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

About the Author

Julie Zhuo is a businesswoman and computer scientist who graduated from Stanford University. At age 25, she became a manager at Facebook and was one of Silicon Valley’s top product design executives. She writes about technology, design, and leadership on her popular blog The Year of the Looking Glass and in publications like the New York Times and Fast Company.

Sources: Juliezhuo.com, Wikipedia, and the “About the Author” section of the book

Our one-sentence summary

Insisting that great managers are made and not born, Zhuo provides tips on how to become a better leader based on her experiences directing meetings, hiring workers, managing herself, reaching goals, and growing her team.

Publisher’s Summary

“The Making of a Manager is a modern field guide packed with everyday examples and transformative insights, including:

• How to tell a great manager from an average manager (illustrations included)
• When you should look past an awkward interview and hire someone anyway
• How to build trust with your reports by not being a boss
• Where to look when you lose faith and lack the answers

Whether you’re new to the job, a veteran leader, or looking to be promoted, this is the handbook you need to be the kind of manager you wish you had.”

Source: Book Jacket

Detailed Summary

Introduction: Great Managers Are Made, Not Born

• Zhuo tells about how her manager asked her to become a manager herself at 25. She explains that she didn’t feel prepared, as she was a product and web designer.
  • As she learned to navigate her new role, she was afraid, doubtful, and insecure about such emotions. Yet she discovered that many of the reasons why she found designing appealing also applied to managing – she wanted to work on strategies that helped and empowered others.
  • She learned how to best manage her team through trial and error, and she acknowledges that she had a lot of help.
  • Given her experience, she decided to write this book, thinking about people like her – individuals who were placed in a manager’s position somewhat abruptly, those who wonder how to help their reports, people dealing with continually growing teams, or people who are just curious about management.
• Zhuo argues great managers are made, not born. In this book, she explains why management exists so that readers can understand how to best manage.

Chapter 1: What is Management?

• Management has little to do with employment status and everything to do with the fact that you are no longer getting things done yourself. Management stems from the idea that a team can achieve more than a single person alone.
  • As a manager, your job is to find a way to obtain better outcomes as people work together to accomplish a goal.
• If getting better outcomes is the job of a manager, then a great manager is one who achieves the goal of improving such outcomes. But sometimes, it depends on certain circumstances.
  • A great manager might lead a new team. As it takes time to ramp up, results can appear unimpressive at first. Or, a bad manager might lead a talented team. Results will likely look promising in the beginning. In both cases, time will reveal the truth.
  • As a manager, you must look at the results andyour team’s satisfaction. The first factor looks into present outcomes and the second into future ones.
• Richard Hackman’s research suggests five conditions increase the probability of a team’s success: having a real team, a clear direction, an enabling structure, a supportive environment, and expert coaching.
  • Taking from such research, Zhuo argues that three main elements categorize the daily tasks of a manager:
    1. Purpose. All teams have an outcome that they are seeking to achieve – the why. Everyone in the group should have a purpose – an understanding of whytheir work matters. An unclear purpose will result in conflict and mismatched expectations.
       • A key role in a manager’s responsibilities is ensuring both that the team knows what success means andthat they all care about achieving it.
    2. People. Managers must also think about the who. Team members should be set up for success, be motivated, and have the right skills. Managers must also develop trusting relationships, make good decisions assigning roles and responsibilities, and coach people individually.
    3. Process. The last category encompasses how a team works together. Many people dislike the word process, as it sounds like a lot of paperwork and tedious meetings. But in a team setting, people can’t coordinate and collaborate without spending time developing a process that works.

• Managers are not supposed to do the work themselves, no matter how good they are at it. Their role is to improve the purpose, people, and process to create a multiplier effect on the collective outcomes of the individuals on the team.
• Most advice about management focuses on long time frames, where spending a little effort today leads to great rewards in the future. However, managers must distinguish the circumstances.
  • Taking from Abraham Maslow’s theory of the hierarchy of needs to explain motivation, Zhuo argues that a company that is on fire now needs to extinguish the flames before it can focus on growth.
  • Once the organization is beyond survival mode, you can plan for the future and invest today in what will help you achieve your goals in the years ahead.
• Another two factors that indicate if someone will become a great manager are whether they enjoy the day-to-day management tasks and whether they want to perform them. To know if you really want to become a manager or determine if you will like the job, ask yourself:
  1. Do I find it motivating to achieve a particular goal, or is it more motivating to play a specific role? If you are committed to your purpose, you will enjoy or not mind the job. But, if there is an activity you love too much to give up, your goals will probably not align with those of a manager.
     • Zhuo tells of a report of hers who was a great designer. People constantly sought her opinion and help. Zhuo thought she’d be a great manager, so she promoted her. But after a year, she quit, as she didn’t enjoy the role and burned out.
  2. Do I enjoy talking with people and having meetings? As a manager, you will spend a lot of time with people, listening and talking to them about their jobs. If this sounds appealing, you may have manager material. But, if you find it challenging or dreadful, you will probably not enjoy management.
  3. Can I remain emotionally stable in an emotionally challenging situation? While nobody likes tough situations, managers will need to have difficult conversations with reports from time to time. And some people are better at remaining steady in these instances.
• Common answers to the question, “Why do you want to become a manager?” include:
  • • I want to progress or advance in my career. While there are many companies and industries in which the only way for growth is management, keep in mind that there are modern organizations that have advancement paths that don’t require being a manager.
    • I want freedom to make decisions and take initiative. While managers have to make decisions and call some shots, these are always in the team’s and broader organization’s interests and come with accountability.
      • Zhuo tells of a time at the beginning of her management experience when she shared an idea with her team, but progress was slow. After a few attempts at reexplaining her thoughts, she realized that the designers were not persuaded or interested in her idea.
      • Zhuo learned her first lesson in management: “The best outcomes come from inspiring people to action, not telling them what to do” (p. 34).
    • I was asked to be a manager. Leaving obligation aside, ask yourself if this is something you want to do. Management is not the right path for everyone, so before you say yes or commit, consider taking a “trial test.” Ask other managers about their experiences, take an internship, or shadow someone.

• Leadership and management are not the same. While a manager is someone with a specific role, a leader has the skill to guide and influence people. A great manager must be a great leader. But not all leaders are managers.

Chapter 2: Your First Three Months

• The path that led you to become a manager influences the factors that make managing easy or hard during your first three months. The following are the four main categories that describe these paths, including their advantages and some aspects you must look out for.
  1. Apprentice: Your team grew so your manager asked you to manage a part of it.
     • Advantages
       • This path is the most effortless transition, as you have your own manager who can help and guide you. Make sure you work with your manager on a joint plan to get started and go through the transition as smoothly as possible.
       • You will have some knowledge of what works and doesn’t work. A good exercise at the beginning of the transition is to make a list of the things that are working great and the ones that need improvement. These lists provide you with an idea of what needs to change and what doesn’t.
       • Because you have context and knowledge of goals and projects, you will be able to ramp up a bit faster.
     • Drawbacks
       • Establishing a new dynamic with your former peers can be awkward. Make your best effort not to avoid conversations, even if they are uncomfortable. And don’t take it personally if people start acting differently or sharing less information with you.
       • Balancing individual contributions and management becomes complicated. Zhuo explains that when she started, she was afraid that if she stopped designing, she wouldn’t be able to be an effective leader. Trying to balance both management and designer work became unsustainable, and she wasn’t succeeding at either. When your team is made up of five or more members, plan to scale back from individual work responsibilities to become a better manager.
  2. Pioneer: You founded a new group and are responsible for its growth.
     • Advantages
       • You know better than anyone else what the job entails. Make sure you spend time developing goals and values along with your team.
       • You can build the team you want to build.
     • Drawbacks
       • You might not have a lot of support. But even if you are the only manager that does what you do in your company, you can find support from other managers, even if from different areas, within your organization. You can also seek support from managers in your area of expertise outside your organization.
       • Just like in The Apprentice category, it can be difficult to balance individual contributions with management (see above).
  3. New Boss: You are a new manager in an already established team.
     • Advantages
       • People will understand and recognize that you are new. Take advantage of it and ask as many questions as possible.
       • You are a clean slate and have the chance to form new relationships and ties, and even to reset your identity. The same applies to your reports. They will appreciate having a new opportunity to build a new relationship. Give everyone the benefit of the doubt, despite what other managers tell you.
     • Drawbacks
       • It will likely take time to adjust to the new norms and environment.
       • You will need to spend time building new and healthy relationships. Zhuo tells of a friend who addressed the “elephant in the room” by introducing himself, noting that it is awkward and uncomfortable to be new, and acknowledging that it might be hard for people to trust him. But, to make things easier for his reports, he would share a little about himself along with his biggest failure ever.
       • You are not familiar with the role, and you had no way of predicting the nature of the team, work, or environment. You’ll face challenges that you never envisioned.
  4. Successor: Your manager left so you are taking their place.
     • • Advantages. In this path, the advantages are the same as in the Apprentice path. You have a sense of what works and what doesn’t, so you can ramp up quickly and you know the context. But the things you need to watch out for do somewhat vary.
       • Drawbacks
         • Establishing a new dynamic with former peers can feel awkward.
         • The increase in responsibility can feel overwhelming, so make sure to ask for help and support from your manager and those around you.
         • You might feel pressure to act just like your former manager. Don’t fall into this trap. You will be more successful if you become a leader using your strengths.

• The first three months as a manager will mark a time of transition. Eventually, the daily tasks will become familiar. You will adapt and create routines, establish relationships, and develop your own support team. But it takes time to feel fully comfortable. In Zhuo’s case, it took about three years before she started feeling like she knew what she was doing.

Chapter 3: Leading a Small Team

• Managing a small team requires that leaders create a healthy manager-report relationship and develop an environment of support.
• In a small group, a shared sense of purpose is relatively easy to develop. Out of process and people, the latter is the more important.
• Two main possibilities explain why members of small groups struggle to develop good work. Either they don’t know how to do good work, or they aren’t motivated.
  • As a manager, you can help individuals learn the skills they’re missing to do great work, or you can hire someone else.
  • To motivate someone, you have to consider a few scenarios. One possibility is that a worker doesn’t know what great work looks like. Another is that the role doesn’t match their aspirations, values, or goals.
  • As a manager, you have to learn to diagnose and solve problems with your reports. The first step is building a stable and trusting relationship.
• It is more your responsibility to build a healthy relationship with your reports than it is theirs. Reports will naturally want their managers to think well of them. You need to create a safe space for them to tell you what they really feel so that you can help them.
• If the following three statements are true, you’ll have developed a healthy relationship where reports know you care about them.
  • Reports tell you about their challenges. If you ask them how things are going and repeatedly get the answer, “Everything is fine,” you might need to dig a little deeper.
  • You and your reports regularly provide each other with critical feedback without anyone taking it personally. There are always going to be uncomfortable conversations, but for there to be solutions, things must be communicated.
  • Reports would gladly work for you again. Usually, as a manager, you can tell if a report would work for you again. But if you must ask, you can ask your reports, “What are the qualities of a perfect manager?” to evaluate and compare.
• To earn your reports’ trust, respect and care about them. Supporting or caring does not mean always agreeing or defending them. You also need to tell them when they’re wrong. It does mean helping them become successful.
  • To help them, you need to invest time. Zhuo recommends weekly 30-minute one-on-one meetings. But to take advantage of the time, discuss top priorities, discuss what great work looks like, share feedback, and reflect on how things are going. It’s helpful to prepare questions beforehand.
  • As a manager, your job is not to provide advice but to empower people.
  • When evaluating someone, you should be honest and transparent. The same honesty and transparency are necessary when admitting mistakes and growth areas.
• Due to evolutionary advantage, humans are wired to overfocus on the bad more than the good. As a manager, you will naturally tend to focus on the problems. But most people will remember when you made them feel good, recognized their strengths, and fueled them to achieve their goals. You need to find the proper balance.
• Good CEOs know that they should put more effort and resources into the projects that are working, rather than trying to save the ones that aren’t. The same applies in the context of teams and teamwork. At times, it is better to invest your time in those who are doing better.
• As a manager, it is difficult to fire people, especially if they are good workers. It is equally painful when people quit. But managers need to know that personal and organizational values will impact whether someone is happy and thriving at a company.
  • Zhuo explains that she spent a lot of her time trying to understand potential candidates’ values and being transparent about those of the company. If these didn’t appear to match, she wouldn’t hire the person even if they had all the skills she was looking for.
  • When it comes to firing someone, keep in mind that it is kinder to let them go and move on. Quoting former General Electric CEO Jack Welch, Zhuo argues that protecting low performers is a false kindness that keeps both the company and the individual from growing and prospering. “There is no cruelty like waiting and telling people late in their careers that they don’t belong” (p. 78).
• Firing someone shouldn’t be the default. Most of the time, managers can and should work with reports to help them improve.

Chapter 4: The Art of Feedback

• Most people struggle with providing feedback. We might feel like we don’t have much to say, or we don’t want to hurt someone’s feelings. But giving feedback is a fundamental part of a manager’s job.
• Good feedback transforms people in a way that makes them feel proud of themselves. It doesn’t always have to be critical. It can come in the form of praise – which is better for motivation. There are four main strategies to inspire change in others:
  1. Set clear expectations at the beginning. The feedback process should begin before the work starts. Managers and reports should agree on what success looks like. Provide advice to help reports start working and share common drawbacks or aspects to avoid.
  2. Give task-specific feedback as frequently as possible. Provide feedback about what someone did right after the fact. Be precise and detailed. Focus on the what and not the who to avoid making it personal.
  3. Share behavioral feedback thoughtfully and regularly. Provide personalized and in-depth feedback. Rely on examples that help reports understand how their interests, personalities, and habits affect their work. Make sure to have discussions in person.
  4. Collect 360-degree feedback to remain objective. Provide aggregated feedback by relying on other colleagues’ viewpoints. This form of feedback takes more time to gather, so provide it only a few times a year. However, 360-degree feedback is helpful because you will sometimes lack context and information about your reports’ daily work.

• Task-specific feedback is necessary, but providing only this type of feedback might limit someone’s growth. Zhuo finds that one-on-one behavioral feedback meetings every month are helpful for individuals to improve their career goals.
• Whenever you have a major disappointment in one of your reports, it is highly likely that there was a failure to set clear expectations.
  • Avoid waiting until individual reviews to let people know that they are not meeting expectations. They will feel terrible, and you will have failed to take advantage of the time they could otherwise have used better.
  • Make sure you set clear expectations as early as possible to avoid future disappointment.
  • Failing to set expectations clearly limits your reports’ ability to communicate with their teams and you. E.g., build an environment where people feel safe to talk about problems or fears of not meeting a goal in time.
  • Whenever you feel disappointed in someone, ask yourself where you missed setting clear expectations or how you could be clearer in the future.
• Feedback is only valuable if it motivates improvement. As managers, sometimes we feel like pointing out a problem is enough. But you also have to provide guidance. Always consider whether you’re giving feedback often enough, notice if reports listen to and embrace it, and determine if it leads to positive action.
  • Keep in mind that what you say and what a listener hears are not always the same. Even when you think you were clear, you might have said too much or too little, or your body language could have sent a different message.
  • Ed Batista explains that feedback doesn’t always work because people see these conversations as threatening. During these conversations, adrenaline fuels fight-or-flight responses, making people less capable of absorbing information. Create an environment where listeners feel safe.
  • After providing feedback, ask your reports whether the feedback resonated with them. Then, ask them why or why not. You can also end the conversation with, “Ok, let’s make sure we’re on the same page. What are your takeaways and next steps?”
• The following three tips help ensure feedback leads to action.
  1. Make feedback specific. Use examples to explain the whybehind it to ensure the recipient understands what you mean.
  2. Clarify what success looks and feels like. Even when the person understands the feedback, it might be hard for them to understand what to aspire to.
  3. Suggest next steps. Offer recommendations, but let people know whether you’re setting expectations or simply giving a suggestion. But avoid overdoing this, as you want to empower your team and not micromanage it.

• When you deliver negative feedback, avoid using charged language, control your body language, and never make declarations personal. If you get upset and emotional at a given moment, take a step back and cool down before engaging.
• A common tactic managers use when scared of providing feedback is phrasing concerns as questions. E.g., “I have a few questions about your work. Do you have a moment to talk about it?”
  • While feedback with a curious mindset is healthy, framing worries as questions feels disingenuous. Or, your report might not notice your concerns and might not change.
• The best way to give critical feedback is to be direct and dispassionate but respectful. Try phrasing it like 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.
  • Try not to give a long preamble. While many managers rely on the compliment sandwich strategy to provide feedback, Zhuo finds it ineffective. Praising the person before and after a hard-to-hear message makes the whole thing appear insincere. You also risk your reports getting lost.
• When delivering bad news about a decision, the decision should be the first thing you communicate. Own it and be firm, as this is not a discussion. As a manager, even if others disagree, sometimes decisions are yours to make, as you are the one held accountable for your team’s output.
• Zhuo ends this chapter by quoting a Facebook saying that they have written on posters all over campus: “Feedback is a gift.” She adds, “It costs time and effort to share, but when we have it, we’re better off. So let’s give it generously” (p. 103).

Chapter 5: Managing Yourself

• To manage your team, you must first know yourself. You have to know what your strengths, weaknesses, values, comfort zones, blind spots, and biases are to know what’s the best way to manage and support your team.
• Every manager will feel like an imposter at some point. Imposter syndromemakes you feel you have nothing valuable to say or triple-check your emails before sending them. But feeling this way is normal.
  • Imposter syndrome is common among managers because they are often looked to for answers, and constantly have to do things they haven’t done before.
• The first step in understanding your leadership style is to know your strengths. Many tests and frameworks can help you decipher your strengths. But for a quick analysis, you can answer the following questions by writing down the first thing that comes to mind:
  • How would the people who know and like you best describe you in three words?
  • What three qualities do you possess that you’re proud of?
  • When looking back at past successes, what three traits do you credit?
  • What are the three most common pieces of positive feedback your managers and peers give you?
• The second step is knowing your weaknesses and triggers. To help you become more aware of these, answer the following questions:
  • What does your worst inner critic yell at you for?
  • If you were given three managerial gifts you don’t yet have, what would they be?
  • What are the three things that trigger you most?
  • What are the most common pieces of feedback your managers and peers give you?
• The third step is calibrating your view of yourself with that of others. That is, whether your perceptions about yourself match reality.
  • Ask your manager for help by asking them what opportunities they see for you to do more of that you do well. And ask them too about the things that keep you from having a greater impact.
  • Ask your manager a list of skills someone in your position requires, and then ask them to rate you on each of those skills.
  • Then, ask other people for feedback to help you improve.
• Taking from Carol Dweck’s work on mindsets, Zhuo suggests that having a fixed mindset will result in fear governing your decisions (fear of failure, judgment, or rejection). With a growth mindset, feedback is motivating.
• It’s also important for you to understand which environments help you thrive, and which lead to negative reactions. E.g., Are you a morning person? Does exercising help you relax and increase productivity? Do you work better with small groups? If you’re not sure what your ideal environment looks like, answer the following questions:
  • In which six-month period in your life were you most energetic and productive? What was giving you the energy?
  • In the past month, what moments stand out? What enabled these highlights?
  • In the past week, when were you in a deep state of focus? How did you get there?
• It’s equally important to understand what environments limit your productivity. Ask yourself what upsets you that does not appear to affect everyone else. If you don’t know what triggers you, answer the following questions:
  • When was the last time someone said something that annoyed you more than those around you? Why did you feel like that?
  • What would your closest friends say your pet peeves are?
  • What’s an example of a time when you overreacted and later regretted it? What caused you to become so worked up?
• Once you know your triggers, share them with your team. Learn about theirs too.
• Some tips that help you manage your mental state include:
  • Avoid beating yourself up for feeling bad. Not only are you already struggling, but then you worry about the fact that you struggle. Guilt makes you stress even more. Avoid doing this by accepting that you’re feeling bad and acknowledging that it happens to everyone.
  • Recognize that most of the time, the stories in your head are irrational. We are all biased, and we look to confirm that bias. Be careful of the explanations you make up in your head, and instead, look for the real answers and confront that reality.
  • Close your eyes and visualize yourself engaged in an activity. Brain imaging studies show that when we picture ourselves doing something, the same parts of our brains are engaged as if we were actually doing the activity. That means we can trick ourselves into getting some of the benefits of such an activity by imagining them in our heads.
  • Ask for help from people you trust. Support groups are remarkably effective.
  • Celebrate your wins, no matter how little.
  • Practice self-care and establish boundaries. Spend time with loved ones, pursue hobbies, exercise, give back to the community, and make sure not to mix such activities with work.
• Management is a personal journey. Not everyone starts at the same point, and we all have different personality traits, strengths, weaknesses, and values. Your company or organization will also impact your development.
• To become a better manager, you have to accept that most learning will happen on the job. But to maximize growth, ask for feedback constantly, treat your manager as a coach, ask for advice from people willing to help whenever possible, set aside time to reflect on your progress, set meaningful goals, and take advantage of any opportunity for formal training.

Chapter 6: Amazing Meetings

• Meetings are necessary, but they must be simple and straightforward. People should feel like the meeting was a good use of their time, that they learned something that will help them with their job, and that everyone was welcomed and engaged.
• When having a meeting, be clear about the outcome you’re looking for. In each of the following scenarios, be clear about what you’re trying to accomplish.
• In a decision meeting, success is making a decision and having everyone leave trusting the process of making such a decision, even if the team isn’t in consensus.
  • Include the people most affected by the decision. Present all options objectively and provide context. Give equal airtime for people to share opinions and viewpoints.
  • Avoid spending too much time on small decisions, changing your mind back and forth, trying to reach consensus, or rehashing the same arguments.
• In an informational meeting, success is not solely in transferring knowledge, especially now that we can use email or chat for this purpose. The objective of these meetings is to allow for interactivity and to share information in a well-prepared manner so that it becomes more interesting than reading it in an email.
  • These meetings should make the group feel like they learned something new, and key messages should be clear and memorable. You should especially strive to evoke inspiration, pride, trust, courage, or empathy, depending on the goal of the meeting.
• In a review meeting, the purpose is for stakeholders to provide input on the work in progress. People tend to measure success based on whether the boss likes the work. But that’s a mistake. Instead, a good feedback meeting should put everyone on the same page and allow for an honest assessment of the progress made.
  • Frame open questions, decisions, and concerns properly to get useful feedback. Ensure the meeting ends with clear next steps.
• In a brainstorming meeting, people propose solutions to a problem. Contrary to common belief, the best ideas don’t come from people getting together and sharing all the ideas that come to mind. The best ideas come from having time to think and engage with others.
  • A good brainstorming session should consider everyone’s ideas, with people building off each other. It should end with clear steps to action.
• In a team-bonding meeting we seek to foster empathy, trust, and collaboration. These meetings should enable comfort so that people are open and authentic.
• When planning a meeting, invite only the necessary people. To know who to invite, focus on the outcome or goal, and ask yourself who is essential to making that outcome happen.
• Give people an opportunity to prepare for meetings. The curse of knowledgeis a cognitive bias that makes it difficult for people immersed in their work to understand what it’s like to hear about their content for the first time. This bias often impacts presenters. They might assume they are being clear when, in reality, the audience is having difficulty grasping the information.
  • If the goal of a meeting is to make a decision or provide feedback, it will be hard for stakeholders to do so if they can’t truly understand you. The solution is to send documentation beforehand so that people have an opportunity to process the information in advance.
• Sending out an agenda before a meeting is helpful. It shows intentionality and helps maintain focus.
• After a meeting, follow-ups are necessary. They should be treated with as much care as the preparation. In the last few minutes of the meeting, ask everyone if they’re on the same page about next steps, and then send an email with a recap or summary of the discussion.
• In meetings, everyone should feel safe to participate. Personality traits and seniority will influence how comfortable someone feels in speaking up. If you’re handling the meeting, make sure you create an open environment for questions, discussions, dissent, and discourse.
  • Be explicit about your norms. If you expect everyone to participate, say so at the beginning of a meeting.
  • Adjust your meeting format in favor of participation. You can go around the room asking everyone for input or rely on an activity such as opening the meeting with post-it notes where everyone expresses their thoughts on the topic.
  • Mediate the time everyone gets to speak. Some people will naturally talk more than others. Help create an opening for those who aren’t extroverted: “John looks like he wants to say something.” You might also need to intervene when someone interrupts. E.g., “Hang on, Ann wasn’t finished.”
  • Ask for feedback about your meetings, especially if they are recurring. Ask participants if they felt a meeting was useful and if it achieved its goal.
• As a manager, you will be invited to many meetings. You will have to manage and cleanse your schedule and calendar often. For instance, if you aren’t absolutely necessary, you can ask for the notes of the meeting and excuse yourself to take advantage of your time doing something more pressing.

Chapter 7: Hiring Well

• Hiring requires planning. Every January, Zhuo would map out where she hoped her team would be by the end of the year and ask herself what gaps she needed to fill to make that happen. You can do something similar by answering the following questions:
  • How many people do you need in your team this year (based on growth, priorities, and budget)?
  • For each hire, what level of experience do you need?
  • Which skills and strengths do you need in your team?
  • What traits or experiences will strengthen the diversity of your team?
• Hiring is the manager’s responsibility. Even if you work with a recruitment team, you need to work together. The following describes how you should approach this process
  • Describe your ideal candidate as precisely as possible. Write the job description yourself and be specific.
  • With the recruiter, brainstorm and develop sourcing strategies.
  • Work to create an impressive interview experience.
  • Along with the recruiter, show the candidates how much you want them to join your team.
• “Hiring is a gamble, but make smart bets” (p. 170). The few hours you spend interviewing someone will rarely give you a proper sense of a person’s potential. Sometimes good interviews don’t result in good hires, and vice versa. There are three main reasons for this:
  • It’s impossible to recreate the day-to-day working environment in an interview.
  • Interviewers are biased and swayed by first impressions.
  • People are capable of growth and change.
• To improve the hiring process, consider the following strategies:
  • Examine past examples of the candidate’s work in similar domains. You can do this via internships or asking interviewees to bring a portfolio to the meeting.
  • Seek recommendations, either from your own team or from your network. Take references seriously. You can also ask an extended network of people you trust about the candidate’s potential.
  • Get multiple interviewers involved in the process. Several people in the room can diminish bias and help catch red flags that others might miss.
  • Within the hiring committee, look for passionate advocates rather than a consensus where everyone agrees to hire someone because there seem to be no issues, even if no one is excited or impressed by that individual.
  • Prepare your questions ahead of time. These should be tailored to the position you need to fill, but consider including the following:
    • What challenges interest you and why?
    • What do you consider your greatest strengths and areas of growth?
    • What do you hope will be different about you in three years?
    • What conflict did you face in the past year that taught you a valuable lesson?
    • What’s something that inspired you in your work recently?
  • Reject those who show toxic behaviors such as bad-mouthing employers, blaming failures on others, insulting another team, asking what the company can do for them rather than the reverse, or coming across as arrogant or with low self-awareness.
  • Build a diverse team. Diversity is the belief that different genders, races, work histories, personality traits, and experiences lead to better ideas and results.
  • Hire people who are capable or more than what the role needs now. They’ll be better positioned to help tackle problems in the future.
• When you need to hire at scale, be diligent with execution. Look for opportunities to make the process efficient by tweaking emails, hosting events to meet prospective candidates, or developing new interview questions.
• Hiring people is a long-term investment. Keep an eye out for the rising star in your field, build your network, and keep in touch. Sometimes, people who decline an offer end up joining a few years later.
• Build a great bench. This term refers to having a team that can take over when you disappear unexpectedly for a couple of months. Great leadership means the team you’ve built can continue to thrive even without you there. A strong bench also means you can eventually find time to pursue other organizational goals. 

Chapter 8: Making Things Happen

• “The path to success is never a straight line” (p. 191). It is consistent planning and execution. You try an idea, you remain open and curious, you learn, you double down on what worked and cut what failed, and you keep working. It’s a process.
• Process simply refers to the actions we have to take to achieve a goal. The following strategies help establish an effective process.
• Start with a concrete vision. When describing goals, it is common to find words such as help, improve, or enhance. But these words aren’t clear – they lead to different and subjective understandings of a goal, limiting the capacity to build a shared sense of purpose.
  • An inspiring vision is bold, measurable, and descriptive of the outcome. As a manager, you must define and share a concrete vision with your team, ensuring it illustrates what you seek to achieve.
  • To help you define goals, ask yourself what you wish will be different in three years. Think about how you want others to describe what your team does.
• While not everything is under your control, planning helps you make sense of a situation and define the best approach to success. A solid plan also facilitates changing or adjusting strategies in case of emergency.
  • A good strategy is realistic and understands the main problem and how to solve it. Craft your plan with your team’s strengths and weaknesses in mind.
  • The Pareto principle, also known as the 80/20 rule,states that about 80% of the consequences come from 20% of causes. Focus on doing a few things well. If you have three goals for your team, force yourself to decide: if you could only achieve one, which would be the best?
  • In your plan, clearly define who is in charge of what. Without clear ownership or responsibility, things will not get done fast or well enough.
  • Parkinson’s law states that, “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” If you fail to break down your ultimate goal into smaller pieces, steps, or objectives that build up to it, you might not achieve your goal. Treat big projects like a series of smaller projects, each a milestone. Periodic reviews can help motivate accountability.
• Of the countless mistakes we all make throughout our careers, the most frustrating ones are those that don’t teach us a clear lesson because we can’t tell what failed: the strategy or the execution. A perfect plan isn’t valuable if we cannot execute it.
  • Executing well means picking a reasonable direction and moving quickly. Your team is executing well if the list of projects is accurately prioritized, there’s an efficient process to make decisions, everyone commits to the decisions (even if they disagree), the team moves quickly, every task has an owner and a deadline, and the team is resilient and seeks to learn.
• Every organization has a greater purpose. And it may take decades before it fulfills it. But, if everyone knows the company’s goal and believes in it, the day-to-day decisions become easier to perform. Everyone in the team should make decisions thinking about how each option moves the organization closer to its purpose.
  • Be careful of conflating the purpose with proxies that measure progress.
• To improve any process, practice constant debriefing. After the team completes a project, schedule a meeting where you reflect on what happened. Discuss what went well, what could improve, and what you could have done differently.

Chapter 9: Leading a Growing Team

• In Zhuo’s experience, the following are the most contrasting differences between managing small and large teams:
  • As your team grows, direct management becomes indirect. In a team of five members, you can know everyone personally, but when you have 30 people, this becomes impossible, and you might need to hire or develop new managers.
  • People will treat you differently. No matter how you see yourself, when people see you in a position of authority and don’t know you well, they become less likely to challenge your ideas or have honest conversations with you.
    • Be aware of this dynamic in all your interactions. Consider the other person’s perspective when you make suggestions – do they appear as orders?
    • To counter this effect, emphasize your openness to dissenting opinions and reward those who express them.
  • The context will change every day. As your team grows, your time to spend on each project will decrease. You won’t be able to spend hours on a single topic.
  • You will have to pick and choose your battles. When you manage a small team, you will have time to clear your inbox and cross off all of the items on your to-do list. But as the team grows, your scope will expand, and those days will cease to exist.
  • Success will be more about mastering people skills such as hiring leaders, building great teams, establishing clear visions, and communicating effectively.
• Delegation is the art of knowing when to take charge and when to entrust others. But it’s like a tightrope where we struggle to find the balance. At one extreme, you can dive too deep and micromanage. At the other, you step too far back and become an absentee manager. We all tend to lean one way or another depending on our values. Or, you might lean in different ways depending on the job at hand. A few guiding principles that can help you include:
  • Giving people big problems to solve is a sign of trust, even if you have the power or ability to take over. The solution will probably be better coming from someone who has dealt with the problem more personally. And most employees appreciate the challenge. The key is doing this only when you do, in fact, trust that the person is capable of solving the issue. This doesn’t mean you walk away. You still help, coach, and support them.
  • Create a shared vision. Personal meetings are not for the manager’s benefit. They are intended to help your reports. You can’t expect to know everything that’s going on, but you do have to make sure that everyone is on the same page regarding what’s most important.
    • Set clear priorities and discuss them with your team in terms of how they can play a role in achieving their goals. Then, ask yourself whether everyone is aligned in their views on how to think about people, purpose, and process.
  • When a manager struggles, your job might be to support and empower them. But, at times, you’re going to have to determine if the best solution is to find a replacement. When you can’t decide, imagine if the position was open. Would you hire the current leader or take a gamble on someone else?
• Your aim is to put yourself out of a job. “Growing a great team means that you are constantly looking for ways to replace yourself in the job you are currently doing” (p. 231). There will always be some responsibility for you to take.
• The rule of thumb in delegation is to find the intersection of what’s most important to the organization and what you’re uniquely capable of doing better than anyone else. Delegate anything a report can do as well or better than you.
  • For things you can do better than your reports, you should try to delegate, as long as the task doesn’t fall into the category of “most important priorities” or you believe that your reports aren’t set up for success.
  • Other things you should probably not delegate include identifying and communicating what matters, hiring talent, and resolving conflict within teams.

Chapter 10: Nurturing Culture

• Culture in an organization refers to the norms and values that govern decisions and actions. As you manage more people, you’ll play a bigger role in shaping and sustaining the organization’s culture.
• To set and shape your team’s culture, you first need to understand your aspirations and your current team. To do so, answer the following questions:

Understanding Your Team

• What are three adjectives that describe your team’s personality?
• What makes you feel proud of being part of the team?
• What does your team do better than other teams?
• How similar is your team’s culture to that of the organization?

Understanding Your Aspirations

• What are five adjectives you’d like people to use when describing your team?
• What are some pitfalls of your team ruthlessly adhering to these qualities?
• What aspects of culture do you admire from other teams?
• What would you not want to emulate?

Understanding the Difference

• What team strength shows up that aligns with your values?
• Where are the biggest gaps?
• What obstacles might keep you from having your team reach those aspirations?
• How will you address them?

• As a manager, constantly voice the most significant values. For a message to become part of a culture, say it several times and in several ways.
• People look to their bosses to understand an organization’s values and norms. Don’t just repeat your values – live them. If you say something is important to you and want your team to care about it, be the first to change the behavior. If you don’t live your values, other people won’t either.
• To maintain a good culture, create incentives. Ensure that the environment rewards those who behave according to your values. Hold those who fail to do so accountable. A few incentives traps to avoid include:
  • Rewarding quantity over quality.
  • Rewarding individual performance above all else.
  • Rewarding short-term gains over long-term investment.
  • Rewarding lack of perceived conflict rather than resolution strategies.
  • Rewarding the squeaky wheel.
• Another strategy to shape organizational culture is to invent traditions that celebrate your values. These could be from small personal prompts at the start of a meeting to monthly events and annual award ceremonies recognizing people.

Epilogue: The Journey is 1% Finished

• No matter how long you’ve been a manager, there is always more to learn. But if you do your job well, your team will thrive. As a manager, your job is to build something that outlasts you and that will be made stronger by everyone who becomes part of it.