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

by Julie Zhuo

But the learning stuck with me because what spoke to him wasn’t the fact that I had rattled off a bunch of amazing advice. It was that, for a moment, we related. I wasn’t some authority figure but rather another person also wading through the choppy waters of management. That helped us connect as individuals, and going forward, it was easier for us to discuss pretty much anything else. The way to earn trust with your reports is no different than how you earn it with anyone else,

If you don’t truly respect or care about your report, there is no faking it. Trust me, they know. None of us are such brilliant actors that we can control the thousands of tiny signals we are subconsciously sending through our body language. If you don’t believe in your heart of hearts that someone can succeed, it will be impossible for you to convey your strong belief in them.

What caring does mean, however, is doing your best to help your report be successful and fulfilled in her work. It means taking the time to learn what she cares about. It means understanding that we are not separate people at work and at home—sometimes the personal blends into the professional, and that’s okay.

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.

I know people who have been let go by their managers and still make time to see them for lunch and catch up on life. We are more than the output of our work on a particular team at a particular moment in time, and true respect reflects that.

The ideal 1:1 leaves your report feeling that it was useful for her. If she thinks that the conversation was pleasant but largely unmemorable, then you can do better. Remember that your job is to be a multiplier for your people. If you can remove a barrier, provide a valuable new perspective, or increase their confidence, then you’re enabling them to be more successful. How can you achieve stellar 1:1s? The answer is preparation. It’s rare that an amazing conversation springs forth when nobody has a plan for what to talk about. I tell my reports that I want our time together to be valuable, so we should focus on what’s most important for them. Here are some ideas to get started: 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?

It’s helpful for both manager and report to think through the topics they want to bring to the 1:1 conversation. Every morning, I’ve gotten into the habit of scanning my calendar and compiling a list of questions for each person I’m meeting with. Why questions? Because a coach’s best tool for understanding what’s going on is to ask. Don’t presume you know what the problem or solution is. Too often, attempts to “help” aren’t actually helpful, even when served with the best of intentions. We all remember lectures that went in one ear and out the other because it was obvious the other party didn’t understand our real problem, or when unasked-for “help” feels indistinguishable from micromanaging or meddling. Your job as a manager isn’t to dole out advice or “save the day”—it’s to empower your report to find the answer herself. She has more context than you on the problems she’s dealing with, so she’s in the best position to uncover the solution. Let her lead the 1:1 while you listen and probe. Here are some of my favorite questions to get the conversation moving: 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 li...

Your report should have a clear sense at all times of what your expectations are and where he stands. If he is often wondering, What does my manager think of me? then you need to dial up your level of feedback. Don’t assume he can read between the lines or that no news is good news. If you think he is the epitome of awesome, tell him. If you don’t think he is operating at the level you’d like to see, he should know that, too, and precisely why you feel that way.

Brené Brown, research expert in courage, shame, and empathy, begs to differ. She proposes that there is enormous power in expressing vulnerability: “Vulnerability sounds like truth and feels like courage. Truth and courage aren’t always comfortable, but they’re never weakness.” These days, I try to admit when I don’t have the answers or when I’m working through my own personal challenges.

As a manager, my attention is similarly drawn toward the problem spots. I’m usually focused on the designs that aren’t quite there, the projects that are slipping behind schedule, or the teams that have hiring needs. Whenever I’m talking with my reports, it’s easy to spend all our time on the things that need improvement. And yet, all of us likely remember moments when a kind word about our unique strengths made us swell with pride and gave us more fuel to achieve our goals. Recognition for hard work, valuable skills, helpful advice, or good values can be hugely motivating if it feels genuine and specific. Furthermore, people are more likely to succeed when using their strengths—a message explored in depth by Marcus Buckingham and Donald Clifton in Now, Discover Your Strengths and Tom Rath in StrengthsFinder 2.0.

In each case, you’re giving someone an opportunity to grow in a way that speaks to their interests and strengths. “There is one quality that sets truly great managers apart from the rest: they discover what is unique about each person and then capitalize on it,” says Buckingham, the renowned management consultant who has studied hundreds of organizations and leaders. “The job of a manager . . . is to turn one person’s particular talent into performance.”

But in the same way that individuals should play to their strengths, so should you pay attention to your team’s top talent—the people who are doing well and could be doing even better. Don’t let the worst performers dominate your time—try to diagnose, address, and resolve their issues as swiftly as you can.

The rising stars on your team may not be clamoring for your attention, but if you help them to dream bigger and become more capable leaders, you’ll be amazed at how much more your team can do as a whole.

I now understand that personal and organizational values play a huge role in whether someone will be happy on a given team. Call it what you want—fit, motivation, chemistry—but the things a person cares about must also be what the team (and company) cares about. If not, then that person might find themselves in frequent misalignment with what they want for their own career.

At the end of the day, if you don’t believe someone is set up to succeed in his current role, the kindest thing you can do is to be honest with him and support him in moving on. Former General Electric CEO Jack Welch argues that protecting low performers only increases the damage when, inevitably, a manager is forced to let them go. “What I think is brutal and ‘false kindness’ is keeping people around who aren’t going to grow and prosper. There’s no cruelty like waiting and telling people late in their careers that they don’t belong.” You have two options at this point: help someone find a new role in your organization or let him or her go.

The good news is that letting people go is an extreme situation. More commonly, the right coaching can help your reports understand what to aspire to, how to overcome the habits that are holding them back, and how to grow their impact. Great managers are excellent coaches,

For a leader, giving feedback—both when things are going well and when they aren’t—is one of the most fundamental aspects of the job. Mastering this skill means that you can knock down two of the biggest barriers preventing your reports from doing great work—unclear expectations and inadequate skills—so that they know exactly where to aim and how to hit the target.

Think of the best feedback you’ve ever received. Why was it so meaningful to you? I’m willing to bet that the reason you remember it is because the feedback inspired you to change your behavior, which resulted in your life getting better. Feedback, at its best, transforms people in ways they’re proud of.

Behavioral feedback is useful because it provides a level of personalization and depth that is missing from task-specific feedback. By connecting the dots across multiple examples, you can help people understand how their unique interests, personalities, and habits affect their ability to have impact. When you give behavioral feedback, you are making a statement about how you perceive that person, so your words need to be thoughtfully considered and supported with specific examples to explain why you feel that way. It’s best discussed in person so the receiver can ask questions and engage in a back-and-forth with you. Behavioral feedback helps people understand the reality of how others see them, which may be different than how they see themselves. It can feel difficult to talk about because it is so personal—a

It’s impossible to expect perfection. We are only human. Failures will occur, projects will miss deadlines, and people will make mistakes. That’s okay. But when these things happen, readjusting expectations as quickly as possible helps people recover from errors with grace. You demonstrate care and maturity when you preempt bigger issues down the road. Whenever you find yourself deeply disappointed, or disappointing someone else, ask yourself: Where did I miss out on setting clear expectations, and how might I do better in the future?

The mark of a great coach is that others improve under your guidance. Maybe you’d like to see your reports dream bigger, accomplish more, or overcome the barriers that get in their way. The question that should always be in the back of your mind is: Does my feedback lead to the change I’m hoping for?

The best way to make your feedback heard is to make the listener feel safe, and to show that you’re saying it because you care about her and want her to succeed. 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.

The first is a verbal confirmation: “Okay, let’s make sure we’re on the same page—what are your takeaways and next steps?” The second is to summarize via email what was discussed. Writing can clarify the points being made as well as be reread and referenced in the future. The third tactic is to help the person hear the same message many times and from many sources. For example, try dedicating multiple 1:1s to talking about particularly tough areas of growth with your report.

1. Make your feedback as specific as possible.

2. Clarify what success looks and feels like.

3. Suggest next steps.

When you give feedback or make a decision, your report may not agree with it. That’s okay. Keep in mind that some decisions are yours to make. You are the person ultimately held accountable for the output of your team, and you may have more information or a different perspective on the right path forward.

Ultimately, what I’ve learned about giving feedback—even the most difficult feedback—is that people are not fragile flowers. No report has ever said to me, “Please treat me with kid gloves.” Instead, they say: “I want your feedback to help me improve.” They tell me, “I’d like you to be honest and direct with me.” How many of us don’t want the same? Telling it straight is a sign of respect. “It’s brutally hard to tell people when they are screwing up,” writes Kim Scott, a former Google manager and the author of Radical Candor. “You don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings; that’s because you’re not a sadist. You don’t want that person or the rest of the team to think you’re a jerk. Plus, you’ve been told since you learned to talk, ‘If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.’ Now all of a sudden it’s your job to say it. You’ve got to undo a lifetime of training.”

At Facebook, we have a saying immortalized in posters all over campus: “Feedback is a gift.” It costs time and effort to share, but when we have it, we’re better off. So let’s give it generously.

As much as you try to tell yourself that your inner turmoil lives inside your own head, the truth is that most of us aren’t very good actors. People know. They see the faults that you don’t want to admit, like how my anxiety was leading to wishy-washy decisions. But they’re also kinder to you than you might imagine. I remember tearing up reading comments about how I was kicking ass in ways that I wasn’t giving myself credit for.

Being a great manager is a highly personal journey, and if you don’t have a good handle on yourself, you won’t have a good handle on how to best support your team.

No matter what obstacles you face, you first need to get deep with knowing you—your strengths, your values, your comfort zones, your blind spots, and your biases. When you fully understand yourself, you’ll know where your true north lies.

Imposter syndrome is what makes you feel as though you’re the only one with nothing worthwhile to say when you walk into a room full of people you admire. Imposter syndrome is what makes you double-, triple-, or quadruple-check your email before hitting Send so that nobody finds any mistakes and figures out you’re actually a fraud. Imposter syndrome is the sensation that you’re teetering along the edge of a sheer cliff with flailing arms, the whole world watching and waiting to see when you fall. Here’s the thing to remember: feeling this way is totally normal. Linda Hill, a professor at Harvard Business School, has spent years studying the transition into management. “Ask any new manager about the early days of being a boss—indeed, ask any senior executive to recall how he or she felt as a new manager. If you get an honest answer, you’ll hear a tale of disorientation and, for some, overwhelming confusion. The new role didn’t feel anything like it was supposed to. It felt too big for any one person to handle.”

If you want to do a quick version, jot down the first thing that comes to mind when you ask yourself the following questions: 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 Like mine, your responses will likely cluster around a few themes. Here, you can see that my strengths are dreaming big, learning quickly, and remaining upbeat. Whatever yours are, remember them and hold them dear. You’ll be relying on them time and time again.

Right beneath your list of strengths, answer the following: 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

To develop our self-awareness and to calibrate our strengths and weaknesses, we must confront the truth of what we’re really like by asking others for their unvarnished opinions. The goal isn’t to seek praise; the goal is to give our peers a safe opening where they can be honest—even brutally honest—so that we can get the most accurate information. In the same way that you gather feedback for your reports, you can learn about yourself through the following tactics: Ask your manager to help you calibrate yourself through the following two questions: 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?

Hey, I value your feedback and I’d like to be a more effective team member. Would you be willing to answer the questions below? Please be as honest as you can because that’s what will help me the most—I promise nothing you say will offend me. Feedback is a gift, and I’m grateful for your taking the time. Examples of specific asks: On our last project together, in what ways did you see me having impact? What do you think I could have done to have more impact? With my team, what am I doing well that you’d like to see me do more of? What should I stop doing? One of the things I’m working on is being more decisive. How do you think I’m doing on that? Any suggestions on how I can do better here? Ask for task-specific feedback to calibrate yourself on specific skills. For example, if you’re not sure how good of a public speaker you are, follow up with a few people after you give a presentation and say, “I’m hoping to improve my speaking skills. What do you think went well with my presentation? What would have made it twice as good?”

It takes a certain amount of confidence to ask for critical feedback. For me, the breakthrough came when I realized I needed to change my mindset. If I saw every challenge as a test of my worthiness, then I’d constantly worry about where I stood rather than how I could improve. It’s like stressing out more about your exam grade than about whether you’re actually learning the concepts being taught. On the other hand, if I approached challenges with the belief that I could get better at anything if I put in the effort, then the vicious cycle of anxious self-evaluation would be broken. No matter how good or bad I am at any particular skill, the notion that it’s within my power to improve has allowed me to approach learning with curiosity instead of apprehension. And the rewards have been tremendous—I would never have known that my feedback was often vague and hand-wavy had I not invited that comment from a colleague. Once I heard it, I was able to work on making my points more precise and actionable, and now that’s praised as one of my strengths.

The perspective you have changes everything. With a fixed mindset, your actions are governed by fear—fear of failure, fear of judgment, fear of being found out as an imposter. With a growth mindset, you’re motivated to seek out the truth and ask for feedback because you know it’s the fastest path to get you where you want to go.

Míndset from carol dweck

Beyond strengths and weaknesses, the next part of understanding yourself is knowing which environments help you to do your best work and which situations trigger a negative reaction. This helps you design your day-to-day to respond to your needs.

If you’re not sure what your ideal environment looks like, ask yourself the following: Which six-month period of my life did I feel the most energetic and productive? What gave me that energy? In the past month, what moments stand out as highlights? What conditions enabled those moments to happen, and are they re-creatable? In the past week, when was I in a state of deep focus? How did I get there?

Triggers occupy the space between your growth area and somebody else’s—you could work on controlling your reactions, but the other person could also benefit from hearing your feedback. To figure out what your triggers are, ask yourself the following questions: When was the last time someone said something that annoyed me more than it did others around me? Why did I feel so strongly about it? What would my closest friends say my pet peeves are? Who have I met that I’ve immediately been wary of? What made me feel that way? What’s an example of a time when I’ve overreacted and later regretted it? What made me so worked up in that moment? Knowing what lifts you up or brings you down is enormously valuable. Like how athletes have structured diet and exercise regimens to keep them competing in peak condition, the work you do to help yourself operate at your best will lead to many more winning days on the job.

Studies show that if you write down five things you’re grateful for every night, you’ll feel happier in the long run. When you need to build your confidence, remember to do the same by focusing on all the things that you are doing well.

In study after study, high workplace stress has been shown to inhibit creativity, whereas “when people were feeling more positive, they were more likely to be creative,” says Teresa Amabile, Harvard Business School professor and author of The Progress Principle.

Management is a highly personal journey. We are all at different points on our path. Some of us start out stronger at certain skills than others.

set a lofty goal for yourself: How can I be twice as good?

But we know by now that a manager’s job is to help her team get better results. When you do better, by extension, she does better. Hence, your manager is someone who is on your side, who wants you to succeed, and who is usually willing to invest her time and energy into helping you. The key is to treat your manager as a coach, not as a judge.

As Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is fond of saying, sometimes you have to “disagree and commit” for the sake of moving forward quickly. A great decision-making meeting does the following: Gets a decision made (obviously) Includes the people most directly affected by the decision as well as a clearly designated decision-maker Presents all credible options objectively and with relevant background information, and includes the team’s recommendation if there is one Gives equal airtime to dissenting opinions and makes people feel that they were heard

A great informational meeting accomplishes the following: Enables the group to feel like they learned something valuable Conveys key messages clearly and memorably Keeps the audience’s attention (through dynamic speakers, rich storytelling, skilled pacing, interactivity) Evokes an intended emotion—whether inspiration, trust, pride, courage, empathy, etc.

A great feedback meeting achieves the following: Gets everyone on the same page about what success for the project looks like Honestly represents the current status of the work, including an assessment of how things are going, any changes since the last check-in, and what the future plans are Clearly frames open questions, key decisions, or known concerns to get the most helpful feedback Ends with agreed-upon next steps (including when the next milestone or check-in will be)