An Individual Contributor’s take on <The Making of a Manager>

I bought this book a while ago due to its popularity, but wasn’t going to prioritize reading it until my friend Wendy Hsu told me, “You have to be prepared to be a manager before the opportunity presents itself.” (“Okay, I’m sold!”)

Even though the book is written for managers, there’re a a few chapters that I find insightful as an individual contributor.

Chapter 1 — What is Management?

Despite the crucial role your manager plays in your success, it didn’t dawn on me “what is the actual job of a manager” (hint: not just attending meetings all day) until I read this book —

“A manager’s job is to get better outcomes from a group of people working together.”

The tasks of a manager can be broken down into three buckets: purpose, people, and process

• Purpose: ensure the team knows what success looks like and cares about achieving it.
• People: Do you have the right people on the team? Are they set up to succeed? Coaching and hiring would full into this bucket as well.
• Process: describes how your team works together. Some important processes to master includes running efficient meetings, future proofing against past mistakes, planning for tomorrow, and nurturing a healthy culture.

The role of a manager is to improve the purpose, people and process of the team to get as high a multiplier effect on the team’s collective outcome as possible.

This chapter also lists a series of questions you could ask yourself, “Is being a manager the right path for you?”

• What you do every day will change based on what the team needs the most at the time to succeed — Adaptability is key trait of great managers. If there’s a specific task you enjoy too much to give up, you might find your personal goals at odds with what the team needs most.
• Do I like talking with people? — As a manager, you’ll have to spend a lot of time with other people.
• Can I provide stability for an emotionally challenging situation? — Since management is all about people, you might have to have hard conversations with people sometimes.
• Being a manager doesn’t mean you have the freedom to call the shots — If your team isn’t sold on your idea but worked on executing it because you asked them to do so, the outcomes won’t be great — the best outcomes come from inspiring people to action, not telling them what to do.

Chapter 3 — Leading a Small Team

Even though this chapter is written to help managers master 1) develop a healthy manager-report relationship and 2) create an environment of support, it also helps me examine my relationships with my past and current managers.

• Managing is caring — What caring means is doing your best to help your report be successful and fulfilled in their work. It means taking the time to learn what they care about, and understand that we aren’t separate people at work and at home.
• 1:1s should be focused on your report and what would help them be more successful, not on you and what you need. Some ideas for a stellar 1:1 includes discuss top priorities, calibrate on what “great” looks like, share feedbacks, and reflect on how things are going.

Chapter 4 — The Art of Feedback

Whether you’re a manager or not, giving feedback is a good skill to have.

• Make your feedback heard — the best way is to make the listener feel safe, and show that you’re saying it because you care about them and want them to succeed. If the recipients view the conversation as a threat, their fight-or-flight instinct would kick in, and the message won’t get through.
• When you have critical feedback to share, approach it with a sense of curiosity and a honest desire to understand the person’s perspectives.
• Ensure your feedback can be acted upon by 1) making your feedback as specific as possible, 2) clarify what success looks and feels like, and 3) suggest next steps.

Chapter 5 — Managing Yourself

This chapter is about understanding yourself — your strengths, values, biases etc. As a result, I think this chapter is applicable to everyone.

The one thing that sticks out to me in this chapter is about when to take formal training —

When thinking about formal training, the question to ask isn’t “Is this worth doing right now given all the other things on my plate”, but rather “One year from now, will I be happy I did this?”

Chapter 6 — Amazing Meetings

Just like giving feedbacks, the ability to host effective meeting is an important skill to have. This chapter states the various types of meetings and what a great meeting would accomplish for each type.

• Decisioning Making
• Sharing Information
• Providing Feedback
• Generating Ideas
• Strengthening Relationships

Chapter 9 — Leading a Growing Team

The author mentions that “At higher levels of management, the job starts to converge regardless of background.” This is an interesting point as I’ve been wondering how people are able to move from the role of CFO to CEO, or vice versa and be successful in both roles. According to the author, for people in senior management roles, success becomes more and more about mastering a few key skills:

• hiring exceptional leaders
• building self-reliant teams
• establishing a clear vision
• communicating well

Another interesting point that was brought up in this chapter is about how great managers are constantly looking for ways to replace themselves in the job they are currently doing. By training someone on your team to do something as well as you do, your team becomes more capable and you would be freed up to take on other challenges. In other words, the act of constantly trying to replace yourself means you create openings to stretch people on your team and yourself.

To achieve that, you need to start delegating. The author states that “The rule of thumbs for delegation is, spend your time and energy on the intersection of 1) what’s most important to the organization and 2) what you’re uniquely able to do better than anyone else.”

In terms of things you shouldn’t delegate, it could be something your personal strengths enable you to do uniquely well. A few other areas that lie at the intersection of “important to the organization” and “you can add unique value” —

• Identifying and communicating what matters
• Hiring top talents
• Resolving conflicts within the group

Overall it’s a well-written book with useful tips that you can apply immediately. I really enjoy the book as an individual contributor aspiring to be a manager someday. Hopefully I will be able to apply what I learn in this book that are relevant to a manager soon!