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

by Julie Zhuo

the most important character in your management journey: you.

Learning how to be a great leader means learning about your superpowers and flaws, learning how to navigate the obstacles in your head, and learning how to learn.

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.

Take the responsibility seriously and don’t perpetuate bad meeting culture. Instead, steer the precious time you and your colleagues spend together toward what’s truly valuable.

if people were tuning out, I wasn’t succeeding.

Success here is both getting to a clear decision and everyone leaving with a sense of trust in the process. You don’t need consensus, but those whom the decision affects should feel that the way it was made was efficient and fair.

People feel that their side wasn’t presented well, so they don’t trust the resulting decision.

Decisions take a long time to make, which delays progress. While important and hard-to-reverse decisions deserve deep consideration, be wary of spending too much time on small, easy-to-reverse decisions.

Unlike my discontinued status meeting, this one works because there is a lot more preparation behind it to ensure the content is interesting.

Other times, the feedback can result in significant deviations from the plan.

Feedback meetings don’t exist to pass or receive judgment but rather to get to the best outcome.

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

The best idea generation comes from understanding that we need both time to think alone (because our brains are most creative when we’re by ourselves) and time to engage with others (because hearing different perspectives creates sparks that lead to even better ideas). Preparation and good facilitation is key. A great generative meeting does the following:

Sometimes, you may decide to get a group of people together for the simple purpose of focusing on relationships. Team lunches, dinners, and other social events serve this purpose, as do some 1:1s and team meetings.

Creates better understanding and trust between participants Encourages people to be open and authentic Makes people feel cared for

Practice clarity and ruthless efficiency with your meetings, and people will thank you for respecting the sanctity of their time.

Up

This is costly as well because you can’t make a fair decision without all affected stakeholders in the room, so either the decision gets delayed or it risks being reescalated and debated again.

Which people are necessary to make that outcome happen?

And as a reviewer, I felt I needed to choose my words carefully in front of such a big crowd, which meant I couldn’t be as casual and direct as I would have liked.

Sending out an agenda ahead of time shows a level of care and intentionality in helping the group stay focused.

After the meeting, send out a recap to the attendees with a summary of the discussion, a list of specific action items and who is responsible for each, and when the next check-in will be.

hiring is not a problem to be solved but an opportunity to build the future of your organization.

“The hiring process typically has three elements: the résumé, the interview, and the reference check,” says Ryan. “Most managers overvalue the résumé and interview and undervalue the reference check.5 References matter most.”

Prioritizing diversity isn’t just a poster or a slogan. It’s the belief that diversity in all aspects—from gender to race to work history to life experiences—leads to better ideas and better results.

every single person, you and me included, comes with his or her own bag of beliefs that should be challenged by others.

power of diversity helps our team avoid biases, make better decisions, and think more creatively.

one of the smartest ways to multiply your team’s impact is to hire the best people and empower them to do more and more until you stretch the limits of their capabilities.

managers, the problem quickly becomes intractable. You can’t create great outcomes without consistently attracting talented people and ensuring that they can also hire well.

Having a great bench is one of the strongest signs of stellar leadership because it means the team you’ve built can steer the ship and thrive, even if you are not at the helm.

Can even the best leaders be coached to even better performance? The answer is absolutely yes, so you should still see your job as being a multiplier for your people.

Repeatedly talk about your values so that everyone understands what great talent looks like. And, above all, make it clear that building the team isn’t just one person’s job, it’s everyone’s job.

Because of the huge amount of subjectivity in words like help or improve, they don’t do much to create a shared sense of purpose.

As a manager, it’s important to define and share a concrete vision for your team

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

it’s through the process of planning that we make sense of our situation and plot our best shot at success.

A good strategy understands the crux of the problem it’s trying to solve. It focuses a team’s unique strengths, resources, and energy on what matters the most in achieving its goals.

what your team is well suited for. There are usually dozens of ways to get from Point A to Point B. Do you want to go by land, sea, or air?

The plan that is smartest for your team is the one that acknowledges your relative strengths and weaknesses.

The general idea is that the majority of the results come from a minority of the causes. The key is identifying which things matter the most.

As Koch writes, “Few people take objectives really seriously.3 They put average effort into too many things, rather than superior thought and effort into a few important things. People who achieve the most are selective as well as determined.

Prioritization is key, and it’s an essential managerial skill.

Effort doesn’t count; results are what matter.

“People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on.4 But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I’m actually as proud of the things we haven’t done as the things I have done. Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things.”

Each might assume someone else is responsible.

Why you should assign someone to take ownership

Even when people have the best of intentions, fuzziness around role definition can create problems.

the clearer I am about whom I’m holding accountable for what, the less of a chance there is for ambiguity and crossed wires.

“Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.”5

Nothing worthwhile happens overnight. Every big dream is the culmination of thousands of tiny steps forward.

Thinking only about the finish line of a long race can be discouraging because it seems miles and miles away.