd answers. Stimulate open, informal conversations about past experiences, current and future projects or what is going on in the broader industry and community to uncover rich insights into each individual. Keep your ear open for that spark, that moment of excitement, that flicker of passion and latch on to it. Ask questions, probe for more. Be a devil’s advocate. Go deep. Go broad. Go crazy. Find the source of their passion.
Armed with solid information and understanding you can craft a roadmap that makes sense for the individual within the organisation, but don’t lose sight of the immediate opportunities. Often our team members are so focused on the team’s goals that they are blind to their personal opportunities. Help them see the possibilities and nudge them to dive in. “Hey, wouldn’t it be amazing if you…”, “What’s stopping you from making X happen?”, “Could you own/run with Y?”. These experiences, taking initiative and working through challenges are what establish leaders and master craftspeople.
5. Recognition and belonging — In Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, the need for belonging and the need for esteem fall just after the basic need for safety.
We have all felt imposter syndrome at some point in our career; the feeling that we are not good enough, that we don’t belong. As a manager, your recognition is powerful. As you evaluate your team members for critical feedback, also pay attention to their strengths and the areas in which they excel. Make sure they know that you see their contribution. Let them know that you value them.
And encourage them to recognise their teammates directly. While your opinion is powerful, the opinion of peers is equally strong.
Putting it into practise
To manage an individual, to challenge them and help them grow, to get the most from them, you need to start with trust. They need to know that you care about them as a person.
Use your one-on-one time with your team members to get to know and understand each other. Build trust and use these levers to help them be successful. Unblock them, show them the big picture, help them care about what you are achieving together, craft with them a future career and the steps to realise it and let them see that they are valued. How? Well, that’s a topic for another time.
