On management

It’s review season yet again, which usually means I’m reflecting on all things management and advising a couple others on their approaches to management and leadership.

Here are a few frames that have endured year after year for me. I hope these ring true for you, and let me know if there are other important ones that I've missed this year.

1. Leaders bring the weather. Yes, that means however you are feeling about the day and your mood is likely to set the tone for everybody. The more even keeled you are, the more even keeled your team is. The more optimistic you are, the more optimistic your team is.?Having a great day? Oh look at that, your team is as well.
2. Know thyself. Great leaders and managers often have in common that they have a deep grasp of who they are, what they stand for, and are in perpetual pursuit of self improvement and mastery. Meditation, self care, leadership training - whatever form it takes, know that it helps deepen your effectiveness as a leader.?
3. Don’t manage others based on how you prefer to be managed. This almost goes without saying, except I see a lot of managers do this. You’ve had situations where you’ve said to yourself, “when I’m managing people, I’ll never do this/always do this!” That’s a recipe for disaster. Manage to each team member’s unique strengths and growth areas. I show up as a manager differently depending on the individual.
4. Repeat the why. It’s easy in the day-to-day to get lost in the tasks that need to get done. So, you’ll need to repeat the why behind doing the work, the mission and passion behind it. Have stories to tell that expound on how the work connects with the why? Tell them daily. Then repeat.
5. Questions separate the good from great managers. I find that excellent leaders are the ones who are able to ask the exceptional questions that get to the heart of an issue. That requires a lot of listening, and most of the time, a lot less talking. Here’s a great 2018 Harvard Business Review article I come back to once a year on this approach: https://hbr.org/2018/03/better-brainstorming ?
6. Culture is what you tolerate. You know that saying that’s culture eats strategy? Well, culture is what you tolerate on your team, in your organization. Managers who don’t walk the talk will find it exceptionally hard to be a standard bearer for others.?
7. Not having all the answers, but knowing how to find a path forward. The real magic behind teams and privilege being a manger is that when faced with a significant opportunity or challenge, you can bet that not one person has the answers to everything but the whole probably has a wealth of knowledge about what to do. Great managers excel at recognizing they don’t have the answers, encouraging an environment/culture where people speak up and then charting a path forward. “Good leaders don’t make excuses. Instead, they figure out a way to get things done.”? – Jocko Willink
8. The best teams correlate with excellent team dynamics, not the highest performing individuals. This is the great and obvious finding of Google’s Project Aristotle (https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/magazine/what-google-learned-from-its-quest-to-build-the-perfect-team.html ). It turns out that no, you don’t want a team that is orderly and everybody speaks when it’s their turn. I can attest to that first hand -- the incredible teams that I’ve been on if you observed them from afar, were at least 50% of the time off topic, laughing about something, or giving each other a hard time. But it turns out that a high trust quotient can help get a lot of things done exceptionally well and quickly because people are speaking their minds and showing up with their real selves.?And that is a marker for very high productivity and problem-solving skills.