This is my notes from the book The Making Of A Manager by Julie Zhuo.
Your job, as a manager, is go get better outcomes from a group of people working together.
Hackman’s research describes five conditions that increase a team’s odds of success: having a real team (one with clear boundaries and stable membership), a compelling direction, an enabling structure, a supportive organizational context, and expert coaching. Author’s: purpose, people and process.
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 has high a multiplier effect on your collective outcome as you can.
Your team becomes four or five people, you should have a plan for how to scale back your individual contributor responsibilities so that you can be the best manager for your people.
Outside of your organization, finding a group of leaders in similar roles at other places can provide you with an invaluable network of support. You can ask them if they had similar problem and how they solved it.
To make the most of having a blank slate, give everyone the benefit of the doubt, no matter what you are told. In your first few one-on-one meetings, ask your reports the following questions to understand what their “dream manager” looks like:
- What did you and your past manager discuss that was most helpful?
- What are the ways in which you’d like to be supported?
- How do you like to be recognized for great work?
- What kind of feedback is most useful for you?
- Imagine that you and I had an amazing relationship. What would that look like?
Andy Grove points out in his classic High Output Management. What gets in the way of good work? There are only two possibilities. The first is that people don’t know how to do good work. The second is that they know how, but they aren’t motivated.
1:1s let you discuss topics that may never come up otherwise-for example, what motivates him, what his long-term career aspirations are, how he’s generally feeling about his work, and more. One-on-ones should be focused on your report and what would help him be more successful, not on you and what you need. The ideal 1:! leaves your report feeling that it was useful for her/him. If he/she thinks that the conversation was pleasant but largely unmemorable, then you can do better.
Tell the reports that you want the time together valuable, so we should focus on what’s most important for them. Here are some ideas to get started:
-Discuss top priorities: What are the one, two, or three most critical outcomes for your report and how can you help her tackle these challenges?
-Calibrate what “great” looks like: Do you have a shared vision of what you’re working toward? Are you in sync about goals or expectations?
-Share feedback: What feedback can you give that will help your report, and what can your report tell you that will make you more effective as a manager?
-Reflect on how things are going: Once in a while, it’s useful to zoom out and talk about your report’s general state of mind-how is he feeling on the whole? What’s making him satisfied or dissatisfied? Have any of his goals changed? What has he learned recently and what does he want to learn going forward?
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. Here are some questions:
-Identify: What really matters for your report and what topics are wroth spending more time on.
–What’s top on your mind right now?
–What priorities are you thinking about this week?
–What’s the best use of our time today?
-Understand: Get the root of the problem and what can de 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: how to best help the 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?
Be honest and transparent about your report’s performance. As a manager, your perspective on how your report is doing cariies far more weight than his perspective on how you are doing. After all, you’re the one who determines what he works on and whether he should get a promotion or be fired.
People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how made them feel.
When we are going through tough times, the thing that’s often the most helpful isn’t advice or answers, but empathy.
“There is one quality that sets truly great managers apart from the rest: they discover what is unique about each person and then capitalize on it, says Buckingham.””
“The job of a manager… is to turn one person’s particular talent into performance.”
Don’t let the worst performers dominate your time-try to diagnose, address, and resolve their issues as swiftly as you can. You should pay attention to your team’s top talent-the people who are doing well and could be doing even better.
Personal and organizational values play a huge role in whether someone will be happy on a given team. The things a person cares about most also be what the team and company cares about. If not, then that person might find themselves in frequent misalignment with what they want for their own career. If it isn’t just right on a particular team, sometimes a move within the same org solves the issue.
If I don’t step up and show some empathy, who else will? As their manager, this was my job. 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.
At the end of the day, if you don’t believe someone is set up to succeed in his current role, the kindest thing you can do is to be honest with him and support him in moving on. Former GE CEO Jack Welch argues that protecting low performers only increases the damage when, inevitably, a manager is forced to let them go.
What I think is brutal and false kindness is keeping people around who aren’t going to grow and prosper. There’s no cruelty like waiting and telling people late in their careers that they don’t belong. You have two options at this point: help someone find a new role in your org or let him go.
Just because your report didn’t work out on your team doesn’t mean it’s on him, perhaps it’s you who shouldn’t be his manager, not the other way around. Perhaps you made the call to hire him when his skills weren’t what the team needed. Perhaps you put him on projects that weren’t a good match.
What does great feedback look like? Why was it so meaningful to you? The feedback inspired you to change your behavior, which resulted in your life getting better.
There is a whole swath of things beyond suggestions for improvement that can inspire someone to take positive action. For one, feedback doesn’t have to be critical. Praise is often more motivating than criticism.
Four most common ways to inspire a change in behavior:
-Set clear expectations at the beginning
-Give task-specific feedback as frequently as you can
-Share behavioral feedback thoughtfully and regularly
-Collect 360-Degree feedback for maximum objectivity
Set clear expectations at the beginning
You should agree on what success looks like-whether for a given project or for a given time period-get ahead of any expected issues, and lay the foundation for productive feedback session in the future.
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
Give task-specific feedback as frequently as you can
You provide this kind of feedback about something that someone did after the fact. For example, after your report presents an analysis, tell her what you thought she did well and what could go better in the future. Be as precise and as detailed as you can. This feedback is most effective when the action performed is still fresh in your report’s memory, so share it as soon as possible.
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? Quick or slow decision making? Wizard or unconventional thinker? etc
Asking this question about themes helps your reflect on your report’s unique strengths or areas of development as shown in his patterns behavior.
This type of feedback is useful, because it provide a level of personalization and depth that is missing from task-specific feedback. By connecting the dots across multiple examples, you can help people understand how their unique interests, personalities, and habits affect their ability to have impact. When you give a behavioral feedback, you are making a statement about how you perceive that person, so your words need to be thoughtfully considered and supported with specific examples to explain why you feel that way. It’s best discussed in person or the receiver can ask questions and engage in a back-and-forth with you.
Collect 360-Degree feedback for maximum objectivity
this type of feedback is a feedback aggregated from multiple perspectives, which means it tends to be a more complete and objective view of how someone is doing. Instead a task-specific feedback, ask everyone else what thought. Also good for annual performance review, instead of relying on just your own observation, getting behavioral feedback form the handful of colleagues she works closest with will result in better insights. Many companies run this feedback process once or twice a year. If it’s not formally done, you can gather the feedback yourself. Every quarter, for each report, I send a short email to a handful of his or her closest collaborators asking: 1.What is X doing especially well that X should do more of? b.What should X change or stop doing?
It’s not practical to do more than handful of time and it is particularly useful when you lack deep context
If the first time he hears that he’s not meeting expectations is during his performance review, it’s going to feel terrible. Our reviews are meant to be summarize performance from the past six months, if the report was indeed not meeting expectations for most of that time, I should have told him that much earlier.
Three explanations:
1.The review isn’t fair. If things really were so dire, why hasn’t this come up until now? This must be a mistake.
2.The review is fair, but my manager was negligent and didn’t realize i was under performing until the end of the half.
3.The review is fair, but my manager wasn’t honest in sharing feedback with me along the way, so I didn’t have a chance to improve.
By setting expectations that you’d like to hear about any concerns with the launch date as soon as possible, you establish that it’s safe to talk about problems even in the early phases. it’s impossible to expect perfection. We are only human. Failures will occur, projects will miss deadlines, and people will make mistakes.
But when these things happen, readjusting expectations as quickly as possible helps people recover from errors with grace. You demonstrate care and maturity when you preempt bigger issues down the road.
Whenever you find yourself deeply disappointed, or disappointing someone else, ask yourself: Where did I miss out on setting clear expectations, and how might I do better in the future?
I might feel accomplished in pointing out the problem, but that’s not the point if it doesn’t actually help him. The mark of a great coach is that others improve under your guidance.
How could you your manager better support you? is simply, Give more feedback. Give feedback more often and remind yourself that you’re probably not doing it enough. Every time you see on of your reports in action, see if there’s something useful you can tell her. Strive for at least 50% positive feedback so she knows hat she’s doing well. If you hear something positive from a colleague, pass it along. Or, if you have a suggestion for improvement, even if it’s small, tell her that as well. At the same time, watch out for only ever giving task-specific feedback.
The best way to make your feedback heard is to make the listener feel safe, and to show that you’re saying it because you care about her and want her to succeed.
When you do have critical feedback to share, approach it with a sense of curiosity and an honest desire to understand your report’s perspective. State your point directly and then follow up with,”Does this feedback resonate with you? Why or Why not?” Either yes and he/she acknowledges it or we can discuss why that is, and what would make the feedback more useful. Then you can ask for verbal confirmation like what is the next steps and your takeaways? or writing can clarify the points. Third is to help the person hear the same message many times and from many sources.
Does my feedback lead to positive action?
1.Make your feedback as specific as possible. Use clear examples that get at the why so it’s easier for recipient to know what you mean.
2.Clarify what success looks and feels like.
3.Suggest next steps. Translate your feedback into action is to share what you think the next steps should be. Don’t overdo this, otherwise you are not empowering. Softer approach is asking What do you think the next steps should be? and let them guide the discussion.
Delivering critical feedback or bad news
The best way to give critical feedback is to deliver it directly and passionately. Both number three (I’m concerned about the quality of work that I’ve been seeing form you recently) and four (Your last few deliverables weren’t comprehensive enough to hit the mark) accomplish that.
Template: When I [heard/observed/reflected on] your [action/behavior/output], I felt concerned because …
When you give feedback or make a decision, your report may not agree with it. That’s okay. Keep in mind that some decisions are yours to make. You are the person ultimately held accountable for the output of your team, and you may have more information or a different perspective on the right path forward.
“Feedback is a gift.” It costs time and effort to share, but when we have it, we’re better off.
Being a great manager is a highly personal journey, and if you don’t have a good handle on yourself, you won’t have a good handle on how to best support your team. You first need to get deep with knowing you- your strengths, your values, your comfort zones, your blind sports, and your biases. When you fully understand yourself, you will know where your true north lies.
The first thing is to know your strengths-the things you are talented at and love to do. Great management comes from playing to your strengths rather than fixing your weaknesses. Strengthsfinder 2.0 or Standout frameworks.
Quick version:
How would the people who know and like me best (family, significant other, close friends) describe me in three words? I.e.: thoughtful, enthusiastic, driven
What three qualities do I possess that I am the proudest of? I.e.: curious, reflective, optimistic
When I look back on something I did that was successful, what personal traits do I give credit to? I.e.: vision, determination, humility
What are the top three most common pieces of positive feedback that I have received from my manager or peers? I.e.: principled, fast learner, long-term thinker
Like the examples, your responses will likely cluster around a few themes. Here you can see the example strengths are dreaming big, learning quickly, and remaining upbeat. Whatever your are, remember them and hold them dear. You will be relying ont hem time and time again.
Second part is getting honest reckoning with yourself is knowing weaknesses and triggers.
Whenever my worst inner critic sits on my shoulder, what does he yell at me for? I.e.: getting distracted, worrying too much about what others think, not voicing what I believe.
If a magical fairy were to come and bestow on me three gifts I don’t yet have, what would they be? I.e.: confidence, clarity of thought, persuasion.
What are three things that trigger me? I.e.: injustice, someone else thinks I’m incompetent, people with big egos
What are the top three most common pieces of feedback from my manager or peers on how I could be more effective? I.e.: be more direct, take more risks, explain things simply
Again you might see themes emerging. Like self-doubt, tendency to complexity, and not being clear enough.
The next part is calibration, which is making sure that the view we have of ourselves matches reality. This is harder than it sounds.
Ask your manager to help you calibrate yourself through the following two questions:
What opportunities do you see for me to do more of what I do well? What do you think are the biggest things holding me back from having greater impact?
What skills do you think a hypothetical perfect person in my role would have? For each skill, how would you rate me against that ideal on a scale of one to five?
Pick 3 to 7 people who you work closely and ask if they would be willing to share some feedback to help you improve.
Hey, I value your feedback and I’d like to be a more effective team member. Would you be willing to answer the questions below? Please be as honest as you can because that’s what will help me the most-I promise nothing you say will offend me. Feedback is a gift, an I’m grateful for your taking the time.
On our last project together, in what ways did you see me having impact? What do you think I could have done to have more impact?
With my team, what am I doing well that you’d like to see me do more of? what should I stop doing?
One of the things I’m working on is being more decisive. How do you think I’m doing on that? Any suggestions on how I can do better?
Ask for task-specific feedback to calibrate yourself on specific skills. It takes a certain amount of confidence to ask for critical feedback.
Carol Dweck describes how to different mindsets-which she calls fixed and growth-make a huge difference in our performance and personal happiness.
Beyond strengths and weaknesses, the next part of understanding yourself is knowing which environments help you to do your best work and which situations trigger a negative reaction. This helps you design your day-to-day to respond to your needs.
Examples of what enables to be the best:
I have slept at least 8 hours of sleep the night before.
I have done something productive early in the day that 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.
Once understood those facts, I was able to change a few habits to make it easier for me to operate in my ideal environment.
For example setup an alarm to go to bed. Exercise in the morning for 15mins which give me a sense of accomplishment. I schedule half an hour of daily prep into my calendar to study and visualize my day. Make an effort to become friends with colleagues and learn their lives outside of work. I schedule thinking time blocks on my calendar to sort thorough and write down my thoughts. Twice a year, I look back on the past 6 months and reflect on what I have gotten better at. Then I set new learning goals for the next 6 months.
These little habits have given me a great sense of control. They are not perfect, but these steps make a difference in how well I work and think.
If you are not sure what your ideal environment looks like, ask yourself the following:
Which 6months period of my life did I feel the most energetic and productive? What gave me that energy?
In the past month, what moments stand out as highlights? What conditions enabled those moments to happen, and are the recreatable?
In the past week, when was I in a state of deep focus? How did I get there?
By knowing what triggers you, you can catch yourself in the moment and take a step back before responding like a hothead. It’s helpful to share your triggers and learn what other people’s are. Your peers may not be aware of how their behavior is affecting you, and vica versa.
To figure out what your triggers are, ask yourself the following questions:
When was the last time someone said smthg that annoyed me more than it did others around me? Why did I feel so strongly about it?
What would my closest friends say my pet peeves are?
Who I have met that I have immediately been wary of? What made me feel that way?
Whats an example of a time when i have overreacted and later regretted it?
What made me so worked up in that moment?
Celebrate little wins
When you are in the pit, you constantly pore over your failures because you questioning whether you have what it takes to succeed. One way to break out of that negative cycle is to tell yourself a different story. Instead of thinking, What am I not doing well?, focus on all the ways you are winning.
Studies show that if you write down five things you are grateful for every night, you will feel happier in the long run. When you need to build your confidence, remember to do the same by focusing on all the things that you are doing well.
Practice self-care by establishing boundaries
Set boundaries by carving out time for the other important aspects of your life-spending time with loved ones, pursuing hobbies, exercising etc. In studies shows, high workplace stress has been shown to inhibit creativity, whereas when people were feeling more positive, they were more likely to be creative.
Ask for feedback from other people all the time
Treat your manager as a coach
Your own boss should be one of your best sources of learning, but this might not be the case for various reasons.
The person most invested in your career isn’t him, it’s you. Your own growth is in your hands, so if you feel you aren’t learning from your manager, ask yourself what you can do to get the relationship that you want.
Make a mentor out of everyone
The world is full of people who can teach us. That’s what a mentor is-someone who shares her expertise to help you improve. It doesn’t need to be more formal than that. Caution against treating the notion of a mentor someone too precious. Nobody wants to be asked Will you be my mentor? because it sounds needy and time-consuming. But ask for specific advice instead, and you will find tons of people willing to help.
Hey, I’m really impressed with the way you [do X]. I would love to learn from you. Would you be willing to grab a coffee with me and share your approach?
Keep in mind that since you are asking for a favor, it’s well within people’s rights to say no because they are busy or unsure of how to help. Thank them anyway.
Set aside time to reflect and set goals
When you are racing full steam ahead and the scenery is zooming past you, it’s hard to comprehend the entirety of your journey.
A study from Harvard shows that we learn more when we couple our experiences with periodic reflections. Schedule some time to reflect on what you accomplished, what I’m satisfied or dissatisfied with, and what Im taking away for next week.
Meetings
On the other hand, good meetings are simple and straightforward. You leave them feeling the same way every time:
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.
I felt welcomed.
“all meetings should have a purpose.” That’s good advice, but it doesn’t go far enough. What does a great outcome look like? being crystal clear about the outcome you’re shooting for is the first step to running great meetings.
Making a decision
In a decision meeting, you’re framing the different options on the table and asking a decision-maker to make a call. 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.
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is fond of saying, sometimes you have to “disagree and commit”4 for the sake of moving forward quickly.
A great decision-making meeting does the following:
Gets a decision made (obviously)
Includes the people most directly affected by the decision as well as a clearly designated decision-maker
Presents all credible options objectively and with relevant background information, and includes the team’s recommendation if there is one
Gives equal airtime to dissenting opinions and makes people feel that they were heard
Sharing Information
The first is that they allow for more interactivity.
if you want everyone to know about a potentially controversial policy change, sharing that news in person allows the group to ask questions or express their reactions.
The second benefit is that a well-prepared informational meeting is usually a lot more interesting than a bunch of words on a page. Eye contact, body language, and visible passion all help to make a message come alive.
A great informational meeting accomplishes the following:
Enables the group to feel like they learned something valuable
Conveys key messages clearly and memorably
Keeps the audience’s attention (through dynamic speakers, rich storytelling, skilled pacing, interactivity)
Evokes an intended emotion—whether inspiration, trust, pride, courage, empathy, etc.
Providing Feedback
A great feedback meeting achieves the following:
Gets everyone on the same page about what success for the project looks like Honestly represents the current status of the work, including an assessment of how things are going, any changes since the last check-in, and what the future plans are
Clearly frames open questions, key decisions, or known concerns to get the most helpful feedback
Ends with agreed-upon next steps (including when the next milestone or check-in will be)
Generating Ideas
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:
Produces many diverse, nonobvious solutions through ensuring each participant has quiet alone time to think of ideas and write them down (either before or during the meeting)
Considers the totality of ideas from everyone, not just the loudest voices
Helps ideas evolve and build off each other through meaningful discussion
Ends with clear next steps for how to turn ideas into action
Strengthening Relationships
To have a high-functioning team, people need to work well with one another, so you need to find ways to nurture empathy, create trust, and encourage collaboration.
Team lunches, dinners, and other social events serve this purpose, as do some 1:1s and team meetings. When we all understand each other a little better as human beings—when we’ve invested time to learn about our colleagues’ values, hobbies, families, life stories, etc.—then working together also becomes easier and more enjoyable.
It enables the following:
Creates better understanding and trust between participants
Encourages people to be open and authentic
Makes people feel cared for
For example, if you’re looking for a decision on pricing, and people start chiming in with suggestions for new features, say that you’ll separately find time to discuss the latter topic, and then steer the conversation back toward the intended agenda.
INVITE THE RIGHT PEOPLE
You’re more likely to have a great meeting if everyone necessary, and nobody extraneous, is there.
How do you know whom you should invite? Go back to your answer for what a great outcome looks like for your meeting, and ask yourself: Which people are necessary to make that outcome happen?
GIVE PEOPLE A CHANCE TO COME PREPARED
But if the goal of the meeting is to make decisions or give feedback, it can be tough for stakeholders to understand the material well enough in the span of a single meeting to arrive at thoughtful conclusions.
The solution is to help everyone come prepared. The change we made to our decision and review meetings was to ask the organizers to send out any presentations or documents the day before so that everyone got the chance to process the information in advance.
In the last few minutes of a meeting, get into the habit of asking, “So before we break, let’s make sure we agree on next steps …” 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. If a decision was made, then that should be communicated to the right people. If feedback was given, then that should be acted upon. If ideas were generated, then the meeting organizer should clarify what the process is to take those to the next stage. These follow-ups can then anchor the agenda for when the group reconvenes.
MAKE IT SAFE FOR PEOPLE TO CONTRIBUTE
Not everyone is comfortable rattling off whatever’s top of mind in front of a group. For me, it was fear of judgment—I worried that I would say something stupid and waste other people’s time.
Be Explicit about the Norms You Want to Set
If you want everyone to participate in your meeting, sometimes the easiest tactic is just to say that directly.
Change Up Your Meeting Format to Favor Participation
You can combat natural group dynamics by suggesting more structured approaches. One example is going around the room. If there is a decision to make among three options, you might ask every person which one he or she favors and why. This guarantees that no perspectives are left unsaid.
Another tactic I like is the “Post-it note” opening.
Before launching into a discussion about a complex topic give everyone a pad of Post-it notes and ask them to write down their thoughts on the topic.
Then, have the room work in quiet concentration for about ten to fifteen minutes. Afterward, each participant puts his or her notes up on the board and talks through their thinking.
Manage Equal Airtime
If your meetings tend to be dominated by a few individuals, try mediating the amount of airtime everyone gets.
Similarly, if you see someone seeking to get a word in, you can help create an opening.
Get Feedback about Your Meeting
If you’re lucky, you’ll have a candid team member who will tell you when he or she feels that your meeting is not a good use of time. However, there’s a more reliable way: make a habit of asking for feedback, especially on recurring meetings with a larger audience.
SOME MEETINGS DON’T NEED YOU AND SOME DON’T NEED TO EXIST AT ALL
At the end of the week, I was stunned to discover that for about 40 percent of my meetings, the answer was no.
They found that 65 percent said meetings prevented them from completing their own work, 71 percent found their meetings unproductive and inefficient,6 and 64 percent said meetings come at the expense of deep thinking.
cleanse. I purged myself of meetings I wasn’t really contributing to. When I wanted to stay in the loop about relevant decisions, I asked the meeting organizers to include me on pre- and post-meeting notes. With the time I regained, I was able to get to a healthier balance and focus on doing a better job on the things I cared about.
===Hiring Well===
The most important thing to remember about hiring is this: hiring is not a problem to be solved but an opportunity to build the future of your organization.
Hiring isn’t just about filling holes. If you approach it that way, you’re not going to bring in the best people. It’s about figuring out how to make your team and your own life much, much better.
DESIGN YOUR TEAM INTENTIONALLY
The solution to both a healthier diet and a better team is to plan ahead.
One exercise I do every January is to map out where I hope my team will be by the end of the year. I create a future org chart, analyze gaps in skills, strengths, or experiences, and make a list of open roles to hire for.
You can do something similar by asking yourself the following questions:
How many new people will I add to our team this year (based on company growth, expected attrition, budget, priorities, etc.)?
For each new hire, what level of experience am I looking for?
Which specific skills or strengths do we need in our team (for example, creative thinking, operational excellence, expertise in XYZ, etc.)?
Which skills and strengths does our team already have that new hires can stand to be weaker in?
What traits, past experiences, or personalities would strengthen the diversity of our team?
HIRING IS YOUR RESPONSIBILITY
No recruiter can possibly know what an ideal candidate looks like for your team. They also can’t help you assess for specialized skills like reading X-rays or writing code. At the end of the day, you are the person who ultimately owns the team you build.
Successful hiring managers form close partnerships with the recruiting team to identify, interview, and close the best people. A great recruiter brings her network as well as her knowledge of the recruiting process—how to source and pitch candidates, how to guide them through interviews, and how to negotiate offers. A great hiring manager brings her understanding of the role—what it needs and why it’s exciting—as well as her time to personally connect with candidates.
Describe Your Ideal Candidate as Precisely as You Can
Develop a Sourcing Strategy
You might come up with specific titles or organizations to search for on LinkedIn, people whom you can ping for recommendations, conferences to attend, or ads you’d like to place.
Another exercise is to figure out which patterns or keywords you should look for in a résumé.
Deliver an Amazing Interview Experience
Show Candidates How Much You Want Them
The more senior the candidate, the more critical your involvement is in the close because that person likely has many options, and you are looking for her to play a leadership role within your team.
HIRING IS A GAMBLE, BUT MAKE SMART BETS
A few years ago, Google crunched the numbers on tens of thousands of interviews to see if there was a correlation between how high an interviewer rated the interaction and how well the candidate went on to perform. What they found was that there was “zero relationship” and that it was “a complete random mess.”
An interview can only hope to simulate how well a candidate does on a smaller problem in a fraction of the time.
Second, interviewers bring their personal biases into the evaluation.
Finally, the third reason interview results don’t tell the whole truth is that people are capable of enormous change.
Examine Past Examples of Similar Work
By hearing them talk through their process and show us specific examples of their work, we learn a lot about their skills and their approach to problems.
Seek Out Trusted Recommendations
Whenever we open up a new role, the first thing I do is make sure my entire team knows we’re hiring. “If you could wave a magic wand, who’s your dream candidate for this position?” I’ll ask them. The list I get in return is both a good starting point on who I should reach out to, but also where else we could be sourcing from—across these recommended people, are there patterns in skills, companies, or experiences that we should further dig in to?
“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.”
When evaluating references, keep in mind two things. The first is that people typically improve their skills over time, so discount negative feedback that isn’t recent.
The second thing is that you might not get a diverse pool of candidates if you’re only sourcing within your existing network, so go back to your definition of the ideal person for the role and make sure you’re casting the net wide enough.
Get Multiple Interviewers Involved
The best practice for interviews is to have the candidate talk to multiple people who know what the role needs, with each interviewer asking different questions so that the group emerges with a well-rounded perspective.
Look for Passionate Advocates Rather Than Consensus
I noticed that weak hires were given when a candidate didn’t have any obvious issues—they seemed pleasant enough, they toed the standard line in their answers, and they had relevant experience. At the same time, they also didn’t wow in any particular dimension.
Since every hire is already a gamble, reject any weak hires. While they’re not likely to bomb, they’re also not likely to add much. If you’re going to make a bet, bet on someone with a passionate advocate behind her. If a candidate gets mixed reviews but all the interviewers that said hire are adamant about wanting to work with her, it’s usually a sign that she brings something highly valued to the table.
Prepare Your Interview Questions Ahead of Time
if you’re looking for a starting point on what to ask, these are my favorite all-purpose questions:
What kinds of challenges are interesting to you and why? Can you describe a favorite project? This tells me what a candidate is passionate about.
What do you consider your greatest strengths? What would your peers agree are your areas of growth? This question gets both at a candidate’s self-awareness and what his actual strengths and weaknesses might be.
Imagine yourself in three years. What do you hope will be different about you then compared to now? This lets me understand the candidate’s ambitions as well as how goal oriented and self-reflective she is.
What was the hardest conflict you’ve had in the past year? How did it end, and what did you learn from the experience? This gives me asense of how the candidate works with other people and how he approaches conflict.
What’s something that’s inspired you in your work recently? This sheds light on what the candidate thinks is interesting or valuable.
Reject Anyone Who Exhibits Toxic Behavior
Build a Team with Diverse Perspectives
A 2014 report of hundreds of public companies found that those with the greatest ethnic and racial diversity in their management ranks were 35 percent more likely to have financial returns higher than average.6 A study of 2,400 companies found that organizations with at least one female board member had better outcomes than organizations with no women.7 An experiment involving college fraternities and sororities found that teams consisting of an “outsider”8 solved problems more accurately than teams consisting just of people within the group.
Hire People Who Are Capable of More
As a manager, 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.
Meeting Frogs Is Part of the Deal, but Believe in the Process
The thing I learned, though, is that if you zoom out a little further, the recruiting progress can be simply understood as a funnel of numbers.
HIRING WHEN YOU NEED FIVE, TEN, OR HUNDREDS OF PEOPLE
What I learned is that hiring is not dissimilar to tackling a design problem.
Here are the most important things I’ve learned about hiring at scale.
Successful Hiring Is All about Diligent Execution
Your task then becomes to create a well-oiled machine in which all the steps in the recruiting funnel happen smoothly and efficiently.
Do Your Research When Hiring Leaders
When you make a great leadership hire, the impact on your team is enormous for years to come. Don’t approach it willy-nilly—it pays to do your research.
Take the Long View with Top Talent
The lesson: Recruiting top talent is all about the relationships you build.
Good, seasoned leaders aren’t short of options, because everybody wants to hire them.
Build a Great Bench
Having a great bench means your lieutenants could take over for you if you’re unexpectedly called out of the office. It means you are not the single point of failure—fires won’t ignite, chaos won’t erupt, and work won’t grind to a halt if you’re not there. 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.
Create a Culture That Prioritizes Hiring Well
==========Making Things Happen==================
The origin story of every great company reveals a common theme: The path to success is never a straight line. It’s not about having the single, brilliant, lightning-flash insight that suddenly wins the game. Instead, it’s about consistent planning and execution—you try what seems like a good idea. You do it quickly. You keep your mind open and curious. You learn. Then you scrap what failed and double down on what’s working. You rinse and repeat, maybe over and over and over again. This process is what makes things happen.
Process is simply the answer to the question “What actions do we take to achieve our goals?” Even if that answer isn’t written down anywhere, it still exists.
START WITH A CONCRETE VISION
the huge amount of subjectivity in words like help or improve, they don’t do much to create a shared sense of purpose.
Instead, tangible visions have the most impact.
Recall Herbert Hoover’s catchy campaign slogan: “A chicken in every pot.” It’s the opposite of squishy.
An inspiring vision is bold. It doesn’t hedge. You know instantly whether you’ve hit it or not because it’s measurable. And it’s easily repeated, from one person to the next to the next. It doesn’t describe the how—your team will figure that out—it simply describes what the outcome will be.
Create a Believable Game Plan
Now you have to figure out a plan—also known as creating a strategy—to make those outcomes real.
“Plans are worthless,2 but planning is everything,” said Dwight D. Eisenhower,
Though surprises happen and not everything is within our control, it’s through the process of planning that we make sense of our situation and plot our best shot at success. When emergencies do arise, a solid strategy provides the foundation for us to quickly adapt our plans instead of going back to the chaos of square one.
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.
If you’re leading a smaller part of a larger organization, then your team’s plans should relate directly to the organization’s top-level strategy.
If you’re leading a smaller part of a larger organization, then your team’s plans should relate directly to the organization’s top-level strategy.
Craft a Plan Based on Your Team’s Strengths
Just as your management style reflects who you are and what you’re good at, so too should your plans take into account your team’s unique capabilities.
The plan that is smartest for your team is the one that acknowledges your relative strengths and weaknesses.
Focus on Doing a Few Things Well
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.
Conventional wisdom says that success comes from working hard and persevering through difficulties. That’s sage advice, but it overlooks how important focus is. 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.”
When determining which patients to see in the emergency room, doctors will triage and tackle the most urgent issues first. Prioritization is key, and it’s an essential managerial skill.
Effort doesn’t count; results are what matter.
Define Who Is Responsible for What
When ownership isn’t clear, things slip through the cracks. This doesn’t just happen in meetings; every time you send an email to more than one person about an issue that requires a follow-up, the recipients may be confused about whom you are expecting to do what. Each might assume someone else is responsible.
that the clearer I am about whom I’m holding accountable for what, the less of a chance there is for ambiguity and crossed wires.
Break Down a Big Goal into Smaller Pieces
Parkinson’s law states: “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.”
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. You might wonder if anything you do today can really make a difference. But if you divide your plan up into smaller chunks and focus on your next milestone—finishing the task at hand, preparing for that next meeting, getting through two pages—success suddenly seems entirely within your reach. And the sense of urgency becomes real.
Worry about what’s in front of you—don’t worry yet about what’s months or years ahead. Then work with your team to set realistic and ambitious target dates for each milestone.
Allot a buffer for dealing with unexpected issues. From your target date, work backward and figure out who needs to do what every week. Ask people to set and publicly commit to their weekly goals—this creates accountability. Periodic reviews can also be a good way to sustain momentum.
PERFECT EXECUTION OVER PERFECT STRATEGY
The best plans don’t matter if you can’t achieve them accurately or quickly enough to make a difference.
Throughout your career, you will make countless mistakes. The most frustrating will be the ones where you don’t learn anything because it’s not clear whether the issue is with strategy or execution.
The most brilliant plans in the world won’t help you succeed if you can’t bring them to life. Executing well means that you pick a reasonable direction, move quickly to learn what works and what doesn’t, and make adjustments to get to your desired outcome.
Here are some ways to tell if your team is executing well:
Lists of projects or tasks are prioritized from most to least important, with the higher-up items receiving more time and attention.
There is an efficient process for decision-making that everyone understands and trusts.
The team moves quickly, especially with reversible decisions. As Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos says, “Most decisions should probably be made with somewhere around 70% of the information you wish you had.8 If you wait for 90%, in most cases, you’re probably being slow.”
After a decision is made, everyone commits (even those who disagree) and moves speedily to make it happen. Without new information, there is no second-guessing the decision, no pocket vetoing, and no foot dragging.
When important new information surfaces, there is an expedient process to examine if and how current plans should change as a result.
Every task has a who and a by when. Owners set and reliably deliver on commitments.
The team is resilient and constantly seeking to learn. Every failure makes the team stronger because they don’t make the same mistake twice.
Balancing Short-Term and Long-Term Outcomes
It should be clear by now that management is all about the art of balance. When it comes to planning and execution, if you only think about the next three months, you might make shortsighted decisions that create problems down the road. On the flip side, if you’re always thinking many years out, you might struggle with speedy day-to-day execution.
Define a Long-Term Vision and Work Backward
Yogi Berra once said, “If you don’t know where you are going,9 you might wind up someplace else.” Facebook’s mission statement is to give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together. In thousands of ways both big and small, this statement is a North Star that guides every team’s decision-making.
My manager Chris often reminds us, “It’s not a good idea to design where your kitchen outlets should go when you haven’t yet settled on the floor plan.” In other words, start by understanding the bigger picture.
Take a Portfolio Approach
One of my colleagues runs her team with a strategy that is similar to that of an investor’s. Just as no financial advisor would recommend putting all your money into one kind of asset, neither should you tackle projects with one kind of time horizon.
My colleague makes sure that a third of her team works on projects that can be completed on the order of weeks, another third works on medium-term projects that may take months, and finally, the last third works on innovative, early-stage ideas whose impact won’t be known for years.
Talk about How Everything Relates to the Vision
If you’re part of a larger organization, you’ll likely have an over-arching vision, whether it’s “A chicken in every pot,” “Be earth’s most customer-centric company”10 (Amazon’s vision), or “Be the most successful and respected car company in America”11 (Toyota USA’s vision).
It will take months or years to reach your team’s aspirations; it may even take decades to fulfill your organization’s greater purpose. And yet, if everyone understands and buys into what they are ultimately trying to do, the tactical, day-to-day decisions become easier because you can look at them through the lens of: “Which option moves us closer toward the future that we want?” When people don’t understand what ultimately matters and why, that’s when conflicts arise.
At the same time, beware of conflating your purpose with the proxies that you use to measure your progress.
For example, if you care about providing the best customer service in the industry, one data point you might track is how long it takes to resolve a customer complaint.
It’s a fine goal to set, but don’t lose sight of the fact that it’s an approximation of what you really care about, which is providing the best customer service.
service. If your team focuses too much on this specific goal, you might end up with customer service representatives making hasty calls that go against what the customer wants. If speed of resolution goes up but quality of service goes down, then you’re not really getting closer to your vision.
GOOD PROCESS IS EVER EVOLVING
One of the earliest things I learned about building products, especially digital ones, is that there is no such thing as “finished.” You put a version 1.0 out in the world. Then, you learn, you iterate, and you make a better version 2.0 or 3.0.
This is true not just for products, but also process. The way we make progress should also be a work in progress.
One of the most useful tools for improving process is the practice of doing debriefs (also called retrospectives or postmortems). You can do this at the completion of a project, on a periodic basis, or anytime an unexpected event or error occurs. Here’s how it works: You invite the team to come together for an hour or two to reflect on what happened. What went well, what didn’t go well, and what would the team do differently next time?
The process is both cathartic and instructive. There is something to learn even if the outcome was positive (how can we take away best practices for other projects?). If the outcome wasn’t good, debriefs help you avoid the same mistakes in the future. The goal of a debrief is not judgment.
Use language that takes collective accountability instead of pointing fingers and set the tone that it’s okay for us to talk about and learn from our errors.
After a retrospective, it’s a good idea to write down the learnings and share them widely.
Heraclitus, the Greek philosopher, once said: “No man ever steps in the same river twice,13 for it is not the same river and he is not the same man.” Every challenge is like crossing such a river. Investigate the stepping-stones, the currents, the hidden eddies. And then, once you make your plan, take that first step to get to the other side.
========Leading a Growing Team==============
BIG TEAMS VERSUS SMALL TEAMS
Direct to Indirect Management
If your team is five people, you can develop a personal relationship with each individual where you understand the details of their work, whatthey care about and are good at, and maybe even the hobbies they enjoy outside of the office.
If your team is thirty people, you can’t manage them all directly, at least, not to the same degree.
When I got to more than eight reports, I started to feel like I didn’t have enough hours in the day to support everyone well while also thinking about hiring, ensuring high-quality design work, and contributing to product strategy.
This is why managers of growing teams eventually start to hire or develop managers underneath them. But this means you’re further removed from the people and the work on the ground. You’re still responsible for your team’s outcomes, but you can’t be in all the details. Decisions will be made without your input, and things will be done differently than how you might personally do them. At first, this can feel disorienting, like you’re losing control. But empowering your leaders is a necessity. One of the biggest challenges of managing at scale is finding the right balance between going deep on a problem and stepping back and trusting others to take care of it.
People Treat You Differently
What I learned is that it didn’t matter how I saw myself. When people don’t know you well and see that you’re in a position of authority, they’re less likely to tell you the ugly truth or challenge you when they think you’re wrong, even if you’d like them to.
Emphasize that you welcome dissenting opinions and reward those who express them. Own your mistakes and remind your team that you are human, just like everyone else. Use language that invites discussion: “I may be totally wrong here, so tell me if you disagree. My opinion is …” You can also ask directly for advice: “If you were me, what would you do in this situation?”
Context Switching All Day, Every Day
Over time, I came to understand that this was the job. As the number of projects I was responsible for doubled, tripled, and quadrupled, my ability to context switch also needed to keep pace. I discovered a few techniques to make this easier: scanning through my calendar every morning and preparing for each meeting, developing a robust note-taking and task-management system, finding pockets for reflection at the end of every week. Some days I’m still distracted. But I’ve come to accept that there will always be a dozen different issues to work through at any given time—some big, some small, and some unexpected—and as the manager of a large team, you learn to roll with it.
You Pick and Choose Your Battles
The more you look after, the more likely it is that something under your purview isn’t going as well as it could be.
option. It took me a long time to get comfortable operating in a world where I had to pick and choose what mattered the most, and not let the sheer number of possibilities overwhelm me.
The Skills That Matter Become More and More People-Centric
At higher levels of management, the job starts to converge regardless of background. Success becomes more and more about mastering a few key skills: hiring exceptional leaders, building self-reliant teams, establishing a clear vision, and communicating well.
THE TIGHTROPE ACT OF GREAT DELEGATION
GIVING PEOPLE BIG PROBLEMS IS A SIGN OF TRUST
The best work comes from those who have the time to live and breathe a problem fully, who can dedicate themselves to finding the best solution.
In fact, the most talented employees aren’t looking for special treatment or “easy” projects. They want to be challenged.
The key, of course, is that you need to actually believe your report is capable of solving the problem.
Tell everyone else that she should now be considered the owner of the problem. Doing so creates accountability, but more important, the public declaration empowers the delegate.
TWO HEADS, ONE SHARED VISION
the one unique trait that made the human species the most successful in the world is that we are able to share the same vision in our heads, which helps even complete strangers work together.
WHAT TO DO WHEN A MANAGER STRUGGLES
What should you do if one of the managers on your team isn’t meeting the expectations of her role? You might think, My job is to support her and help her through it. You’re not wrong.
The problem with this is that the subordinate’s tuition is paid by his customers. And that is absolutely wrong.”
asked: “Assume the role was open. Would you rather rehire your current leader or take a gamble on someone else?” If the answer is no, make the move.
AIM TO PUT YOURSELF OUT OF A JOB
“Try to double your leadership capacity every year.”
The rule of thumb for delegation goes like this: spend your time and energy on the intersection of 1) what’s most important to the organization and 2) what you’re uniquely able to do better than anyone else.
========Leading a Growing Team==============
Nurturing Culture
Culture describes the norms and values that govern how things get done.
KNOW THE KIND OF TEAM YOU WANT TO BE A PART OF
UNDERSTANDING YOUR CURRENT TEAM
What are the first three adjectives that come to mind when describing the personality of your team?
What moments made you feel most proud to be a part of your team? Why?
What does your team do better than the majority of other teams out there?
If you picked five random members of your team and individually asked each person, “What does our team value?” what would you hear?
How similar is your team’s culture to the broader organization’s culture?
Imagine a journalist scrutinizing your team. What would she say your team does well or not well?
When people complain about how things work, what are the top three things that they bring up?
UNDERSTANDING YOUR ASPIRATIONS
Describe the top five adjectives you’d want an external observer to use to describe your team’s culture. Why those?
Now imagine those five adjectives sitting on a double-edged sword. What do you imagine are the pitfalls that come from ruthless adherence to those qualities? Are those acceptable to you?
Make a list of the aspects of culture that you admire about other teams or organizations. Why do you admire them? What downsides does that team tolerate as a result?
Make a list of the aspects of culture that you wouldn’t want to emulate from other teams or companies. Why not?
UNDERSTANDING THE DIFFERENCE
On a scale from one to nine, with nine being “we’re 100 percent there” and one being “this is the opposite of our team,” how close is your current team from your aspirations? What shows up as both a strength of your team
What shows up as both a strength of your team as well as a quality you value highly?
Where are the biggest gaps between your current team culture and your aspirations?
What are the obstacles that might get in the way of reaching your aspirations? How will you address them?
Imagine how you want your team to work in a year’s time. How would you describe to a report what you hope will be different then compared to now?
Once you’ve identified the values you want to nurture within your team, the next step is to develop a game plan to help those values flourish.
NEVER STOP TALKING ABOUT WHAT’S IMPORTANT
Whenever we’re feeling tension with our coworkers—they have a habit that irritates us, we disagree about an important decision, or they do something that seems thoughtless—she encouraged us to sit down with the other person and discuss that tension openly. Because if you don’t, nothing will get better, and resentment will only grow.
When you value something deeply, don’t shy away from talking about it. Instead, embrace telling people why it’s important to you.
ALWAYS WALK THE WALK
People watch their bosses closely to understand the team’s values and norms. Our radars are fine-tuned to spot instances where someone in a position of authority says one thing and does another. This is one of the fastest ways to lose trust.
If you’re not willing to change your behavior for a stated value, then don’t bring it up in the first place.
CREATE THE RIGHT INCENTIVES
Let’s say you talk the talk and walk the walk. That means all your cultural aspirations will come true, right? Not quite. The final piece is ensuring that your environment rewards people who behave according to your team’s values and holds people accountable when they don’t.
Sometimes, even the best intentions can lead to bad incentives.
Usually, a better option is to have a frank discussion about what we should value and why.
Once people understand and buy into those values, they can make the best decisions on how to apply them.
Here are some other common incentive traps to avoid:
Rewarding individual performance over anything else.
Rewarding short-term gains over long-term investments.
Rewarding lack of perceived issues or conflict.
Rewarding the squeaky wheel.
The way to identify and resolve incentive traps is to regularly reflect on what the difference is between your stated values and how people are actually behaving on your team.
If the issue isn’t structural, but someone does something that’s out of line with your values, you must still take action.
INVENT TRADITIONS THAT CELEBRATE YOUR VALUES