7 Lessons I Learned as a Manager
This post is 6 months in the making…but I’m writing it for all the prospective managers out there and even for those that are being managed.
to give you some perspective… to show you what you’re in for… all of it!
As many of you know, I stepped down from being a manager at my day job in late June of this year. Honestly, it was just becoming too much with my business and my speaking career taking off. I was finding myself getting frustrated with my team for their needs instead of willingly supporting them. So, I stepped down. And over the last 6 months, I started compiling a list of some of the biggest lessons I learned from my time as a manager, some of which were surprising and some of which weren’t. Let’s take a look…
no. 1 - it’s about relationships.
This one shouldn’t come as a shock to anyone, but management is about relationships first and foremost. It’s about the relationships you have with your team, the trust you have in your team, and—perhaps most important—the trust your team has in you. But when I say it’s about relationships, let me break down a little bit more about what I mean.
It’s about emotion management as much as “people management.” This was a lesson that I learned quickly, especially when my company was going through changes (and just know—if your organization doesn’t handle or manage change well, that’s a burden that’s going to fall on your shoulders as a manager). More often then not, you’re not managing what people are or not doing but people’s reactions to what is happening around them. Bonus structure changing? You have to manage the reactions to that. New CEO? You have to manage the reactions to that. Did your sales team get a trip to Vegas while the rest of the organization didn’t even know about it? You’re going to have to manage the reactions to that, too. And as such, you cannot avoid tough conversations. They happen, inevitably and often, and you cannot avoid them.
But it’s also about managing your emotions—well, not so much managing them as taking them out of the equation. Perhaps the hardest part of being a manager for me was that it wasn’t about my own personal thoughts about someone on my team. It wasn’t about whether I liked them or not. There’s a necessity to be objective as a manager that’s sometimes hard as hell.
It’s also about not jumping to conclusions. Even if a situation with a team member looks sketchy AF and seems outwardly like it’s grounds for termination, it might not be. There might be some extenuating circumstances going on, but—again—that’s where we need to manage our emotions, keep our judgments in check, and allow the team member to explain and tell us their side. I had a situation where a team member looked borderline drunk (or at least on something) during a meeting with a client. It was bad and the client was not happy—especially because we work with minors in our work. It took all of my might to not say anything and just give my team member space to explain. Turns out they were having a reaction to a medication they were taking. So, we made a plan and it’s never happened again.
It’s about relationships. So, keep your relationships with your team front and center.
no. 2 - It requires organization
Holy crapola will your email volume increase exponentially when you start managing and I was not prepared for that. Your number of meetings will likely increase a ton too, which I also wasn’t prepared for. What I learned eventually—and wish I had learned sooner—is that little rituals make a big difference and automation and workflows will absolutely save your ass.
But, until I learned that, little things were falling through the cracks for me as a manager that made a big difference. That is until I locked in a task and notes management system that worked. So, that’s actually one of the more tangible tips I’ll give new managers here—experiment with and find a good task/note management system ASAP! Notion is my system of choice and in my anti-burnout digital planner, I have some of the very templates I used with my team and in my meetings.
I also never fell into a rhythm with my team meetings. I kept saying that if a good discussion is happening, I didn’t want to cut it off and I didn’t want to interrupt people, and—as a result—our team meetings either went over time or were frantic and rushed as they ended.
I wish I had learned earlier that people appreciate punctuality and if you go over time on your meetings, you’re too blame—not the person that talked too much.
no. 3 - it requires boundaries.
I know so many mangers struggle with this. They struggle with turning off and stepping away because their team “needs” them. But, here is what I came realize—if I didn’t take the space I needed and respect my own boundaries, a) they never would, and b) all it did was make me resent my team.
So, some of the biggest, most game-changing things I did were:
I wrote a team standards document that elaborated and explained my boundaries and expectations for them, and what they could expect from me in return. This is something my company initiated and that I loved so much I integrated into my Inner Circle membership. I give you all the tools you need to write your own Team Standards document. Click here to learn more >>
I diligently set an out-of-office when I was out-of-office—and I did not respond to requests, texts, or emails that came through when I was out of office. My day-job has emergency protocols in place if people need support outside of normal hours. I set the expectation that they should follow those, not rely on me.
I communicated my hours in my email signature. Below my email signature with all the “official” details, I wrote when and what days of the week I worked. This was for my clients and for my team.
Which brings me to number 4…
no. 4 - It requires communication—over-communication, in fact.
We talked in the last bullet about communicating boundaries. You notice that when it came to my hours, I had that in my team standards, my out of office, and my email signature.
But the other things I found it’s super necessary to communicate and over-communicate were:
Deadlines. I learned during one review period how much people will procrastination on submitting forms if you don’t remind them. So, the next review period, I scheduled and set-up a shit-ton of reminder emails to make sure they didn’t miss the deadline—10 days ahead, 1 week ahead, 3 days ahead, and the day off. And in one of the last ones, I communicated “this is the last day to ask me questions or get help from me. If you wait until the day it’s due—when I am not working—I will not be available to answer your questions.” From my perspective, they had no excuse. They’re adults and adults should plan ahead not put their lack of planning on me.
Expectations. This was especially important when there was some sort of company-wide policy change. If some fundamental aspect of their job was changing, they heard it from me at least 4 or more times.
Consequences. If someone on my team was struggling, I realized quickly that I needed to not only state the consequences if they didn’t improve in our 1-on-1 meeting, but also in an email and a follow-up email. Each time I made a point of saying something like, “I know we already talked about this, but I just want to make things super clear so there’s no confusion…”
Along the same lines, I found it important to communicate in multiple different mediums. When there was a big announcement, I said it out loud in team meeting, sent an email, and posted in Slack. Most major announcements went in Slack and via email because I found more and more that my team members had different preferred methods of communication, so this became more and more important!
no. 5 - It requires training.
Too many companies simply promote someone into management who has been doing a “good job” at their previous position. That’s not a good reason. Just because someone was good at what they did before doesn’t mean they’ll make a good manager. And as we’ve already shown, it is so much more than being able to “help someone who does what you used to be good at.”
It requires:
Knowing how to have difficult conversations
Being able to deal with potential issues of termination or the need for performance improvement
Knowing when something needs to be escalated or turned over the HR
Organizational skills
LEaderships skills
The ability to put things into multiple different contexts
Being able to explain the why behind a change (even if the why wasn’t explained well to you)
All of these things may require training and, unfortunately, most promotions either don’t come with training OR the training is woefully inadequate.
No. 6 - It’s a thankless job.
Way back in the day when I was exploring science writing as a possible career, I wrote an article about how public health is like defense—a thankless job. Honestly, I feel the same way about management.
As a manager, I got comments saying I communicated too much and too little. I was told I needed to manage my time better in team meetings (true) but also that team members appreciated being able to have the floor. Some people liked my personality, some people thought I was too “unprofessional.” Some team members thought I managed the change in our bonus structure well, some people were aggravated that I didn’t have more answers.
The thing that everyone who isn’t a manager needs to know is this: managers don’t have all the information and often have little to no power to address concerns or make changes.
I had people who deserved bonuses not get one for arbitrary reasons and my hands were tied. I had people who should’ve been more successful in our company get overlooked for promotions, and my hands were tied.
I was often asked to manage through changes where I wasn’t sold yet on the change and I still had questions, but sometimes organizations push changes ahead even when they haven’t worked out all the details. Managers have to roll with the punches and deal with the frustration of their teams about all the unanswered questions…and it’s hard!
And, sometimes, your manager has literally taken a pay cut (🙋🏻♀️🙋🏻♀️) to be a manager because they wanted to help people so badly. I’m not saying don’t have expectations of managers. I’m not saying don’t expect them to improve or change. I’m saying, take it easy on them. Being a manager is often a powerless position—you take the brunt of the heat and have little to not control to do anything about situations. And it sucks.
No. 7 - It requires Compassion.
Compassion counts almost more than anything else as a manager, in my experience. I had the pleasure of building such great relationships with my former team members, several of whom I’m still pretty close with and chat with and I think a big reason for that was because compassion, for me, is front and center. I had team members tell me about learning differences, psychological issues, and struggles they were experiencing that gave such important context to their work that they flat-out told me, “I’ve never been comfortable telling another manager this…”
That’s what happens when you lead with compassion and understanding. When you lead with empathy. I wholeheartedly believe it’s the most important thing when it comes to being a manager.