As a user story:
The purpose of this document as a user story.
As a Leader I want to be the best leader possible so that I have a positive impact on my Direct Reports lives, ease their job/workload, and facilitate their work.
What Is This?
This post/page will be a compiled, concise list of management lessons I’ve learned over the course of my career. I will regularly come back here so this will be a living, ever changing document.
Ongoing (Always Do These Things)
Google, Google, Google.
Any time you have an unsolved problem or a “how should we..” question for your staff; step #1 is Google.
For example, the question “how should we do a code test for this applicant” provides Google results of automated, pre-built code test platforms.
Regular Check-ins
My opinion is that staff should choose their own check-in schedule. Some staff may prefer weekly while others may prefer monthly or bi-annually. It needs to happen at least every 6 months and 1 or more the meetings needs to be a more formal performance review. The other check-ins/meetings should include:
- How the employee is feeling about the work.
- Things the employee feels might impact their work.
- Workload and increase/decrease in duties.
- Questions/requests the employee has.
- Accrued vacation time and if the employee is taking adequate time off.
The Purpose of a Leader
In basic terms the purpose of a leader is to take “all the bad and none of the good”. Any blame or any problem, such as failed projects, missed deadlines, etc are the fault of the leader (because communication early & often should’ve happened to prevent a missed deliverable). All credit for successful projects, happy customers, etc can be attributed to the staff the leader leads (the leaders primary purpose is to enable the staff to do their jobs).
Feedback
Feedback should always be framed in terms of cause/issue, impact, and desired change. By framing feedback in this way its less likely to be a personal attack or “you suck at your job”.
While you may not add to an employees record for every piece of feedback, you need to document it for your own reference. That allows you, before performance reviews, to catch up on the feedback and if the desired changes happened as requested.
Reviews and Serious Meetings
Any serious meeting or negative feedback with an employee should be one-on-one unless a witness is specifically required, in which case they are just there to listen. Negative feedback from multiple people can quickly feel like bullying or people go into group-think.
Daily Notes
While I haven’t done this I do strongly believe its the right thing to do. Setup a Google Form or notepad for yourself. Every day record a sentence, or more, for each direct report. This then makes it easy during check-ins and performance reviews to review your own notes and celebrate wins as much as failures/mistakes/losses. Too often performance reviews turn negative or focus on the negative and improvements required. Even the best employee is often told to do more in the coming 6-12 months.
Read, Read, and Read Some More
Always be learning, always be growing, and always be exploring options/perspectives. Management, like socioeconomic, is a human-based science and humans/society changes and grows over time. Is the general public preferring to work from home or work in an office these days? Do more people apply to jobs with unlimited vacation time or office snacks? You must stay on top of these things to attract & retain top talent.
Ask Good Questions
Ask open-ended, unweighted, not-loaded, compassionate questions.
For example, “I’d like to explore revenue/sales with you, what insights do you have?” might be an open, unweighted way of digging into lacking sales performance. But if someone the employee cares about just passed away, that’s likely at least part of poor performance so this is not a compassionate question to ask.
Similarly, asking “which option do you like better; mine or your co-workers” is a loaded question. Of course a direct report will tell you your idea is better than a colleagues.
Always be Learning/Developing Technical Knowledge
The world is constantly changing now and if you expect your staff to stay up-to-date on changes then you need to do the same. The cheap & easy way to do this is simply host “lunch & learns” where various staff take a bit of time to teach everyone else about developments/innovation in their area of expertise. Another option is RSS feeds for various topics. This is precisely why I maintain this site; to keep track of professional development and learning.
When is the last time you as a manager did technical professional development (as opposed to managerial/HR professional development).
Measure KPI’s or Metrics
Bottom line, on a daily basis how do you know if an employee is doing a good job? This can’t be “because it feels like it”, “because it seems like it”, or “because they’re making sales”. A S.M.A.R.T. goal has to be measurable. You and the employee have to know, definitively, if they’re meeting expectations or not.
In every check-in meeting the employees KPI’s should at least be checked or touched on. The easiest way to do this is ask the employee to compile KPI data before the meeting.
On the flip side, a fair amount of leniency needs to be allowed around KPI’s and they need to be renegotiated often. How often have we heard “the sales guy was fired because he didn’t meet his annual target [but the annual target didn’t take into account the recession in Q4]”?
Measure Your Own KPI’s or Metrics
If you do not have a boss (you are the owner, CEO, or president). Or, if your boss or employer does not provide KPI’s or metrics. If you do not have KPI’s, metrics, or a budget; create your own! At some point you will have to analyze your metrics & budget. Whether you are justifying your own job, analyzing one of your reports’ jobs, or asking for more budget you must have numbers to back up your claims and make data-driven decisions. Far too often we see “the companies running profitably, what does it matter if its 9% or 10% profit”. That’s all well and good until it’s 1% or 2% loss, then suddenly the percentage point makes all the difference. If you have reports, how much is all salaries of your department combined? What is the income your department brings in or touches or is responsible for? Running your department as siloed entity, is it profitable? Alternatively if your department is a cost centre (accounting, IT, HR) you need to know if your department cost increased or decreased in relation to the overall organizations income.
Problem Solving & Google’ing Doesn’t Come Naturally
You will have to teach many new staff the art of debugging and problem solving. Because this doesn’t come naturally it must be a gentle process.
If You Find Yourself Apologizing
If you find yourself apologizing to an employee or saying “sorry to see you leave us” then take a very long, hard look at your management role. To put it bluntly, as a leader you must catch yourself (objective self-review) long before you have to apologize.
I’ve recently heard “I’m sorry, I know we’re really hard to work with” and “I’m sorry to see you leave us”. This can be caught much earlier by weekly/monthly/quarterly asking yourself objectively how you did as a leader.
Anytime An Employee Leaves
We’ve heard over and over again; people don’t quit jobs, they quit bosses. If an employee leaves, you have to assume you did something to facilitate the mismatch between employee/employer. Do a postmortem after every employee and ensure you don’t loose 2 employees for the same reason; that’d repeated mistakes.
Hold Yourself To The Same Standards
I’ve heard stories of “I’m required to be in the office minimum 1-day per week, but my boss is not”. Anything standards/requirements you have for your staff, you must also follow or provide background to your staff.
First 60 Days of Management
This could apply to your first 60 days in the new management role or could apply to a new hires’ first 60 days on the job.
Mission, Vision, Values
As a manger your mission, vision, values must be inline with the org. If there’s a misalignment it’ll quickly become clear to staff and they’ll be torn between the two. This can quickly create dissatisfaction, confusion, or changing org focus.
Communicate Expectations
Something along the lines of “I’m your new manager, I’m really happy to be hear and serving you, and here’s how I will communicate, provide feedback, and ensure our team is integrated with the org [mission, vision, values]”.
First Check-ins
Hold a one-on-one with direct reports. Figure out who’s happy, who’s unhappy, change management required (from old to new management), etc. Figure out who’s your “stable rocks” and who’s your “rock stars”. Figure out personal situations such as family obligations, drug problems, gambling problems, mental health; anything that might unfortunately bleed over into work or require some extra flexibility. Figure out how much management each needs. Figure out how often and in what form each wants check-ins and feedback. Figure out how, when, and what performance reviews were most recently done before you arrived.
Establish KPI’s
What do you and the employee feel are reasonable measures of success in their role. These must be documented for both you and the employee to see and regular check/confirm/update.
Here’s an example, I had an employer who, without notice or discussion, cut my pay in half. I continued working because the end client shouldn’t suffer but I also scaled back to only the bare essentials. On of the things I dropped was regular Git commits. That doesn’t impact the end client and if I’m only paid for half my work I’m only going to do the bare minimum. Since “commit to Git at least daily” was not part of my KPI’s no one noticed the lack of Git activity.
Approach People “Clinically”
To a certain extent you must approach everyone who reports to you in a very clinical manner. It doesn’t matter if someone disagreed with you yesterday or pissed you off. You must approach all staff the same everyday no matter what because you need them to complete a task. Holding a grudge or building a pattern of behavior diminishes the work relationship and inevitably leads to an unsalvageable relationship. Whatever happens, good or bad, you have to shake it off and start from 0 again tomorrow. Then if there’s a pattern of behavior it’s entirely on the employee. Employees are also not stupid and will easily figure out if your approach changes.