Introduction

• Directly line managing someone – instead of just leading a small segment of what they do – is an extremely important skill to foster, but one that sufficient direct training and coaching isn’t often provided for. If you want to learn about accounting or programming you read a book and/or take an online course, but you can’t simply do that to learn how to manage people. Each individual is different and the type of person you are impacts what the best way for you to manage is.
• Many millennials are likely to be in a position where they have recently started managing a team or will soon be managing a team, and from my experience proactively preparing for this rather than simply trying to ‘muck-through’ the first few months is a very good idea.
• The aim of this piece is three-fold:
  • Share my checklist for managing others, which I have compiled, refined and now regularly review to ensure I am doing the best possible job of managing others
  • Highlight some of the common mistakes people make and things to actively consider when managing people
  • Share my favourite books and podcasts that every new manager, or a manager who thinks there are areas they can improve on, should check out
• Managing other people is absolutely a skill and an art which develops over-time, but proactively being aware and conscious of how you are managing someone will help you develop faster and not fall into bad management habits.

My Checklist

• Instead of jumping into some of the key principles which experts often provide as core requirements to good management I thought I’d share my checklist, the principles which I have tried and tested, and honed over the last few years. This is a list of the 10 Do’s and 4 Don’ts that make up my management rules which I try to hold myself against on a daily basis.
• Do stay in the Trenches – Just because you’ve been promoted and are now managing a team of resources it doesn’t mean you get to sit back and do nothing, in fact the exact opposite is the case, you need to work smarter. You might not be spending as many hours doing the thing that got you promoted, but you have to still be excellent at it and set an example to your team by being willing to do the dirty and boring stuff. For example, if you were an excellent statistical modeller and get promoted to manage a team of statistical modellers you can’t now pick and choose the best bits and expect your team to do all the boring repetitive stuff. You have to show you are not only still a great modeler but that your willing to stay late with them and do the most boring jobs to help them get things across the line. By doing this your team will respect you and know that you still appreciate and understand what they are doing.
• Do always make time for you team – No matter how busy or crazy things get always ensure you make time for each member of your team regularly. As a starting point I’d suggest regular 1-to-1’s every 3 to 4 weeks to ensure they feel appreciated, included and to allow them to feel they can provide feedback. When in 1-to-1 sessions ensure you are actively encouraging people to talk about themselves, don’t dominate the conversation, instead embrace an awkward silence and give people time to build up to opening up and sharing their honest views.
• Do give honest feedback – Use the technique which author Kim Scott calls ‘Radical Candor‘, show how you ‘care personally’ but ensure you ‘challenge directly’. Always be honest with your feedback, but make a bond with the individual so they know it’s coming from a good place. This translates into; don’t gloss over or not talk about the areas where someone might be performing below expectations but ensure they know you are listening to them and understanding their perspective.
• Do allow people to fail ‘safely’ – One of the most important attributes of being a good manager is the ability to develop the skill set and confidence of others. Not only will you feel great about watching someone flourish under your guidance you also want to ensure that your team can continue to work effectively and even optimally without you, enabling you to move on to bigger and better things in the future. However, the key to doing this well – at the beginning at least – is to allow them to fail safely. If you are setting them a challenging new task ensure they only present it back to you initially, make that environment as comfortable and forgiving as possible. If you don’t and they fail at the challenging task publicly their confidence will be massively impacted and they might never want to be challenged again. Once you’ve challenged and tested them in safe situations then slowly increase the pressure, the accountability they take and the audience they present to. Doing it this way builds their confidence and their experience in unison. The key when doing this is that you remain ultimately responsible. Even if you follow all these steps and slowly build them up to present their work to the big boss, if they fail or freeze up it is ultimately your responsibility. I’ve written about the important of failure before, you can see the full article here. The key is to focus on praising and rewarding the effort instead of the outcome, because sometimes the outcome can be the result of dumb luck. As Robert Allen famously said ‘There is no failure. Only feedback’. Failure isn’t final, failure is an opportunity to learn and to grow. Never be ashamed or embarrassed by your failings or the failings of other Instead, accept it, do the root cause analysis and carry on striving for success.
• Do predominately focus on individual’s strengths – There has been a lot of focus on this in recent months and years, I have also talked in detail about this subject, so for more information I suggest reading this article. The short version is that there is no point trying to create a team of people who are exceptional in all areas, it isn’t realistic and you’ll depress your team by always focusing on weaknesses. Instead celebrate them for the things they do well and hire different individuals to ensure that across the team you have the balance you need. This principle comes up in literature on management regularly, Marcus Buckingham, author of ‘The One Thing You Need to Know’ defines great managers as those who are able to identify their direct reports individual strengths and support them in enhancing them further.
• Do be consistent & transparent – There are two related by different aspects of this. Firstly, people always like being included in decisions or changes, therefore be sure you are transparent with your team, explain the decisions you take and give them an opportunity to input and feel heard. This one took me some time to fully appreciate, if my team was getting heat for something I would often take all that heat head on and not tell my team the problems, I did this because I felt I was protecting them. The problem was it seemed to them that I would ask for random, inconsistent things from them because they couldn’t see the full reasoning. By having more of a dialogue about the heat I was getting they saw where these asks were coming from. I was still protecting them from the heat, still shielding them from senior leadership by taking responsibility, but by giving them visibility of it they felt more involved and motivated to respond positively. Secondly, be fair. This is massive! You have to hold everyone you work with to the same standards and at a macro-level treat them the same. At the micro-level different ways of motivation and providing feedback will differ from person to person but everyone has to feel there are treated equally, things will go downhill extremely quickly if people feel there are double standards within your team.
• Do foster 360-degree feedback – This is related to being transparent. 360-degree feedback involves allowing those individuals who report into you to have an opportunity to feedback on your performance. Usually feedback is unidirectional, top down. By fostering an environment that promotes 360-degree feedback you’ll not only have a happier environment, as people will feel like they are being heard, you’ll also learn a lot more about your management style, your strengths and your weaknesses. The key to this being effective is the way in which it is administered. As a minimum in the 1-to-1’s you have with direct reports you should be asking them if they have any feedback for you – either positive or negative – and give them an opportunity to speak freely. However, there is only so much they are likely to talk about in that environment; therefore, I suggest one of the following additional approaches. (1) Your team all get together and discuss you, one person is responsible scribe and all the feedback is anonymous. The scribe then compiles the feedback and provides it to your boss for discussion. After the discussion between the scribe and your boss, your boss provides you with the feedback. (2) You create an anonymous survey online – for example survey monkey – and review all the feedback – anonymously submitted – in your own time or with your boss. Both approaches can be effective, although I’d say the second works better with a larger team because your direct reports will feel it’s less likely you’ll know who submitted which survey answers and therefore be more open and honest.
• Do set clear goals with individuals – As much as being a manager is all about the ‘softer’ skills of empathy, relatability and perception always look to help your direct reports/employees quantify their career and performance goals. By quantifying goals, be it number of sales per month, number of resources managed, number of presentations completed etc, you are giving both yourself and your direct report the ability to objectively measure their progress over a period of time. Not everything is quantifiable, so even if the goal isn’t quantifiable ensure the goal is set in written form none-the-less. Humans often forget how they used to be and how they’ve grown or changed, having things written down to refer back to helps people see that change.
• Do hire for attitude, not skills – As Kevin Kelly famously said ‘Hire for attitude, train for skills’. Whilst this is usually a consideration when hiring rather than managing someone it is important to always keep in mind. It is significantly cheaper and more effective to train someone in your existing team, who is strong and has the right attitude, than risk bringing someone new in. By regularly allowing your team time to upskill themselves not only do you increase the resilience of the team as the others learn how to continue with the temporary loss of a member, you also improve the happiness and attention span of your team, making them more likely to stay around and deliver greater value for you.
• Do always recognise Achievements – We almost always feel at least a little under-appreciated, remember that when dealing with your team. Just because you’re not being patted on the back as much as you want to be, doesn’t mean you should do the same for your team, in fact it should make it more important to thank people and recognise the great things they do.
• Don’t Micro-manage. This is such a common problem of first time managers, don’t fall into the trap. It’s time-consuming, it prevents both the individual you manage and you from developing and it will also drive most people crazy and lead to significant friction within the relationship. Refer back to point 1 ‘Stay in the Trenches’ to see what you should do instead. Be willing to help out and fill a gap when your team is stretched, but trust that they know how best to manage their time. If after a period of time you don’t think they are working optimally then have a conversation, but you need to show trust and belief first.
• Don’t make assumptions about your employees – Whether it’s related to their interests, family or any other area inside or outside of work, don’t assume you know things about your people. Instead, spend time getting to know them, and allow them to tell you more about them and help you build a picture of how they are, how they operate and any challenges they may have now or in the future. Making assumptions about your employees is risky, lazy and can definitely lead down a bad path.
• Don’t try to do it all yourself – While related to micro-managing it is not the same thing. The key to being a good manager is building a team around you which is more efficient, effective and happier than the sum of the parts, nobody is going to progress if you ignore your team and try and do everything yourself. It can lead to frustration, resentment and ultimately you burning out.

Things to be aware of and think about

• Researching, defining and refining your own principles/checklist of being the type of manager that you want to be is very important. If you like the core elements of my checklist then please feel free to take it, however I would suggest you consider the following things as well before you dive into implementing the above.
• Remember why you’ve been promoted – The core reason you’ve been promoted to a position of manager is because you were excellent at your previous job, that doesn’t mean you’ll be a good manager. While you’d always hope that your future progression and potential managerial skills were accessed before your promotion this might not have occurred. There is an important principle which exists in the management, leadership and coaching domain, it’s called the Peter Principle. It states that selection of a candidate for a position is based on the candidate’s performance in their current role, rather than on abilities relevant to the intended role, and as a result managers rise to the level of their incompetence. While this is a pessimistic outlook you only have to look around your organisation to see it’s often true. In my experience, it is those managers who are aware of the Peter Principle and understand it can occur are also the people who it doesn’t apply to. This is because they are conscious of it becoming reality so work extra hard to ensure they are constantly learning and growing to remain relevant and exceptional within their roles.
• Be aware of ‘the power’ books – As a new manager people many suggest you read famous books such as Niccolo Machiavelli – The Prince and Sun Tzu – The Art of War, however I’d suggest not doing so, at least not for advice on how to manage people. They are both exceptional books and worth reading, however the skills and techniques they promote are focused on leading massive teams and trying to extract power from very power crazy, even sociopathic, individuals, this is hopefully not the environment most new managers find themselves in!
• Always ensure your feedback highlights the development areas – You are failing yourself as well as the other person if you say ‘you have no development points’ or ‘keep doing what you are doing’. Everyone has development points – whether it be things they aren’t achieving in their current role, or skills they will need to obtain before begin able to get promoted. If they don’t you aren’t using that employee effectively enough, challenge them more often and spend more time thinking about what they can work on. There is nothing more demoralising as an individual than being told you are doing all the right things but not seeing a corresponding impact on your compensation.
• Be aware of ‘the ‘timid choices’ – I first read about this in ‘Misbehaving’ by Richard Thaler, a must read for everyone to understand more about human behaviour and psychology, you can find my book review on it here. In a real-life experiment, when he was helping a client Thaler found that each manager at the company was loss averse regarding any outcomes that were attributed to him. ‘In an organisation setting, the natural feeling of loss aversion can be exacerbated by the system of rewards and punishment. In many companies, creating a large gain will lead to modest rewards, while creating an equal-sized loss will get you fired. Under those terms, even a manager who starts out risk neutral, willing to take any bet that will make money on average, will become highly risk averse’ – Richard Thaler (Misbehaving). This point is about managing upwards as well, make sure that your new boss understands how the system is rigged for certain outcomes and that he/she needs to help you excel and prove your true valuable by fostering an environment to fail safely, just as you should create the same environment for your employees.

Resources to Help You

• When you search online for the ‘best’ books on management you’ll often find the same books come up from the ‘gurus’ of the management world, think Peter Drucker ‘The Effective Executive’, Jim Collins ‘Good to Great’, John Maxwell ‘The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership’, Tom Peters ‘In Search of Excellence’ and Michael Hammer & James Champy ‘Reengineering the Corporation’.
• I have read some, admittedly not all of these, but they wouldn’t be the first books I recommend. These ‘gurus’ are all too often trying to sell you ‘the secret’ to good management, and in my opinion that one-size-fits-all ‘secret’ doesn’t exist, no matter how much you spend on the ‘gurus’ books and seminars! The simple reason is that, unfortunately, real-life isn’t so easy, what works with one person in one moment of time won’t work with someone else in another. This is the reason I have my ‘checklist’ which I am constantly reviewing and revising to ensure it’s applicable, it’s an evolutionary process not a one-size-fits-all shopping list.
• Another problem the ‘gurus’ have is that these individuals often haven’t separated causality and causation so what they peddle could actually be a result of a being in a good company rather than actually the things that make someone a good manager.
• Having said that there are a number of good resources I’d recommend, not to necessarily copy and paste the approaches they propose, but reading them and understanding the common problems and themes they identify can help you prepare and tweak your management approaches. You’ll notice that the majority of the books listed before are related to management and leadership, but they are a lot more encompassing than the management ‘gurus’:
  • ‘The Management Myth’ by Mathew Stewart
  • ‘Thinking, Fast and Slow’ by Daniel Kahneman
  • ‘Team of Teams’ by Stan McChrystal
  • ‘How to win friends and influence people’ by Dale Carnegie
  • ‘Misbehaving: The Making of Behaviour Economics’ by Richard Thaler – see my book review of this here.
  • ‘Drive’ by Daniel H. Pink
  • Manager Tools Basics Podcast – This is a great podcast series focused on improving managing skills. There are two Podcasts provided by Michael Auzenne & Mark Horstman, ‘Manager Tools’ and ‘Manager Tools Basics’. I recommend ‘Basics’ to start with because it is a reduced curriculum of 23 core manager skills. If you finish these 23 and want more the ‘Manager Tools’ podcast has 500+ cases for you to learn from
• Personally, I love books – both fiction and non-fiction – and think there is so much we can learn from them. I have learnt as much, if not more, about management and leadership from history, literature, politics and war books than business books, so in my opinion being well read will automatically improve your management skills.
• The final thing I want to mention on the topic of resources to help with management skills is the Gallup Strength Finder (https://www.gallupstrengthscenter.com/). It is a tool that many companies have been getting their employees and teams to undertake and I can absolutely see why. It’s a great tool to understand what things you – and your team – are naturally good at, understand what strengths you and your team have and allows you to amend team composition and dynamics to ensure you are getting the best out of everyone. It’s well worth checking out.

Conclusion

• The skill of managing people is not something you can learn and then keep for the rest of your life, it’s like a muscle that you need to regularly exercise. Everyone is different, and different management styles work better with different people, therefore ensure you have a number of different ways to get through, and importantly don’t give up on your people.
• Constantly self-evaluate how your relationship and feedback is going with every individual in your team and try to foster an environment that allows 360 degree, someone else’s perspective on your style could be very different to your own.
• Also, don’t be afraid of opening up to your team, even if you risk embarrassing yourself slightly. Hormesis is a very topical concept right now and is very applicable to managing others. Hormesis involves exposing yourself to small doses of things that would in large quantity be very damaging. Use this technique to help you build a more confident and able team, being protective is good, but if you don’t allow them to fail in a small ‘safe’ way they won’t grow and can become brittle. If you are looking for more information on the power of hormesis, I suggest reading this post here.
• None of this is rocket science, it’s all simple stuff on paper, the difficult bit it being aware of it, and taking the time to actively – and continuously – improve and test the way you manage people to improve yourself.
• I want to end this piece with an exceptional quote from Matthew Stewart in ‘The ‘Management Myth’:

“What makes for a good manager?…A good manager is someone with a facility for analysis and an even greater talent for synthesis; someone who has an eye both for the details and for the one big thing that really matters; someone who is able to reflect on facts in a disinterested way, who is always dissatisfied with pay answers and the conventional wisdom, and who therefore takes a certain pleasure in knowledge itself; someone with a wide knowledge of the world and an even better knowledge of the way people work; someone who knows how to treat people with respect; someone with honesty, integrity, trustworthiness, and the other things that make up character; someone, in short, who understands oneself and the world around us well enough to know how to make it better. By this definition, of course, a good manager is nothing more or less than a good and well-educated person.”

• I agree that is what it takes, but doing that takes awareness, the drive to continue to focus on growing yourself and finding the time and desire to help those who work for you develop too. Good luck!

 

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