The Making of a Manager

People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel

We humans are wired to see the bad more clearly than the good. It’s an evolutionary advantage, after all.

I’m by no means a management expert. I’ve learned largely by doing, and despite my best intentions, I’ve made countless mistakes. But this is how anything in life goes: You try something. You figure out what worked and what didn’t. You file away lessons for the future. And then you get better. Rinse, repeat.

I never thought managing was easy. I still don’t.

Just like how there is no one way to go about being a person, there is no one way to go about managing a group of people.

It may seem counterintuitive, but the feedback process should begin before any work does.

You can be someone’s manager, but if that person does not trust or respect you, you will have limited ability to influence him.

How do I make decisions?
What do I consider a job well done?
What are all the responsibilities I took care of when it was just me?
What’s easy or hard about working in this function?
What new processes are needed now that this team is growing?

That line of thinking was a mistake

Fake it till you make it