The Making of a Manager: What to Do When Everyone Looks to You

by Julie Zhuo

A MANAGER’S JOB IS TO . . . build a team that works well together, support members in reaching their career goals, and create processes to get work done smoothly and efficiently.

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.

If the outcome you care about is getting amazing design, then a great manager’s team will consistently deliver concepts that wow. A mediocre manager’s team will produce work that gets the job done but doesn’t stand out. A bad manager’s team will regularly suggest proposals that make you think, Surely we can do better than this.

one should look at “the output of the work unit and not simply the activity involved. Obviously, you measure a salesman by the orders he gets (output), not by the calls he makes (activity).”

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.

Six years ago, I switched my reporting to a different manager, Chris Cox, Facebook’s chief product officer. One of the earliest conversations I remember us having is when I asked him how he evaluates the job of a manager. He smiled and said, “My framework is quite simple.” Half of what he looked at was my team’s results—did we achieve our aspirations in creating valuable, easy-to-use, and well-crafted design work? The other half was based on the strength and satisfaction of my team—did I do a good job hiring and developing individuals, and was my team happy and working well together?

Hackman’s research describes five conditions that increase a team’s odds of success: having a real team (one with clear boundaries and stable membership), a compelling direction, an enabling structure, a supportive organizational context, and expert coaching.

Your role as a manager is not to do the work yourself, even if you are the best at it, because that will only take you so far. Your role is to improve the purpose, people, and process of your team to get as high a multiplier effect on your collective outcome as you can.

Do I Find It More Motivating to Achieve a Particular Outcome or to Play a Specific Role?

Do I Like Talking with People?

Can I Provide Stability for an Emotionally Challenging Situation?

the best outcomes come from inspiring people to action, not telling them what to do.

Nope, wrong. Manager is a specific role, just as elementary school teacher and heart surgeon are specific roles. As we discussed a few pages ago, there are clear principles outlining what a manager does and how his success is measured. Leadership, on the other hand, is the particular skill of being able to guide and influence other people.

In my first few months, Rebekah was my constant sounding board. If I wasn’t sure how to respond to a request or if a situation came up that I felt unprepared for, she was there to coach me. If you’re transitioning as an apprentice, work with your manager on a joint plan for getting started.

What did you and your past manager discuss that was most helpful to you? What are the ways in which you’d like to be supported? How do you like to be recognized for great work? What kind of feedback is most useful for you? Imagine that you and I had an amazing relationship. What would that look like?

What does it mean to do a great job versus an average or poor job? Can you give me some examples? Can you share your impressions of how you think Project X or Meeting Y went? Why do you think that? I noticed that Z happened the other day. . . . Is that normal or should I be concerned? What keeps you up at night? Why? How do you determine which things to prioritize?

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, but they aren’t motivated.

Why would someone not be motivated to do great work? One possible answer is that he doesn’t have a clear picture of what great work looks like. Another possibility is that the role doesn’t speak to his aspirations; he can, but he’d rather be doing something else. Or perhaps he thinks nothing will change if he puts in more effort—there will be no rewards if things improve, and no penalties if they don’t, so why bother?

If she asks her report how things are going and the answer for multiple weeks is “Everything is fine,” she takes it as a sign to prod further.

If your report feels that your support and respect are based on her performance, then it will be hard for her to be honest with you when things are rocky. If, on the other hand, she feels that you care about her no matter what, and nothing can change that—not even failure—then you will get honesty in return.

Discuss top priorities: What are the one, two, or three most critical outcomes for your report and how can you help her tackle these challenges? Calibrate what “great” looks like: Do you have a shared vision of what you’re working toward? Are you in sync about goals or expectations? Share feedback: What feedback can you give that will help your report, and what can your report tell you that will make you more effective as a manager? Reflect on how things are going: Once in a while, it’s useful to zoom out and talk about your report’s general state of mind—how is he feeling on the whole? What’s making him satisfied or dissatisfied? Have any of his goals changed? What has he learned recently and what does he want to learn going forward?

Identify: These questions focus on what really matters for your report and what topics are worth spending more time on. What’s top of mind for you right now? What priorities are you thinking about this week? What’s the best use of our time today? Understand: Once you’ve identified a topic to discuss, these next questions get at the root of the problem and what can be done about it. What does your ideal outcome look like? What’s hard for you in getting to that outcome? What do you really care about? What do you think is the best course of action? What’s the worst-case scenario you’re worried about? Support: These questions zero in on how you can be of greatest service to your report. How can I help you? What can I do to make you more successful? What was the most useful part of our conversation today?

If a report was struggling to do quality work, not being productive, or decreasing team morale, I’d think to myself, If I don’t step up and show some empathy, who else will? Nobody. As their manager, this was my job. And everyone deserves a second chance. Unfortunately, 80 percent of the time, that effort—extra 1:1s, help on projects, conversations with peers, pep talks—ultimately proved futile.

One of the consistent themes from your 360-feedback is that your plans need more rigor. An example is how you left out the edge case of senior discounts in your pricing proposal, which resulted in incorrect projections. This pattern of small errors across your work is starting to undermine your credibility.

Luckily, I still had time to put the lesson into action. The sooner that Albert internalized he was not meeting expectations, the quicker he could potentially turn things around, and the smoother our future performance conversations would go.

At the beginning of the project, let your report know how you’re planning to be involved. Be explicit that you’d like to review the work twice a week and talk through the most important problems together. Tell him which decisions you expect to make, and which he should make.

If you come off with even a whiff of an ulterior motive—you want to be right, you’re judging her, you’re annoyed or impatient—the message won’t get through.

This is why positive feedback is so effective. Just ask any preschool teacher or pet owner, and they’ll tell you that recognizing what’s going well is more likely to change behavior than only pointing out mistakes. Saying, “Hey, I thought that thing you did was awesome,” reinforces what you’d like to see more of without being threatening.

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. Both number three (I’m concerned about the quality of work that I’ve been seeing from you recently) and four (Your last few deliverables weren’t comprehensive enough to hit the mark) accomplish that, although number four gets a slight edge because it’s more specific in describing the concern.

How would the people who know and like me best (family, significant other, close friends) describe me in three words? MY ANSWER: thoughtful, enthusiastic, driven What three qualities do I possess that I am the proudest of? MY ANSWER: curious, reflective, optimistic When I look back on something I did that was successful, what personal traits do I give credit to? MY ANSWER: vision, determination, humility What are the top three most common pieces of positive feedback that I’ve received from my manager or peers? MY ANSWER: principled, fast learner, long-term thinker

Whenever my worst inner critic sits on my shoulder, what does she yell at me for? MY ANSWER: getting distracted, worrying too much about what others think, not voicing what I believe If a magical fairy were to come and bestow on me three gifts I don’t yet have, what would they be? MY ANSWER: bottomless well of confidence, clarity of thought, incredible persuasion What are three things that trigger me? (A trigger is a situation that gets me more worked up than it should.) MY ANSWER: sense of injustice, the idea that someone else thinks I’m incompetent, people with inflated egos What are the top three most common pieces of feedback from my manager or peers on how I could be more effective? MY ANSWER: be more direct, take more risks, explain things simply

What opportunities do you see for me to do more of what I do well? What do you think are the biggest things holding me back from having greater impact? What skills do you think a hypothetical perfect person in my role would have? For each skill, how would you rate me against that ideal on a scale of one to five?

Remember to ask for both task-specific and behavioral feedback. The more concrete you are about what you want to know, the better. If you lead with, “Hey, how do you think my presentation went?” you’ll probably hear responses like “I think it went well,” which aren’t particularly helpful. Instead, probe at the specifics and make it easy for someone to tell you something actionable. “I’m working on making sure my point is clear in the first three minutes. Did that come across? How can I make it clearer next time?”

For example, I hold weekly office-hour blocks as a result of a direct tip from her.

On the other hand, good meetings are simple and straightforward. You leave them feeling the same way every time: The meeting was a great use of my time. I learned something new that will help me be more effective at my job. I left with a clearer sense of what I should do next. Everyone was engaged. I felt welcomed.

Another tactic I like is the “Post-it note” opening. Before launching into a discussion about a complex topic (for example, what our marketing goals should be or what success looks like three years from now), give everyone a pad of Post-it notes and ask them to write down their thoughts on the topic. Then, have the room work in quiet concentration for about ten to fifteen minutes. Afterward, each participant puts his or her notes up on the board and talks through their thinking. Similar ideas are clumped together, and after the very last note has been added, the room discusses the various “clumps.” By encouraging people to get their own thoughts down on paper before sharing them, the barrier to participation is lowered.

It’s not about having the single, brilliant, lightning-flash insight that suddenly wins the game. Instead, it’s about consistent planning and execution—you try what seems like a good idea. You do it quickly. You keep your mind open and curious. You learn. Then you scrap what failed and double down on what’s working. You rinse and repeat, maybe over and over and over again. This process is what makes things happen.

Assume you have a magic wand that makes everything your team does go perfectly. What do you hope will be different in two to three years compared to now? How would you want someone who works on an adjacent team to describe what your team does? What do you hope will be your team’s reputation in a few years? How far off is that from where things are today? What unique superpower(s) does your team have? When you’re at your best, how are you creating value? What would it look like for your team to be twice as good? Five times as good? If you had to create a quick litmus test that anyone could use to assess whether your team was doing a poor job, a mediocre job, or a kick-ass job, what would that litmus test be?

“We can either spend the next few weeks debating which ideas are the best or we can try to learn as quickly as possible by doing. Our goal is to build simple, conclusive tests that help us understand which things we should double down on and which things we should cut from the list. If an idea works, we’ll expand upon it in the next sprint.”

Here are some ways to tell if your team is executing well: Lists of projects or tasks are prioritized from most to least important, with the higher-up items receiving more time and attention. There is an efficient process for decision-making that everyone understands and trusts. The team moves quickly, especially with reversible decisions. As Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos says, “Most decisions should probably be made with somewhere around 70% of the information you wish you had. If you wait for 90%, in most cases, you’re probably being slow.” After a decision is made, everyone commits (even those who disagree) and moves speedily to make it happen. Without new information, there is no second-guessing the decision, no pocket vetoing, and no foot dragging. When important new information surfaces, there is an expedient process to examine if and how current plans should change as a result. Every task has a who and a by when. Owners set and reliably deliver on commitments. The team is resilient and constantly seeking to learn. Every failure makes the team stronger because they don’t make the same mistake twice.

The rule of thumb for delegation goes like this: spend your time and energy on the intersection of 1) what’s most important to the organization and 2) what you’re uniquely able to do better than anyone else.

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? Imagine a journalist scrutinizing your team. What would she say your team does well or not well? When people complain about how things work, what are the top three things that they bring up?

When you value something deeply, don’t shy away from talking about it. Instead, embrace telling people why it’s important to you. Assume that for the message to stick, it should be heard ten different times and said in ten different ways. The more you can enlist others to help spread your message, the more likely it is to have an impact.