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

by Julie Zhuo

Worry about what’s in front of you—don’t worry yet about what’s months or years ahead.

The best plans don’t matter if you can’t achieve them accurately or quickly enough to make a difference.

The way we make progress should also be a work in progress.

At the end of the day, a resilient organization isn’t one that never makes mistakes but rather one whose mistakes make it stronger over time.

Heraclitus, the Greek philosopher, once said: “No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it is not the same river and he is not the same man.” Every challenge is like crossing such a river. Investigate the stepping-stones, the currents, the hidden eddies. And then, once you make your plan, take that first step to get to the other side.

People trump projects—a great team is a prerequisite for great work.

Beyond people, you and your report should be aligned on why you’re doing what you’re doing and what success looks like. As Antoine de Saint-Exupéry has been attributed as saying, “If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.”

Change is hard, but trust your instincts. Would you hire this person again if the role were open? If the answer is no, make the move.

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. From this, you can extrapolate that anything your report can do just as well or better than you, you should delegate.

As long as you continue to be motivated by your purpose, as long as your aspirations extend beyond what your team is currently capable of, as long as you can see new challenges on the horizon, then there’s opportunity for you to have more impact. Often, this means doing new things that you’re not very good at yet. Compared to the expertise you had in the responsibilities you delegated away, this can feel uncomfortable.

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?

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? Make a list of the aspects of culture that you wouldn’t want to emulate from other teams or companies. Why not?

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 a 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? Imagine how you want your team to work in a year’s time. How would you describe to a report what you hope will be different then compared to now?

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.

As I’ve given greater voice to what I care about, nobody, not even once, has told me that it’s annoying or condescending. Instead, the feedback is the opposite—talking about your values makes you a more authentic and inspiring leader.

If you’re not willing to change your behavior for a stated value, then don’t bring it up in the first place.

If you say something is important to you and you’d like the rest of your team to care about it, be the first person to live that value. Otherwise, don’t be surprised when nobody else does either.

As a leader, nurturing culture may not be the first thing on your mind. You may be dreaming about the changes you want to create in the world or sketching out the master strategy that will get you there. But success or failure aren’t usually the results of a few sweeping decisions. Rather, how far you get will be the sum of the millions of actions taken by your team during the small, quotidian moments. How does everyone treat each other? How do you solve problems together? What are you willing to give up to act in accordance with your values?

Pay attention to your own actions—the little things you say and do—as well as what behaviors you are rewarding or discouraging. All of it works together to tell the story of what you care about and how you believe a great team should work together.