My career as a people manager in tech started about 17 years ago. At the time, I was sent to a two-day course that was supposed to tell me everything I needed to know to manage people. Unfortunately, all that course told me was that my direct reports wanted to take advantage of me and that I needed to demonstrate “I was the boss”.
Since the course, I found the opposite to be true.
All my years of experience managing employees located around the world, discussing challenges with other managers, and mentoring and coaching those starting their management careers have demonstrated to me that there is much more important information to learn as a manager.
It’s not that underperformance is not a challenge but when it happens, typically Human Resources can help. On the flip side, you may have little support as a manager to get the most out of a team of smart people.
What would I have loved to know in that management workshop 17 years ago?
Being a good person is not the same as being a good manager
I was promoted within my team. Without transition, I moved from being their colleague to managing them.
As contract research consultants, we were working in a high-pressure environment all the time so I felt my role was to assuage the team’s stress. I endeavoured to be the group’s cheerleader and make sure all decisions were made by consensus.
That didn’t make me a great manager.
Good people management involves adapting your style to the context. Indeed, sometimes you need to be the one uplifting the team’s mood and some decisions are better to be taken as a group. But other situations need you to be the one grounding the team or taking an unpopular — but necessary — decision.
Takeaway: People management is not a moral trait — being a “good person” — but a profession. Create your scorecard about what good management looks like, identify your gaps, get mentors, and invest in learning and perfecting your skills.
Don’t treat everybody the same
I remember a conversation with an experienced manager many years ago. We were talking about biases and he shared with me that his rule of thumb was to treat everybody the same. My answer? That I strived to treat everybody differently because each member of my team was unique.
My rationale is that each of your direct reports is different and they come with their unique strengths and challenges. Why would you treat an employee who is a single father in his first professional role the same as an experienced non-binary employee caring for a family member with Alzheimer’s?
Takeaway: You may be familiar with the Golden Rule: Treat others as you wish to be treated. All my years as a customer support leader and inclusion strategist is that what works is the Platinum rule: Treat others as they wish to be treated. Invest time in knowing your team members.
Don’t compete
I was a high-performing team contributor before my promotion to manager. In the first years after the transition, I felt I needed to do my “old” job as well as my new job as a manager and I needed to demonstrate to my team that I hadn’t lost my “edge”.
The result? Work constantly overspilling to long evenings and weekends that got me almost to burnout several times.
Takeaway: You need to let go of your former identity. As a manager, your value is to enable the team to deliver the objectives they are assigned to and remove obstacles in their way. Trying to get into a competition with them is simply a waste of everybody’s time and energy.
Keep for yourself your 2 cents
The hierarchical view of management that was instilled in me implied that my obligation was always to provide positive and negative feedback to my team. Simply saying that the work was of good quality felt like I was a slacker — as a “good manager” I should be providing detailed feedback.
As a consequence, I spent useless time and effort at the beginning on tasks such as going slide by slide through very good presentations from my direct reports and commenting on small stuff to show them that I was doing my work as a manager. I not only wasted my time but I’m sure I tested their patience too.
Takeaway: If the work is of good quality, simply acknowledge it. Don’t feel the need to provide suggestions when they don’t add value.
Let your cape at home
Working with smart people is a privilege but it doesn’t come without drawbacks. One of them is their capacity to outsmart you if you let them. Let me explain.
I remember clearly some of my very smart and experienced reports coming “helpless” to me about a difficult customer or task. Of course, I would fall for the trick and “offer” to step in and tackle the issue myself. Or come up with a solution to their problem.
The ruse worked for a while because, from my side, it was making me feel “valued”, and from theirs, it meant that they outsourced the problem to me. What could be wrong with that?
That resulted in more work for me and hindered their growth.
So I learned the hard way that I had to resist the urge to save the day every time an employee would come with a problem. That didn’t mean that I wouldn’t engage in collaborative discussions about how to approach complex issues — or remove barriers blocking them from doing their job — but that my role was not to do their job.
Takeaway: They are smart people and you pay them to solve problems. Don’t be the manager that needs to be the superhero-ine in each situation. Your job is to coach your direct reports towards solutions and offer them challenges at their level that enable them to grow.
Be prepared to eat humble pie
In the “command and control” version of management, the boss talks and the team members do as instructed without asking for context, highlighting contradictions, or questioning assumptions.
The reality is that I’ve never been that kind of employee myself. I’ve always thrived in work environments where constructive challenge is welcome and seen as a sign of engagement.
On the other hand, as a manager, I have to admit that sometimes it can be exhausting to have such passionate, clever, and demanding discussion partners. All the time.
The remedy? In the few instances I’ve longed for quieter 1:1 and group meetings, I’ve reminded myself that the alternative is boredom and conformism. That has been enough to bring me back to appreciate the team I have.
Takeaway: When you manage top performers, it’s a given that they will challenge the status quo and come up with better alternatives to the solutions you present. Remember that this is the reason you’re paying them.
Your reports are not your friends
When I took my first job as a people manager, I didn’t consciously think about the necessary change in the dynamics with my coworkers.
In retrospect, it was inevitable but maybe my brain was not ready to contemplate that change yet. Paradoxically, none of the books I’d read about management appeared to care enough to mention it.
It took awkward conversations, light jokes not laughed at, and some of my direct reports’ kind comments for me to understand that I couldn’t close my eyes anymore. Things had changed forever.
Later on, when through my DEI work I began to dig deep into biases, I realised the importance of separating personal affinity from the manager-employee relationship. For example, I’ve learned how easy it’s to overburden the employee that we find the easiest to work with.
Takeaway: By seeing your team as friends, you’re short-changing them. Regardless of whether you like them or not as a person, your job as a manager is to ensure they progress in their career and deliver on their objectives.
Take care of yourself
During the pandemic, somebody on my team passed away after a long illness. I felt the loss deeply — he was an amazing human being and professional.
If that was not enough, due to the restrictions on movement and direct contact with people, it fell on me alone to inform all the relevant stakeholders in the company and file the necessary paperwork. I felt both drained and devastated.
In a moment of clarity, I realised that I needed to put my oxygen mask first and reluctantly took some time off to process the events. It was the best decision for me, my team, and the company.
Takeaway: Take care of your mental and physical health. It’s no fun to be part of a team where the boss is always stressed and deprioritizes their own health. Don’t underestimate the toll on you of both onboarding and losing employees, reorganisations, and other major events.
Managing clever people can be very rewarding provided that you understand that the way you deliver business value has shifted and you act accordingly.
Your role is not anymore to be the smartest person in the room but to coach, mentor, and sponsor a high-performing group of people so you can become a winning team.
BACK TO YOU: What do you think people managers need to learn — or unlearn — when managing smart tech workers?
PS. You and AI
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- Are you concerned because your clients are prioritising AI but you keep procrastinating on learning about it because you think you’re not “smart enough”?
I’ve got you covered.