General Management 101
People management is the differentiator between good and great companies. It is the single greatest predictor of sustainable growth in a company. Companies that invest in people management, that train on it, coach on it, lionize it and don’t excuse poor practitioners, grow. Companies that fail on any or all of those fronts spin their wheels with turn over and poor performance. Managers scratch their head about a previous top performer who is, ya know, okay or whatever, at this point, and <head shake> i just don’t know what happened.
Hey, I do: they were managed poorly and that’s hyper de-motivating!
Good management, and investment in teaching people how to manage, means managers can spend time doing rather than interviewing, training and backfilling.
People management is easy. You show up, tell people what to do and then, I dunno, play solitaire or come up with ridiculous ways to waste time and make work harder, less fun and less efficient.
This is, often, how people view managers and their purview. Sadly, that first part—that people management is easy—is oftentimes how managers view people management.
Good people management is hard. It takes effort, intentionality and time and you have to actually care. That sounds trite. I get it.
It’s the truth.
Good people management is a different skill set than being an individual contributor. Oftentimes the people who get promoted into management roles are the ones who excelled at being an individual contributor—He was a really good project manager, so let’s have him manage project managers! She was a great field coordinator, so let’s have her manage field coordinators!
That’s a great starting point but too often it becomes the finish line as well. Understanding that managing the people who did the job you used to do is different than doing that job is a critical first step in becoming a good people manager. If you’re still doing the job you used to do, while trying to manage the people who do that job, you’re failing. You’re failing yourself and you’re failing the people you are supposed to instead be managing.
Think about the backstory of the first example—a really good project manager (PM) who becomes the manager for a group of PM’s. That “really good” project manager did not magically fall into this world, fully formed from some PMBOK-Zeus’ head, fully formed and ready to gantt chart the shit out of an implementation: they learned how to be a really good PM. Someone taught them. Someone invested time in showing them, Do this, avoid that, question this, etc. Project management is a skill. It is teachable and learnable and something at which a person can excel or flounder.
People management is the same. It is a teachable, learnable skill—but oftentimes a skill that we fail to teach because, hey, they were a really good project manager and therefore this other skill (people management) is going to be easy. Natural. A cinch.
Here’s the other fundamental truth about people management: Not everyone is cut out for it, and that’s okay.
Companies often tie title, accolades and compensation to people management, which in turn entices people into people management roles who lack the interest, ability or both. This is a mistake— for both the company, and the individual. It is a very feudal mindset and, like strange women lying in ponds distributing swords, it is not a basis for a system of governance. Don’t just let managers manage, make managers manage. Make individual contributors contribute. Reward each on the basis of their contribution, but understand that the metric for contribution is different for each. This is a longer topic, one for another post, but an absolutely worthy conversation.
My two central truths of people management are as follows. The first was said to me by my outgoing manager when I left a company where I did not manage people. The second is what my incoming manager said to me as I joined a new company and took over an existing team in turmoil.
1: Look back at every manager you have ever had and think about the skills, traits and attributes they had that you like. Why do you like them? Did they make them more or less effective as a manager? What skills, attributes and traits did they have that you hated? Why did you hate them? Did they make them a more or less effective manager?
2: You are not managing for any one person, and that includes yourself. You are managing for you team. The team succeeds or the team fails. No one person defines the team and no one person is bigger—or smaller—than the team, and that, again, absolutely includes yourself.
The first one is self-reflective and a really good start on the EQ path.
The second? Well, what does that mean?
It means you look at each person as a part of the whole—yourself included. You plan for the team as a whole—what do we need for resources over the next 6 months? You train for the team—what do we need to know over the next year? You review utilization for the team. You hire for the team and, yes, you terminate people for the team—because if you don’t, the team won’t exist.
Being a good people manager is realizing you generate value by making your team better. If you’re not doing that, you’re not a good manager, period. New paragraph.
If you’re not acting as a force multiplier, what are you doing? You might be a good individual contributor, but that’s a different role. You might be that time/fun/efficiency vampire I mentioned earlier. When review time comes up, is the conversation about what you accomplished, or what your people accomplished? Or what you accomplished through your people? What did the team do? How did you help make that happen? Is it sustainable or is it dependent on you being a lynchpin?
You’re managing for your team, not any one person, yourself included.
Step 2? Invest your time in learning how to be a people manager, and accept that it will take time and effort.
Let’s go from there.
I’ll discuss good people management more over time, but for now, here are some links to videos or books that I enjoy and find valuable.