After wrapping up Julie Zhuo’s The Making of a Manager, I’m so glad I took notes throughout. It was a great read and one that I’m sure I’ll reference for many years. Julie’s experience being thrown into a managerial role at a company with explosive growth produced a book that I’d recommend to anyone looking to become a manger or who’s already a manager.

A summary of my notes for reference:

  • Chapter One: What is Management?.
    • Your job as a manager is to get better outcomes from a group of people working together.
    • It’s the realization that you don’t have to do everything yourself, be the best at everything, or even know how to do everything
    • 3 things managers thing about every day: people, purpose, and process
    • Moving to a managerial role means more focus on your team than yourself, more time with people, being a stable force for emotionally challenging situations
    • You don’t need to be a manager to move up in organizations; “individual contributor” roles allow for specialized work without managerial tasks
    • “What makes a good leader is that they eschew the spotlight in favor of spending time and energy to do what they need to do to support and protect their people.” …”In return, we offer our blood and sweat and tears and do everything we can to see our leader’s vision come to life.” - Simon Sinek, Leaders Eat Last
    • Only when you have built trust with your reports will you have the credibility to help them achieve more together.
  • Chapter Two: Your First Three Months
    • Some good questions for new hires:
      • What was more challenging than you expected?
      • What was easier than you expected?
    • As the manager of a growing team, a mistake that many people make is continuing individual contributor work past the point at which it is sustainable
    • Ways in which people become managers:
      • The Apprentice – Your manager’s team is growing, so you’ve been asked to manage a part of it going forward.
      • Pioneer – You are a founding member of a new group, and you’re now responsible for its growth
      • New Boss – You’re coming in to manage an already-established team, either within your existing organization or at a new one
      • Successor – Your manager has decided to leave, and you are taking his place
  • Chapter Three: Leading a Small Team
    • Managing a small team is about mastering the following basic fundaments: developing a healthy manager-report relationship and creating an environment of support.
    • Trust is the most important ingredient for successful managers
    • Reports should feel able to:
      • Bring their biggest challenges to managers
      • Give feedback that isn’t taken personally (Radical Candor)
      • Gladly work for you again
    • 1:1s are extremely important and help to surface topics that don’t normally come up organically
      • Both manager and report should bring topics to discuss to 1:1s
    • Be honest and transparent about your report’s performance
      • Your report should have a clear sense at all times of what your expectations are and where he stands.
    • Admit your own mistakes and growth areas
    • “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel” - Maya Angelou
    • Help people play to their strengths
    • “Recognition for hard work, valuable skills, helpful advice, or good values can be hugely motivating if it feels genuine and specific.” - Julie
    • Discover what is unique about each person, and capitalize on it
    • Make people moves quickly
  • Chapter Four: The Art of Feedback
    • For a leader, giving feedback - both when things are going well and when they aren’t - is one of the most fundamental aspects of the job
    • When expectations aren’t met, make it clear and don’t wait long to give feedback
    • How to ensure your feedback can be acted upon:
      • Make feedback specific and actionable
      • Clarify what success looks and feels like
      • Suggest next steps
        • Beware of overdoing this – empower your team to learn on their own. Think about asking, “So what do you think the net steps should be?” And letting them guide the discussion.
    • When delivering bad news about a decision, the decision should be the first thing you say. Own the decision and recognize and disagreement respectfully,
  • Chapter Five: Managing Yourself
    • Everyone feels like an imposter sometimes
    • Understand your strengths
    • Questions to ask yourself for better self-understanding:
      • Strengths:
        • How would the people who know and like me best (family, SO, friends) describe me? What qualities do I possess that I’m most proud of?
        • When I look back on something I did that was successful, what personal traits do I give credit to?
        • What are the most common pieces of positive feedback that I’ve received from my manager or peers?
      • Weaknesses and triggers:
        • Whenever my worst inner critic sits on my shoulder, what do they yell at me for?
        • If a genie were to between three gifts on me that I don’t currently have, what would they be?
        • What are three things that trigger me?
    • What are the top common pieces of feedback ofrom my manager or peers on how I could be more effective?
    • Questions to ask your own manager:
      • 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 form 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?
    • Assume the best of intention from other people
    • Visualization is a powerful tool that can help your prepare and provide self-assurance
    • Celebrate the little wins
    • Take care of yourself – you can’t pour from an empty vessel
    • Ask for feedback, and treat your manager as a coach
    • Reflect on progress and set goals
  • Chapter Six: Amazing Meetings
    • Good meetings should leave you feeling like it was a good use of time, you learned something new, had clarity, and felt psychologically safe
    • Have an ideal meeting outcome, not just a purpose for the meeting
    • A good decision-making meeting should get a decision made (duh), include there right stakeholders, present options (and a recommendation if there is one), and give time for dissenting opinions
    • Avoid meetings that could be substituted by email
    • Meetings have advantages like interactivity (great for things like potentially controversial announcements where discussions would be helpful) and interesting (people pay more attention)
    • Great informational meetings enable the group to feel like they learned something, are communicated clearly, are engaging, and evoke emotion
    • Great feedback meetings get everyone on the same page, accurately represent the situation, and ends with next steps
    • Great idea-generating meetings should create many ideas from individuals that have time to brainstorm alone and then as a group, consider all ideas, not just the loudest ones, build on ideas through meaningful discussion, and end with clear next steps
    • Nurture team trust and empathy through shared activities that create better understanding between individuals, encourage openness, and make people feel cared for
    • “You’re more likely to have a great meeting if everyone necessary, and nobody extraneous is there.”
    • Allow people to prep for meetings by sending out slides and docs in advance - then follow up the meeting with a summary and next steps
    • Create a psychologically safe environment for meetings
    • Look for meetings you can strike off your calendar or decrease in frequency
  • Chapter Seven: Hiring Well
    • Hiring is not a problem to be solved but an opportunity to grow your build the future of your organization
    • When it comes to hiring, don’t settle
    • “In addition to contributing their talents, our favorite coworkers teach us new things, inspire and support us, and make going to work, a whole lot more fun.”
    • Create a Roadmap and Vision for growing your team and check in regularly
    • Hiring managers should describe ideal candidates as accurately as possible, especially when working with recruiters
    • Develop a sourcing strategy to get the right candidate pool
    • Interviews are first impressions, so aim to create a remarkable interview experience
    • Check in frequently with candidates
    • “The more senior the candidate, the more critical your involvement is in the close
    • Look for past examples of similar work, and seek out trusted recommendations
    • Use multiple interviewers to reduce bias and catch any red flags that could be easy to miss by just one person - let interviewers document their experience before discussing with the team do avoid group think
    • People should be enthusiastic about the new hire instead of just thinking “I don’t see a reason we shouldn’t hire her”
    • Aim for consistent reviews so reviewers can evaluate from the same place
    • Starting set of questions:
      • What challenges interest you?
      • What are your greatest strengths? Areas of opportunity?
      • Where will you be in 3 years?
      • What’s the hardest conflict you’ve had in the last year?
      • What’s inspired you in your work recently?
    • Don’t hire jerks
    • Grow a team with a diverse set of backgrounds, perspectives, experiences, and skills
    • Hire the best people and empower them to do more
    • Avoid rushing into leadership hires
    • Give away your Legos
  • Chapter Eight: Making Things Happen
    • “Good process helps us execute at our best”
    • Define and share a concrete vision
    • When thinking about vision, consider:
      • How things will be different in 2 years
      • How you’d like someone from an adjacent team to describe your team
      • How it would look if your team was 2 times as good as it is now - then 5 times as good
    • Good strategies are realistic and understand the problem they’re trying to solve
    • Create a strategy that suits your team’s strengths
    • Prioritize based on objectives - “Effort doesn’t count; results are what matter”
    • Without ownership and accountability, it’s easy for things to be discussed but never come to fruition
    • Break down goals into smaller, manageable pieces
    • Iterate quickly and focus on perfecting execution over strategy
    • Prioritize projects by importance and tackle them in that order
    • Know your vision and work backwards from there
    • Connect work back to purpose as often as you can
    • The best processes evolve over time
    • Improve process through retrospectives after projects
    • Your mistakes should make you stronger over time
  • Chapter Nine: Leading a Growing Team
    • “One of the biggest challenges of managing at scale is findingg the right balance between going deep on a problem and steeping back and trusting others to take cafe of it”
    • Know your team dynamic will change as you grow - create a culture of psychological safety to encourage honesty and transparency
    • Be prepared to context switch as your team’s number of projects increase by planning for your week and being organized
    • “At higher levels of management, the job starts to converge regardless of background” - its more about teams and communication
    • One of the hardest skills to learn is the art of delegation - knowing when to dive in yourself and when to step back and entrust others
    • Giving people hard problems is a sign that you trust them - empower your team to solve difficult challenges and support them
    • Having the same vision on a team is important to success - is your team aligned in how they think about people, purpose, and process?
    • “A great team is a prerequisite for great work” – People trump projects
    • Part of growing your team is looking for ways to replace your own role
    • We tend to get attached to what we’re doing and the control it gives us – but part of growing the team is foregoing your own ego in lieu of your team’s success
    • Don’t take everything on yourself – remember the adage of teaching someone to fish
    • When thinking about what not to delegate, consider your unique value that flows from your personal strengths – and communication, hiring, and resolving conflicts
  • Chapter Ten: Nurturing Culture
    • Leaders should know what their team does well and what it values
    • Each team has its own subculture
    • Don’t shy away from talking about things that you value
    • For the message to stick, it should be repeated often and in different ways
    • Your behavior should reflect the team’s ideal values
    • Choose the right incentives to reinforce valued behaviors – not just quick fixes
    • Avoid rewarding short gains over long-term investments
    • Develop traditions around your values to reinforce them and build culture