The Manager's Path: Chapter 4 - Managing People
The fourth chapter of The Manager’s Path addresses managing individual people. In contrast to my differences with chapter three, this chapter felt spot on. Nearly everything here resonated with my experience managing people both inside and outside of tech.
I unabashedly loved this chapter. It’s natural for managers to develop their own styles and processes over time, but if it’s your first time leading people the practical and specific advice here is great. Start with the recommendations here and then evolve them to suit your needs as you grow.
This is also a dense chapter, covering everything from onboarding to running 1:1s, performance management, and firing. If you’re getting started as a manager I suggest reading this chapter once, making a 30-60-90 day action plan for yourself as a manager, and returning to re-read this chapter at each milestone. It’s that important - and that good.
Key takeaways
Building trust and rapport
Trust and rapport is not the same as having your reports like you. I’ve worked for managers I never “clicked” with but I did trust them, and had a professional working rapport with them based on mutual recognition of competence. I’ve also worked with managers who I got along with great on a personal level right up until they drove the proverbial bus over me for their own careers, stealing credit for my work and that of my peers, even straight up lying to me.
Of these two, trust is the one you have the most control over. Establishing it is simple but not easy. Say what you’re going to do, and then do it. Admit your mistakes. Return to your reports again and again for their input. Absorb and reflect on it. You don’t have to let them run the show, but if you’re not even listening to them - truly listening - you’ll never get anywhere.
Rapport is trickier. You will have varying levels of rapport with different people; that’s human nature. You can’t control that. What you can control is demonstrating to your reports that they matter to you as individuals and that you recognize their humanity and uniqueness. This chapter has good advice here, such as asking your reports how they like to be managed, how they prefer to receive feedback and praise, and disclosing your own style without expecting them to adapt wholly to your whims and demands. You may never be best friends with all of your reports (and you shouldn’t!) but do these things and you’ll have the foundation for a strong working relationship.
Writing and delivering performance reviews
Here is where you leverage all of that trust and rapport you built. Delivering critical feedback is always difficult, but your reports will be in a much better place to receive it if they know that you are sharing it because you want them to improve. The implication is that you want them to continue working with you - good news! They will only believe that if you have done the work previously to build trust and rapport with them.
“Try to account for the whole year, not just the past couple of months”
Some tactical advice from my own experience here. As well as keeping recurring notes like this chapter recommends, I ask each of my reports to keep their own “brag books” to use in their own self-assessment. I can go back through Jira and our wiki to see the major milestones met during a reporting period, but so much important work happens outside of what is planned. Brag books are a way to ensure that gets added up at the end of the year. It’s no substitute for completing assigned feature work; that’s always the first priority. It does, however, make a powerful argument for attributes that are more difficult to review, such as unblocking peers or partner services, diving into incidents to support a newer member, or external work like talks or blog posts that help promote the company.
I’m glad this chapter calls out using peer feedback in addition to your own examples. Peers contribute feedback differently; some with a sentence or two per question, others with responses that match the length of this post. What you’re looking for are the common themes running through the feedback. Maybe I’m just lucky with the engineers I work with, but I find those themes to be present far more often than this chapter hints at.
Finally, when writing your own reviews, be sure your examples align with the overall leveling guidance you’re giving your reports. For a newly promoted engineer, look for examples that indicate they are beginning to perform successfully at their current level. For an engineer you’re coaching towards a promotion, use the documented behaviors from the next level on your career ladder to show how they’re already performing above their current band. Any discrepancies you find are opportunities for feedback and development. Seize them!
Micromanagement and delegation
“If micromanagement is your habit, if it’s your default approach toward leading your team, you’ll end up… undermining the very people you need to be growing and rewarding.”
Here’s where failing to build trust and rapport falls down. As an aside, I like the analogy of the “trust battery” here - every relationship has a trust battery that starts at a 50% charge, and every interaction either charges or depletes that battery. Over time you will find yourselves consistently either nearly full or nearly empty. If it’s low, you can take action to turn those interactions around, but it’s difficult and will involve a lot of self-reflection.
Back to micromanagement - over thirty years I’ve seen this more often than I’ve seen good management. In fact, it’s led me to overcorrect to a very “hands off” style of management. This comes with downsides, of course, so one of the first things I tell new reports is my own history with managers and how it has impacted me. I don’t want them to confuse my intentional “observe from afar and help when asked” approach with indifference; far from it. I want them to be successful and to build the confidence to take on increasingly difficult work.
The Army gets this right with the saying, “you can delegate authority but never responsibility.” Trust your reports and empower them to accomplish the work you lay out together, but you are always responsible for the outcome of that work. You cannot point the finger downwards. You won’t be very successful pointing the finger sideways or especially upwards either. You’re a manager now; the buck stops with you.
I could write an entire book on the toxic outcomes of micromanagement, how high performing teams can be shattered by departures and brought entirely to a halt. I’ve seen it all too often and all too recently. If you find yourself needing to control every aspect of your team’s work, find a trusted mentor, peer, or coach who can help you delegate more effectively. You’ll ultimately be far more successful.
Assessing your own experience
- Have you set up regular 1:1s with your direct report?
Yes - I have longstanding weekly 1:1s with all of my direct reports as well as my own manager.
- When was the last time you talked to your reports about their career development? If it was more than three months ago, can you make sure to put this in your next 1:1s?
I work with each of my direct reports to create goals for every coming quarter. We frame these goals in terms of their own goals for career progression and check in on them at least monthly.
- Have you given feedback to your reports in the last week? When was the last time you handed out kudos in front of the team?
I have given public and private feedback to my reports this week. I try to give kudos verbally in weekly meetings every time a workstream lands or there is a specific milestone worth celebrating. I could be doing a better job of handing out written kudos on a more frequent and more regular basis.
- When was the last time someone behaved in a way that needed correction? How long did it take you to give corrective feedback? Did you give the feedback in private, or did you do it in public?
In the last month of last year I needed to give a correction for some ongoing behavior. I gave it in private during a regularly scheduled 1:1. This was the type of feedback that didn’t need immediate correction as it was an ongoing issue with a path towards improvement, not a single step change.
- Have you ever been given a performance review that felt like a waste of time? What was it missing that could have made it more valuable?
Yep - the farther I’ve progressed in my career the less useful performance reviews have been. That’s if they even occur at all. The fact is that, just as with mentorship guidance, you’re going to get less help the higher up you go.
- What was the most useful piece of performance feedback you ever got? How was it delivered to you?
I’m very impact-driven. As a result, I was told, “when you’re facing two possibilities, choose the one which has more impact.” Simple, maybe even obvious, but powerful for cutting through noise and clutter and managing where I apply my time. It was delivered verbally, in private.
- Do you know how the process of promoting people works in your company? If not, can you ask someone to walk you through it?
As far as I’m aware we don’t have a formally documented process like I have seen at other large companies. This may vary from organization to organization. This is something we should be tracking though, as we’re past the point of not quite enough process on this one. I’ll take my own action item here to make this happen.
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