People Management for People Interested in People Management
People Management for People Interested in People Management
Why, or why not, to get into people management
I love cooking. I find it relaxing and enjoyable to try and meld flavor, technique and process. It makes me think and plan, but in a completely different way from my work mindset. It unclogs mental logjams.
One of my favorite recipes is Cacio e Pepe – pasta with black pepper. It has five ingredients: Pasta, water, olive oil, black pepper and Romano cheese. It is about technique and simplicity and, if done right, gives you a gloriously flavorful emulsion of peppery, savory cheese coated pasta.
But recipes with few ingredients are the most difficult. There’s no place to hide. Over or under-cooked something? You know it immediately. Over-salted? Nothing to leech that out.
Managing people is ultimately about three ingredients. There’s no place to hide. If you screw up on one of these, people—usually the people you manage— will immediately know.
1) Know what motivates your people, and whether they are currently motivated
2) Give a shit about them and their career development
3) Act as a force multiplier
That’s it.
This is where you think I’ll say something like, This is a deceptively complex list. Nope. It’s not. It is simple and straightforward, and it is all the more challenging to enact because of it. There is no complexity in which to hide. You can either do these things, or you cannot.
If you’re interested in getting into people management, think about this list. Can you do this? Are you interested in learning to do this?
Note that there is nothing in here about doing your old job, or even being good at that job anymore. People management is a wholly other skill set. It is teachable and trainable, but understand that the skills that got you the management role are not the same skills that will make you successful as a people manager.
Most of us are lucky enough to have had multiple managers in our careers. Some are good, some are bad, some are great and some are abysmal. Each one of them had a style that was their own—good, bad or other.. If you try and be a manager who is just like MyFirstManager, You. Will. Fail. Because you’re not them. You don’t have their skill set and background and cache and panache—and that’s good! You have your own skill set and background and cache and panache. Make your own style by looking at your previous managers and asking if you liked/didn’t like something did, and why it was, or wasn’t effective for them. Can you make it your own? Choosing to do something or choosing NOT to do something is equally as informative and powerful. Developing your own style will serve you better than doing a poor imitation of someone else’s.
Let’s break down each of these three a bit.
Know what motivates your people, and whether they are currently motivated
If your people aren’t motivated, they aren’t working to their potential. If you don’t know what motivates them, you’ll never help get them motivated. Therefore, if you don’t know what motivates your people then your team is not working to their full potential.
It is also critically important to remember that motivation is individual and constantly evolving. 25 year old Nick had very different motivators from 30 year old Nick, who had very different motivations from 35 year old Nick. This is expected and good. Someone who’s motivations have stopped changing has probably stopped growing and learning and evolving in other parts of their life, too.
In my experience, there are five motivating factors at work. None of these are any better or worse than others—they are simply the motivational keys to people management. If something isn’t motivating to you, that is fine. This isn’t about you. This about all the other people. This is about EQ. Don’t denigrate a motivation just because it doesn’t speak to you, first because it is a common and easy mistake that will cost you great employees, but second, understand that your motivations will also change and that one of the motivations that doesn’t speak to you today may speak to you in a year.
In no particular order:
Money
Recognition
Title
Work/Life Balance
Security
Money
Money is obvious. People like to get paid and have money to spend. This does not need to be giant figures. A grand, to someone earning 50k a year, is a solid, Thank You. Money is a straightforward motivator and the most foundational. Shakespeare wrote for money. I love my job, but I would do something else if I wasn’t getting paid to do it.
This is also about being penny-foolish and pound-wise. When calculating raises and bonuses do not try and “save the company money”. If you have the budget for something, use it. If you can give someone an extra $500, do it. If you don’t, own that, too.
There are all sorts of articles and business groupthink about how “Money is a poor motivator and is short term” but those articles are typically written by people for whom money is no longer motivating. You have a comfortable mortgage, no credit card debt and 500k invested in Amazon and ExxonMobil? Cool, no shit money isn’t motivating for you. That doesn’t mean isn’t motivating to others.
Recognition
Less tactile but just as important is Recognition. Trumpet your people when they deserve to be trumpted. Managers who take the credit for their team members’ ideas are asking to either be undercut – e.g. You know that Mark actually came up with that idea and developed it, right?—or asking to lose people. No one wants to work for the person who hogs the success and shares the failures.
This is not about grand gestures. This is about name dropping, giving someone their due and acknowledging contribution. Something as simple as, “Lindsey had a great idea and then saw it through to a Phase 1 and she’s leading the discussion on how we take this to a broader audience in Phase 2.”
Regular, quick recognition is a great motivator and it takes nothing away from you as a manager. The people you manage reflect on you. If they’re producing great work and coming up with great ideas, that is a positive reflection on you. If your team is a bunch of deli-counter drones who show up at 8:59a and leave by 5:01p every day, that is also reflective on you.
People who feel like they will be recognized — and advanced— based on that recognition are motivated to work more creatively and to work harder. They’re also more apt to see you as a mentor and someone who actually gives a shit about them and their advancement. Managers who hog credit or who treat recognition like they’re some 50’s dad stereotype, unable to express thanks or emotion, will lose people.
Title
Hopefully you work at a company where title is less important than reputation and ability. That being said, it matters. If someone is doing the work of a Senior Project Manager, then recognize them as such—and pay them as such. Title and Recognition are related, and Title and Money are related, but Title is distinct enough to get its own motivational category. Some people want the title in their signature block and they want others to see it. They want the post up on LinkedIn. Title is about external recognition. Title is a way to declare status, and, to some, worth.
Notably, Title is a huge motivator in many Asian countries—India, Japan and Korea being prime examples. When structure is calcified and society is very hierarchical, title matters more. Title can also matter more to those taking a step in their personal lives, for example, someone about to get married, or have their first child or retire.
Work/Life Balance
Twenty-one year old Nick’s work life balance consisted of having enough time to play video games, hang out with friends and drink some beers. I was responsible for one and exactly one person’s well-being: myself. Working late or coming in early or working on the weekend was annoying, but not a big deal. Fifteen+ years later, and I’ve got a couple of kids, a wife, a home, extended family, etc. Being home and able to log off between 5:30p and 830p every night is a big deal. That’s family time. That is making dinner. That is putting my kids to bed.
Work/Life is not, notably, just about kids—though many, many companies and managers want to believe that is the case.
There was someone on my team years ago who had a dog and he left work, on the dot, at 515 every day so he could go home and walk his dog to the dog park and play with him. He’d be back online in an hour or two— sometimes he’d even come back into the office — so it wasn’t a big deal to anyone. We had crunch on a project and people were staying late and he got a ration of shit from the director overseeing the project, but, my teammate stood firm and went to go let his dog out. He was back in maybe 90 minutes — and while he missed the director loudly talking about how he had kids and not some dog to go walk, and are you kidding me, the rest of the team got to hear it.
And it stuck with me. Sure, that guy had kids at home. The other guy had a dog. Someone else had a boyfriend at home, or plans to go to dinner with friends. It isn’t up to the manager or the company to decide what is worthy of being important to someone. That is a great way to tell someone that their whole person is not valued at work—and guess how long that person sticks around? Good managers recognize that whatever is important to each person is what is important to the overall team.
That said, for many people what is important is being home for kids, dinner and bedtime. If a job creeps into work/life imbalance—or runs headlong into it—you will lose people. Knowing who values, and devalues, work/life balance is important.
**NOTE ADDED POST PUBLICATION*
This got a lot of feedback. Like, a lot. I think the response is, overall, worthy of its own post but I want to respond to something quickly, here: Wanting to be home for your kids or your spouse or your doggo or for whatever makes you happiest and most fulfilled is the goal. People who feel fulfilled at work and at home are, in my experience, the happiest, most creative and hardest working. If being around on a Tuesday night to go to violin practice or a volleyball game is the thing that gets you out of bed in the morning then let’s prioritize that!
There is no one-size solution or fit for work/life balance. There isn’t. Your desire for work/life balance will change and shift over time—or at least that’s my observation. That’s good. That’s normal. It can ebb and flow on a monthly and annual basis—again, expected. Good. This is why work/life balance is so important.
Security
Knowing you will have a job is a great motivator for a number of employees. In manager circles I think this is probably the most denigrated motivator—and I sort of understand why? It can be the refuge of the B or C level employee – someone holding on because they’re not capable of landing another job and they want to ride this out until retirement.
That is the minority. The majority of people who are motivated by security have something else in their life that is more important. A sick family member. A side gig with art or music. They want something to pay the bills while they pursue their passion. Security is a perfectly valid motivator.
Those are the big five motivators. Everyone has a measure of all of them, but typically one or two primary motivators. What is critically important to remember is that they will change and evolve over time for one person and that a given team of ten will have ten different motivational profiles. It is also critically important to remember that no one motivator is more valid than any other—what is valuable is the work they let you generate.
Give a shit about them and their career development
If you’re looking at becoming a manager, chances are you have someone mentoring and developing you. Do they give a shit about you? About your growth? Is that motivating?
Let’s take a moment and talk about “giving a shit”. It is really easy to pretend to give a shit. It is Grade A Performative Verisimilitude. You can skate by on that for a bit, but sooner or later people will suss it out and you’re screwed. Giving a shit means you actually invest in them and their success. It means giving them recognition when they deserve it, and a critical conversation when that is what’s needed. It means having tough conversations with them. It means pushing them out of the nest when you know they can fly, even if they think they still need that magic feather (you). Not to put too parental a spin on this, but it means caring about them and their success in a way usually reserved for children.
Giving a shit is tough. You can only give a shit about so many people, so don’t think you can invest in everyone and know everyone and be that person for everyone. At a high level, sure. At a personal, I know you, level, it just is not scalable or possible.
Here’s the hardest part: Give a shit about them so that they succeed away from you. If motivation is about reflected excellence, giving a shit is about spreading influence. If you push great people into different groups, into different business units and verticals, they will succeed. Giving a shit means caring even when there isn’t a direct benefit to you. The irony is that, when you do it because you actually care there are direct long-term benefits to you. Need a favor? Need to goose something? Need someone to identify good talent to move back into your group? You have that network.
Act as a force multiplier
Your job as a manager is to make everyone else better. Sometimes you dig in to help on an individual engagement, but overall, if you’re in the weeds on a specific engagement, you’re not seeing the whole playing field. Others are suffering because you’re too focused in—and the worst part is that you’re so focused in you can’t even identify who is suffering! Acting as a force multiplier is about strategic vision and tactical execution.
Let’s do some math.
For the example, let’s say you work on a team of five. When you’re an individual contributor, you probably worked about 45-50 hours/week, as did everyone on the team. That’s 225-250 hours/week. As a manager, you will probably work the same. Assuming your role is backfilled after you become a manager and someone else does roughly the same number of hours, how are you bringing value to your team?
Here are some wrong answers:
1) I approve time cards faster and act as a great shoulder to cry on when things are tough!
An auto-approval system and a teddy bear could replace you.
2) I get everyone to work more hours for the same salary/pay!
The company will not notice this and your team will—and not appreciate it.
3) Everyone goes out for beers every other Thursday!
Is your team in their twenties? Got anyone older? With kids? This is not the inclusive event you think it is.
4) I run a tighter ship and no one complains about anyone or anything and everyone is happy!
Your team is not communicating with you and is likely ignoring you.
5) I get out of the way and let everyone solve their own problems – I teach them independence!
Your team feels like you don’t have their backs and cannot solve any of their problems.
Aside from the delusion that you’re doing a great job, you’ve added little to your team. If your “management style” involves being a cheerleader with a bullwhip who can approve timecards the team doesn’t need you! You’re not contributing, your team will burn out and they will come to dislike you because they see themselves as working hard and you as hardly working.
Managers bring value to their teams by making them better at what they do.
Examine process and allocation. Those things—tasks, systems, meetings, etc.—that bugged you as an individual contributor; they are potentially within your power to address and streamline. Time tracking is a topic near and dear to my heart, and an area typically ripe for efficiency gains, so let’s use that as the example.
It is easy to spend ~3.5 hours/week on time tracking and time entry. People don’t spend equal time each day. Instead they spend ~15 minutes daily and then slam down maybe 1-2 hours Monday morning to finalize the prior weeks’ time. Templating time entry, and streamlining the approval process and, frankly, being a pain in the ass about people getting time in on Friday, reduces the overall time burden. Time entry drops to about 1 hour/week/person, for a net savings of 2.5 hours/person.
On your team of five, that is 12.5 hours a week, and 50 hours/month. You got an extra week of a person’s productive time out of your team by looking at the strategic issues plaguing your team’s productivity and enacting a tactical response. They may not initially appreciate you doing this, but you have the data and if you can meaningfully express this to them a month down the road, it will speak to them. It’s the difference between logging off at 630 and logging off at 430. It’s not having the end of month consist of time entry and their normal job. Perspective is powerful!
Wrap Up
Your job as a manager is to make your team better. That’s it. That’s how you add value. That’s how you make them better. That’s how you grow as a manager.
Success is three things:
1) Know what motivates your people, and whether they are currently motivated
2) Give a shit about them and their career development
3) Act as a force multiplier
Do this, whether the employees are remote or in person, and you’ll succeed as a manager. Period.