Five Things I’ve Learned As A New Manager At Google
Nine
months ago, I became a people manager for my team of privacy engineers
here at Google. Since then, I’ve learned a lot about what it takes to be a
manager. As it turns out, there are some things that aren’t necessarily obvious
when you step into a management role for the first time. Here are a few of
the biggest lessons I’ve learned firsthand.
IT’S OKAY NOT TO KNOW EVERYTHING
Before
I became a manager, I felt pretty secure in the knowledge that it wasn’t
my job to know everything. I had my own areas of focus and could rely on others
to deal with things outside my own scope. But once I became a manager, I
felt much less sure about this conviction. Were my reports going to expect me
to know everything I’d earlier considered beyond my scope?
Fortunately,
they didn’t. I’ve started to take a broader view of what’s going on in my
own engineering organization, but that still doesn’t mean I need to know
everything myself. Instead I’ve focused on knowing the people who
know things. My team knows that they can bring questions to me, and I’ll get
them an answer or point them to somebody who can.
NEVER HESITATE TO LEAN ON YOUR PEERS
Advancing
as an individual team member usually means doing the same stuff at an
ever-increasing scale, bit by gradual bit. Becoming a manager isn’t like that.
You’re more or less dropped into the deep end. Suddenly, there are lots of
things you’ve never had to do anything remotely similar to before. But I
found that my fellow managers were an invaluable resource for
getting myself up to speed—as long as I was willing to ask.
I’ve
had run-ins with imposter syndrome before, and being a woman in a
male-dominated industry hasn’t always helped. Coping with that required convincing
myself I could “fake it ’til I make it” (in retrospect, I had definitely already “made
it”—it just didn’t feel that way at the time). As a manager, I wasn’t willing
to employ the same strategy—the stakes were too high. My overriding need
to “get it right” helped me to just ask those “stupid” questions. I’m glad
I did.
LISTEN MORE, NOT LESS
After
becoming a manager, you might expect others to spend more time listening to
you. My experience so far is that the best results come from doing the exact
opposite: spending more time listening to others. I try to spend as
much time possible in my one-on-ones, listening to what my team
members have to tell me. Meanwhile I try to keep my own feedback and
advice to them as concise as I can.
The
single most insightful concept I picked up during Google’s training for new
managers was how to be an effective coach. One non-obvious key to getting that
right, I learned, is letting the person you’re coaching discover their own
answers. That takes a lot of active listening and very little speaking. In the past few
months, I’ve gotten a lot better at resisting the strong temptation to
just tell someone what they should do, and I’ve already seen how it pays off in
the long run by helping others sharpen their own instincts and become more
self-guided.
DON’T (JUST) BE A “CRAP UMBRELLA”
I’ve
heard effective managers described as “crap umbrellas,” shielding their team
members from the stuff that prevents them from doing useful work. The best
managers I’ve ever had were extremely effective at shielding me from crap, so
that made a lot of sense when I heard it. The thing that truly made
them great, though, was that they didn’t just put up a brick wall. They made
sure to keep me involved in the important parts of whatever we were working on
together, while filtering out the distractions.
Now
that I’m a manager, I try hard to do the same. Listening to my team members
helps me figure out where they do and don’t want to be involved. That way
I can be an effective shield for my team without isolating them from the larger
organization.
LOOK FOR SMALL WAYS TO LEND SUPPORT—BEFORE YOU’RE ASKED
TO
Finally,
I’ve learned quickly how to be more proactive in the way I offer support.
Instead of waiting for my team members to ask me for something, I try to
anticipate what they need to know. This isn’t limited to strictly work-focused
needs, either—it also extends to emotional support and quality-of-life issues.
During a particularly stressful week for the LGBT community a while back, my
own manager proactively reaching out with a word of sympathy meant the world to
me. I knew I wanted to try and do the same for my own team once I became a
manager.
Even
small gestures, like asking a new report if they have any dietary requirements
before planning a team lunch, can go a long way in building psychological
safety. In fact, Google’s re:Work effort identified psychological
safety as
the foundation on which all other qualities of high-performing teams are
built. So simple gestures like these are deceptively powerful opportunities
I’ve tried to take advantage of wherever I can.
I’ve
found out firsthand how important it is for new managers to continue to learn
and grow. When you’re in charge of a group of other people, you’re a
force-multiplier for your team; every way you yourself can improve has a
disproportionate overall benefit. That responsibility can be a bit scary, but
seeing your team succeed is incredibly satisfying. I’m glad I took the
leap.
BY AMBER YUST
https://www.fastcompany.com/40405205/five-things-ive-learned-as-a-new-manager-at-google
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