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

by Julie Zhuo

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. Your job, as a manager, is to get better outcomes from a group of people working together. It’s from this simple definition that everything else flows.

A great manager might be asked to lead a new team, and because it takes her time to ramp up, her results might be unimpressive at the beginning. On the flip side, a bad manager might achieve a few quarters of amazing results because she inherited a talented team or set high-pressure ultimatums that had people burning the midnight oil.

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? The first criterion looks at our team’s present outcomes; the second criterion asks whether we’re set up for great outcomes in the future.

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.

If you are wondering whether you can be a great manager, ask yourself these three questions. Do I Find It More Motivating to Achieve a Particular Outcome or to Play a Specific Role? As a manager, you are judged on your team’s outcomes, so your job is to do whatever most helps them succeed. If your team is lacking key skills, then you need to spend your time training or hiring. If someone is creating problems for others, then you need to get him to stop. If people don’t know what they should be doing, then you need to construct a plan. A lot of this work is unglamorous. But because it’s important, it must be done, and if nobody else does it, then it falls to you. This is why adaptability is a key trait of great managers. As your team changes—whether it’s goals shifting, people joining or leaving, or processes evolving—what you do every day will also change. If you’re committed to your purpose, then you will probably enjoy (or at least not mind) the variation that comes with the job. If, instead, there is a specific activity that you love too much to give up—whether it’s seeing patients, teaching students, writing code, or designing products—then you may find your personal goals at odds with what the team needs most. This question is more important than any other on the list, and a strong yes can make up for almost anything, which is why you see leaders with vastly different strengths and temperaments helming companies. What they have in common is that their number one prior...

That was when I realized the root problem: None of the designers were truly sold on my idea. They didn’t think it was going to succeed. And because of that, the work trudged along, lacking heart and soul. I learned then one of my first lessons of management—the best outcomes come from inspiring people to action, not telling them what to do.

Some of your reports will appreciate the chance to build the kind of manager–report relationship that they’ve always wanted.

To make the most of having a blank slate, give everyone the benefit of the doubt, no matter what you’re told. Hopefully others will do the same for you. And be up front with people—especially your reports—about the kind of relationship you’d like to build and the kind of manager you want to be.

In your first few months, your primary job is to listen, ask questions, and learn.

“Since I’m new, you might not feel comfortable sharing everything with me right away. I hope to earn your trust over time. I’ll start by sharing more about myself, including my biggest failure ever …” I love this anecdote because it’s the epitome of “show, don’t tell.”

No matter how you slice it, you are your reports’ boss. You have more impact on their day-to-day than they have on yours. This means that the responsibility of building a trusting relationship lies more with you than with them.

The issue, of course, is that if your reports don’t tell you how they’re really feeling, you can’t help them. You may miss early warning signs that lead to bigger problems down the road. People’s dissatisfaction will fester beneath the surface until one day they surprise you with their resignation. And most of the time when that happens, they’re not just quitting your company, they are also quitting you.

One of my teammates shared with me a simple litmus test for assessing the health of her relationships: 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.

strive for all your one-on-one meetings to feel a little awkward.3 Why? Because the most important and meaningful conversations have that characteristic.

My reports would gladly work for me again. One of the truest indicators of the strength of your relationships is whether your reports would want you as their manager in the future if they were given the choice.

In anonymous surveys to track team health, some companies explicitly ask the question, “Would you work for your manager again?”

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?

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.

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?

you have good values

attention is similarly drawn toward the problem spots.

Good CEOs know that they should double down on the projects that are working and put more people, resources, and attention on those rather than get every single project to the point of “not failing.”

YOU DON’T ALWAYS HAVE TO MAKE IT WORK

personal and organizational values play a huge role in whether someone will be happy on a given team.

These days, I spend a lot of time trying to understand what potential candidates value, as well as being transparent about what my company and I value.

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.

What a great job looks like for your report, compared to a mediocre or bad job What advice you have to help your report get started on the right foot Common pitfalls your report should avoid In your first three months on the job, I expect that you’ll build good relationships with your team, be able to ramp up on a small-scale “starter” project, and then share your first design iteration for review. I don’t expect that you’ll get the green light on it right away, but if you do, that would be knocking it out of the park. Here’s what success looks like for the next meeting you run: the different options are framed clearly, everyone feels like their point of view is well represented, and a decision is made.

Share Behavioral Feedback Thoughtfully and Regularly When you zoom out and look at many examples of task-specific feedback for a report, what themes emerge? Does he make decisions quickly or slowly? Is he a process wizard or an unconventional thinker? Does he gravitate toward pragmatic or idealistic solutions?

Behavioral feedback helps people understand the reality of how others see them, which may be different than how they see themselves.

Collect 360-Degree Feedback for Maximum Objectivity

You’ve Just Assigned a Challenging New Project to Your Report Because this project is high stakes, you’d like to keep a close eye on how it’s going. If you frequently drop in and ask for an update or give unsolicited feedback, you risk making your report feel disempowered. He’ll be constantly checking over his shoulder, paranoid that you’re just around the corner. At the same time, you don’t want to wait a month before reviewing the work. If it’s not heading down the right track, you’d like to know sooner rather than later. Here, setting expectations helps with both problems. 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.

That was when I realized it was I who misunderstood: George had heard the feedback. The issue was that he didn’t see what was complicated about the way he explained things. And if he couldn’t see it, he couldn’t fix it.

Hearing this, I was shocked. In my talk with Amy, I had briefly mentioned the long lunches and non-work activity as two data points among others that made me wonder about her motivation. But the point I really wanted to make was about her low productivity. If she was a top performer, this issue would never have come up.

“Does this feedback resonate with you? Why or why not?”

“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.

One manager I know takes it even further—whenever he gets feedback about one of his reports from someone else, he always asks that person, “Would you be comfortable sharing that feedback directly with X?”

You lost the room when you shared seven goals for the review instead of just one or two. It’s hard to remember them all, so the priorities felt unclear. At the end, you showed three different directions for where we could go from here, but you didn’t give us your recommendations or how to think about the pros and cons of each option. As a result, people were confused about the next steps.

Be clear about whether you’re setting an expectation or merely offering a suggestion.

Don’t engage when you are upset.

If you need a template, try this: When I [heard/observed/reflected on] your [action/behavior/output], I felt concerned because … I’d like to understand your perspective and talk about how we can resolve this.

“I recognize that you may not agree with my decision, but I’m asking for your cooperation in moving forward.”

“It’s brutally hard to tell people when they are screwing up,”2 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.”

back would be hard, but I was not prepared for a “Winter Is Coming” kind of difficult. A few weeks in, I found myself overwhelmed by every little thing. My mind felt like the aftermath of

Let me tell you a few facts about me: I’m more comfortable in small groups than big ones. I care deeply about understanding first principles. I am more articulate in writing than in person. I need time alone to reflect and process new facts before forming an opinion. I skew toward long-term thinking, which means that I sometimes make impractical short-term decisions. And at the end of the day, nothing gives me more satisfaction than learning and growing.

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.

Over the years, here’s what I’ve learned about what enables me to be my best: I’ve received at least eight hours of sleep the night before. I’ve done something productive early in the day, which motivates me to keep the momentum going. I know what my desired outcome looks like before I start. I have trust and camaraderie with the people I work with. I’m able to process information alone (and through writing) before big discussions or decisions. I feel like I’m learning and growing.

It’s helpful to share your triggers and learn what other people’s are. Because we’re all wired differently, your peers may not be aware of how their behavior is affecting you, and vice versa.

The group who went to the gym every day increased their muscle strength by 30 percent; the group who ran through the workout in their heads increased their strength by 13.5 percent—almost half the benefit! The legendary golfer Jack Nicklaus once wrote, “I never hit a shot,6 even in practice, without having a very sharp, in-focus picture of it in my head. It’s like a color movie.” Not only can visualization improve your outcomes, it can also help you find confidence when you’re in the Pit. If you’re feeling stuck, here are some exercises to try:

Admitting your struggles and asking for help is the opposite of weakness—in fact, it shows courage and self-awareness. You are saying that you care more about getting yourself to a good place than you do about your ego.

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?”