Book Summary: The Making of a Manager by Julie Zhuo

22 min readMar 31, 2024

What does a manager do?

A good manager’s duties

When you become a manager for the first time, you have to understand what a good manager does. This book explains the following as duties of a good manager:

Build a team that works well together
Support members in reaching their career goals
Create processes to get work done smoothly and efficiently
Setting up the team for success
Managing people

Day-to-day Tasks

A good manager’s day-to-day tasks should be planned to follow the above duties. We can categorize these tasks into three buckets:

Purpose: The outcome your team is trying to achieve (aka Why).
A manager should ensure that the team knows what success looks like. When the team is aware, the members start believing in your vision and caring about achieving the goal.
Remember, The best outcomes come from inspiring people to action, not telling them what to do.
People: The people management (aka Who).
We can not separate management from the team. This means that a manager has to spend time with the team.
Nobody likes tough situations, but some people are better than others at remaining steady and providing care and support through the bumps and dips of life.
Process: The teamwork (aka How)
A good manager needs to establish common ground within their team on how they make decisions and respond to problems.
A manager is responsible for improving the team processes, running effective meetings, future-proofing past mistakes, planning for the future, and nurturing a healthy culture.

Responsibilities

While doing these day-to-day tasks, a manager needs to be aware of his responsibilities:

Unglamorous work: A manager is responsible for the unglamorous work, that is important and it must be done. If it is not done, it falls on the manager.
Accountability: No manager gets free rein without accountability. If the decisions turn out to be bad, the managers are held accountable.
Concrete team vision: A manager needs to share a concrete vision for the team that describes what they are trying to achieve collectively.

Individual Contributions v/s Multiplier Effect

The book introduces a great concept called the “Multiplier Effect”. Here are the things that a good manager has to do to create this effect in the team:

As a manager, you have to believe that your team can achieve more than someone can do it alone. The manager’s job is to get better outcomes from a group of people working together.
A good manager’s role is to improve the purpose, people, and process of your team to get a high multiplier effect on the team’s collective outcome
A manager has to learn how to give up some level of control. Once you are a manager, you can not make every single decision. You have to trust your team to make these decisions and provide support as needed.
It is tricky to balance your individual contributor commitments with team management, but that’s the skill you need to learn in this role.

Manager v/s Leader

I am guilty of using Leader and Manager as the same word. Although, when you take a deeper look, that is not the case. Here are the points on how these two words are different:

Leadership is a quality, rather than a job:

To be a great manager, one must certainly be a leader.
A leader, on the other hand, doesn’t have to be a manager. Anyone can exhibit leadership regardless of their role.
If you can pinpoint a problem, and motivate others to work with you to solve it, then you are leading!

Leadership is a particular skill of being able to guide and influence other people.

Leadership is not something that can be granted. It must be earned. People must want to follow you.

Transition to Manager Role

The book explains different paths that one might go through when they transition to the manager role.

Although it does not matter which path you are on, there is a useful exercise you can do at the beginning of the transition:

Sit down and make a list of all the things that are awesome about the current state of the work.
Create a separate list of all the things that could be better on the team.
These two lists will give you the starter plan for what you should and shouldn’t change. You don’t need to change that isn’t broken!

Apprentice

If your manager’s team is growing, so you’ve been asked to manage a part of it going forward, you are an apprentice.

The advantage of this one is that you have a sense of what works and what doesn’t. Although, It can feel awkward to establish a new dynamic with former peers.

Things to Watch out for:

Playing the role of coach
Having Hard Conversations
Having people treat you differently or share less information with you

Tip: During the transition, work with your manager on a joint plan for getting started.

Pioneer

If you are a founding member of a new group, and you’re now responsible for its growth, you are a pioneer.

The advantage here is to build the team you want. However, be careful that you may not have much support. The life of a pioneer is filled with adventures and solitude.

New Boss

If you are coming in to manage an already established team, either within your organization or at a new one, you are someone called a “New Boss”.

When you are in this situation, it takes a while to adjust to the norms of a new environment. You have to be careful about a few things:

Jumping in and exerting your opinions right away to show that you are capable.
In the first few months, your primary job is only to listen, ask questions and learn.
You need to invest time in building new relationships.

Successor

If your manager has decided to leave, and you are taking his place, you are a successor. In this position, there are a few things you need to be aware of few things:

It can feel awkward to establish a new dynamic with former peers.
The increase in responsibility can feel overwhelming.
Change is a prerequisite for improvement, so give yourself permission to move on from the past. Don’t just try to be the old manager, bring the changes to improve your team further!

Building relationships and Providing support

One of the trickiest and most important responsibilities of a manager is to build trusty relationships with your team members and provide them support to help them achieve their career goals.

Remember that, you have more impact on their day-to-day than they have on yours. This means that the responsibility of building a trusting relationship lies more with you than with them.

Strive to be human, not a boss!

Trust is the most important ingredient

The first step to addressing any concerns/feedback is diagnosing the people and issues behind it.

You have to understand that it is human nature to want your manager to think well of you. If your reports don’t tell you how they’re feeling, you can’t help them! You may miss the early warning signs that lead to bigger problems.

If your report does not find a trusting and honest relationship with their manager, they often decide to step away from the team or the organization. When this happens, you have to understand that they are not just quitting your team/company, they are also quitting you (as a manager). You can avoid being blindsided by developing a relationship founded on trust.

If the following three statements are true, you can feel confident that you have established a relationship based on trust:

My reports regularly bring their biggest challenges to my attention
If your report is saying “Everything is fine” multiple times, it is a sign to investigate further. It means that the report is shy about sharing details are not feel comfortable sharing their feedback.
My report and I regularly give each other critical feedback and it isn’t taken personally
Strive for all your one-on-one meetings to feel a little awkward. Why? Because the most important and meaningful conversations have that characteristic.
Remember, these talks are needed to be said in order to be addressed, and with a bedrock of trust, the conversations become easier!
My reports would gladly work for me again.

Managing is Caring

Managing is really about caring about your team. If you don’t fully respect and care about your report, there is no way to fake it. They will know it. If you don’t believe in your heart of hearts that someone can succeed, it will be impossible for you to convey your strong belief in them.

Supporting and caring for someone does not mean always agreeing with them or making excuses for their mistakes. The respect and caring must be unconditional. It’s about a person as a whole, rather than what they do for you, or how well they do a task. If your report feels that your support and respect are based on their performance, then it will be hard for them to be honest with you, when things are going south.

The goal is to give your team a safe opening where they can be brutally honest so that you can get the accurate information about the ongoing situations.

As a manager, you should always be supporting the team for their future growth. Here is a sentence that can help you with conversations where the report lacks skills for promotion:

“I understand that you’d like to work toward a promotion, but here are the gaps I’m seeing . . . ,”

Note that your job does not end there! Over the next few months, coach them, and give frequent feedback on how they are doing relative to the expectations. This way, the reports are not getting confused about where to put their efforts.

1-on-1s

For a new manager, 1-on-1s are a great way to build relationships. As these conversations are only between you and the report, it makes it easier for both parties to slowly establish a trusty relationship.

Note that 1-on-1s should be focused on your report and what would help him be more successful, not on you and what you need. If you’re looking for a status update, use another channel. Rare one-on-one face time is better spent on topics that are harder to discuss in a group or over email. The ideal 1:1 leaves your report feeling that it was useful for them.

Here are some good ideas to get started in your first 1-on-1s:

Discuss top priorities
Calibrate what “great/success” looks like on the team
Share feedback
Reflect on how things are going

Remember that coach’s best tool for understanding what’s going on, is to ask! Don’t presume that you know what the problem or solution is. Sometimes, the attempts to “help” aren’t actually helpful, even when served with the best of intentions. Just ask questions, learn more about the situation, and just nudge your report in the right direction.

Although, be aware of “unasked-for help”. Sometimes the unasked-for help feels indistinguishable from micromanaging or meddling in their work!

Providing Feedback

One of the most important duties for a manager is to provide feedback on your report’s work (positive and negative). You have to be Honest and Transparent about Your Report’s Performance.

As a manager, your perspective on how your report is doing carries far more weight than their perspective on how you are doing.

The responsibility falls to you, to be honest and transparent when it comes to how you are evaluating performance. Your report should have a clear sense at all times of what your expectations are and where they stand.

People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel. So make sure that you are focusing on how you are providing the feedback.

“Vulnerability sounds like truth and feels like courage. Truth and courage aren’t always comfortable, but they’re never weakness.”

While you are providing feedback to your reports on their performance and their mistakes, you have to make sure that you admit your own mistakes and growth areas! Being a manager, the responsibility of accepting your mistakes increases as others notice you.

Types of Feedbacks

There are two main types of feedback that you will be providing to your report:

Task-specific feedback — most effective when the action performed is still fresh in your report’s memory, so share it as soon as you can.
Every time you see one of your reports in action — delivering a project, interacting with a customer, negotiating a sale, speaking up in a meeting — see if there’s something useful you can tell her. Strive for at least 50 percent positive feedback so she knows what she’s doing well.
Behavioral feedback — provides a level of personalization and depth that is missing from task-specific feedback. By connecting the dots across multiple examples, you can help people understand how their unique interests, personalities, and habits affect their ability to have an impact.

How to Provide feedback?

If you frequently drop in and ask for an update or give unsolicited feedback, you risk making your report feel disempowered
At the beginning of the project, let your report know how you’re planning to be involved. Be explicit that you’d like to review the work twice a week and talk through the most important problems together. Tell him which decisions you expect to make, and which he should make.
State your point directly and then follow up with, “Does this feedback resonate with you? Why or why not?”
when you’re not sure whether you’ve been heard, there are a few things you can do. The first is a verbal confirmation: “Okay, let’s make sure we’re on the same page — what are your takeaways and next steps?” The second is to summarize via email what was discussed.
Try removing middlemen from the feedback loop. If your report wants to share feedback about another teammate, have them share the feedback directly! It empowers team collaboration and makes sure that there aren’t any misunderstandings, providing feedback.
Ensure that your feedback can be acted upon. Remember these three tips
- Make your feedback as specific as possible
- Clarify what success looks and feels like
- Suggest next steps
“Feedback is a gift.” It costs time and effort to share, but when we have it, we’re better off. So let’s give it generously.
Always thank people for feedback. Even if you don’t agree with what’s said, receive it graciously and recognize that it took effort to give. If others find you defensive, you’ll get less feedback in the future, which will only hurt your growth.

Providing Negative Feedback

New managers mostly have the issue of sharing negative feedback in their reports. The book explains how to provide this feedback while making sure the report knows its action plan for the future.

Every major disappointment is a failure to set expectations.

Telling your report something disappointing is both important and unavoidable. Use this list as a reference when you are providing negative feedback:

Don’t engage when you are upset.
The best way to give critical feedback is to deliver it directly and dispassionately. Here is a template that you can use:
“When I [heard/observed/reflected on] your [action/behavior/output], I felt concerned because . . . I’d like to understand your perspective and talk about how we can resolve this.”
Own the decision and don’t open it up for discussion too much.
Acknowledge the disagreement respectfully, then move on. “I recognize that you may not agree with my decision, but I’m asking for your cooperation in moving forward.”
People are not fragile flowers! Telling it straight is a sign of respect.

You can convey the same point in a dozen different ways — by varying your chosen words, your tone, or your body language. Observe:

You’re such a screwup. What am I going to do with you?
Your work is terrible, and I need to know how you’re going to fix it.
I’m concerned about the quality of work that I’ve been seeing from you recently. Can we talk about that?
- This is one of the best ways to open the conversations. It allows you to have open-ended conversations where your report can present his side of the story.
Your last few deliverables weren’t comprehensive enough to hit the mark, so let’s discuss why that is and how to address it.
I have a few questions about your latest work — do you have a moment to walk me through it?
- Seem like an attractive opener (and is how I used to begin many of my critical feedback sessions), but it’s the scared manager’s choice

Building a great team

“There is one quality that sets truly great managers apart from the rest: they discover what is unique about each person and then capitalize on it. The job of a manager is to turn one person’s particular talent into performance.”

As a manager, you should always hold the bar high for collaboration. The lone wolf members, who like to do the work alone, create a divider effect instead of a multiplier effect. The presence of these members makes the rest of the team less effective. You should follow “The No Asshole Rule” — Asshole is someone who makes other people feel worse about themselves or who specifically targets less powerful members.

help people connect with others through their shared interests. If a report brings up a complaint about someone else, (a coworker who never seemed to listen to his suggestions), try helping them to see the other side (Maybe the other person does not know that you feel this way).

Understanding yourself

Remember that your strengths and weaknesses directly affect how you manage your team. When you fully know yourself, you will know where your true north lies. It will help you to steer your management boat in the right direction.

You also have to understand what triggers you in negative situations. What separates triggers from normal negative reactions is that they have an outsize effect on you specifically. If you want to do a quick version, jot down the first thing that comes to mind when you ask yourself the following questions:

To find Strengths:

How would the people who know and like me best (family, significant other, close friends) describe me in three words?
What three qualities do I possess that I am the proudest of?
When I look back on something I did that was successful, what personal traits do I give credit to?
What are the top three most common pieces of positive feedback that I’ve received from my manager or peers?

To find Weaknesses:

Whenever my worst inner critic sits on my shoulder, what does she yell at me for?
If a magical fairy were to come and bestow on me three gifts I don’t yet have, what would they be?
What are three things that trigger me? (A trigger is a situation that gets me more worked up than it should.)
What are the top three most common pieces of feedback from my manager or peers on how I could be more effective?

To find Triggers:

When was the last time someone said something that annoyed me more than it did others around me? Why did I feel so strongly about it?
What would my closest friends say my pet peeves are?
Who have I met that I’ve immediately been wary of? What made me feel that way?
What’s an example of a time when I’ve overreacted and later regretted it? What made me so worked up in that moment?

Knowing what lifts you or brings you down is enormously valuable. Recognize that everyone in the world goes through hard times, and give yourself permission to worry. Don’t pay the double tax on your mental load.

Remember, When a negative story takes hold of you, step back and question whether your interpretation is correct.

Make a Mentor Out of Everyone

Management Duties

The author suggests booking half an hour of “daily prep” into the calendar at the start of the day so I can study your day and prepare for the meetings and big tasks for the day. You should also consider scheduling “thinking time” to write down thoughts on ongoing big problems. Another good tip is to look back on the past 6 months reflect on what you have grown better at, and set your next learning goals.

Another important thing is to figure out the ideal environment for you. Ask yourself the following questions to find your ideal environment.

Which six-month period of my life did I feel the most energetic and productive? What gave me that energy?
In the past month, what moments stand out as highlights? What conditions enabled those moments to happen, and are they re-creatable?
In the past week, when was I in a state of deep focus? How did I get there?

Running Meetings

As a manager, you have to run different types of meetings. This section will help you with different kinds of meetings.

One thing to remember is to be aware of the over-talkers. Be clear but polite in letting them know that it’s time for someone else to get a turn!

Decision Making Meeting

A great decision-making meeting does the following:

Gets a decision made (obviously)
Includes the people most directly affected by the decision as well as a clearly designated decision-maker
Presents all credible options objectively and with relevant background information, and includes the team’s recommendation if there is one
Gives equal airtime to dissenting opinions and makes people feel that they were heard

However, be aware of bad outcomes:

People feel that their side wasn’t presented well, so they don’t trust the resulting decision.
Decisions take a long time to make, which delays progress. While important and hard-to-reverse decisions deserve deep consideration, be wary of spending too much time on small, easy-to-reverse decisions.
Decisions keep flip-flopping back and forth, which makes it hard to trust and act on them.
Too much time is spent trying to get a group to consensus rather than escalating quickly to a decision-maker.
Time is wasted on rehashing the same argument twenty different ways

Informational Meeting

A great informational meeting accomplishes the following:

Enables the group to feel like they learned something valuable
Conveys key messages clearly and memorably
Keeps the audience’s attention (through dynamic speakers, rich storytelling, skilled pacing, interactivity)
Evokes an intended emotion — whether inspiration, trust, pride, courage, empathy, etc.

Feedback Meeting

A great feedback meeting achieves the following:

Gets everyone on the same page about what success for the project looks like
Honestly represents the current status of the work, including an assessment of how things are going, any changes since the last check-in, and what the future plans are
Clearly frames open questions, key decisions, or known concerns to get the most helpful feedback
Ends with agreed-upon next steps (including when the next milestone or check-in will be)

Generative Meeting

A great generative meeting does the following

Produces many diverse, nonobvious solutions by ensuring each participant has quiet alone time to think of ideas and write them down (either before or during the meeting)
Considers the totality of ideas from everyone, not just the loudest voices
Helps ideas evolve and build off each other through meaningful discussion
Ends with clear next steps for how to turn ideas into action

Team-Bonding Meeting

A great team bonding meeting isn’t about the number of hours spent together or the lavishness of the event. Instead, it enables the following

Creates better understanding and trust between participants
Encourages people to be open and authentic
Makes people feel cared for

Preparation is the key

When running these meetings, preparation and good facilitation is the key. Practice clarity and ruthless efficiency with your meetings, and people will thank you for respecting the sanctity of their time.

One thing you can try is encouraging people to get their own thoughts down on paper before sharing them, the barrier to participation is lowered.

After the meeting

After the meeting, the follow-ups need to be treated with as much care as the preparation.

The key to getting great feedback is being specific about what you want to know and making it safe for the person to tell you her honest opinion. Here is an example:
“I’m here to do a Q&A because it’s really important to me that we can have real talk about all the things happening on our team. But to be honest, I don’t get the sense that I’m hearing all of your top concerns. So I want to say this upfront: Hard questions are good! Get them off your chest! I promise to be as transparent as I can.”

Hiring

Having a great bench means your lieutenants could take over for you if you’re unexpectedly called out of the office

The author suggests an exercise in every January to map out where the team will be by the end of the year. She creates a future org chart, analyzes gaps in skills, strengths, or experiences, and makes a list of open roles to hire for.

The author suggests the following to be remembered, when you are going through the hiring process:

Even when you don’t end up extending an offer, an amazing interview experience tells prospective hires that you care about the people who might be the future of your organization.
Look for honest references
- You probably won’t get that by calling up the folks that a candidate provides or talking to someone you don’t know well. But ask your network of trusted colleagues if they can help put you in touch with a mutual connection that they also trust.
- When evaluating references, keep in mind two things. The first is that people typically improve their skills over time, so discount negative feedback that isn’t recent. If your friend tells you that five years ago Jack wasn’t great at closing deals, it’s possible he’s since gotten much better.
Since every hire is already a gamble, reject any weak hires. While they’re not likely to bomb, they’re also not likely to add much.
Only you can decide what questions you should ask, because only you know what you’re looking for.
Reject Anyone Who Exhibits Toxic Behavior
Do Your Research When Hiring Leaders
- When you make a great leadership hire, the impact on your team is enormous for years to come. Don’t approach it willy-nilly it pays to do your research.
Take the Long View with Top Talent.
Jobs may be short, but careers are long

Some all-purpose questions for the interview

What kinds of challenges are interesting to you and why? Can you describe a favorite project? — Tells me what a candidate is passionate about.
What do you consider your greatest strengths? What would your peers agree are your areas of growth? — Gets both at a candidate’s self-awareness and what his actual strengths and weaknesses might be.
Imagine yourself in three years. What do you hope will be different about you then compared to now? — Lets you understand the candidate’s ambitions as well as how goal oriented and self-reflective she is.
What was the hardest conflict you’ve had in the past year? How did it end, and what did you learn from the experience? — Gives me a sense of how the candidate works with other people and how he approaches conflict.
What’s something that’s inspired you in your work recently? — Sheds light on what the candidate thinks is interesting or valuable

Letting Someone Go

“Perhaps it’s you who shouldn’t be his manager, not the other way around.”

When you decide to let someone go, do it respectfully and directly. Don’t open it up to discussion (it isn’t one), and don’t regard it as a failure on the part of your report. (As Netflix’s former chief talent officer, Patty McCord, reflects, “Why do we call it ‘getting fired’? Are we shooting people?”)

Planning the Work

“Plans are worthless, but planning is everything,”

One of the jobs of a manager is to plan the work for the team in a way that accomplishes the goals on time.

A good strategy understands the crux of the problem it’s trying to solve. It focuses a team’s unique strengths, resources, and energy on what matters the most in achieving its goals. In the words of Apple visionary Steve Jobs, creator of the iPod, iPhone, and iPad:

“People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I’m actually as proud of the things we haven’t done as the things I have done. Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things.”

Here are few more things you should be aware about planning, according to the book:

When ownership isn’t clear, things slip through the cracks. Make sure you are clear about the expectations and reports know what they are doing.
Worry about what’s in front of you. Don’t worry yet about what’s months or years ahead. Then work with your team to set realistic and ambitious target dates for each milestone.
By putting one foot in front of the other over and over again, eventually we’ll scale mountains.
Perfect execution over perfect strategy any day
- If your strategy is bad, then you’ll make a move on a chessboard that opens you up to attack. But if your execution is bad, then your intended “Rook to E5” somehow becomes “Bishop to D10” because you’re trying to play chess with your feet instead of your hands
Define a Long-Term Vision and Work Backward
The author’s manager Chris often reminds her, “It’s not a good idea to design where your kitchen outlets should go when you haven’t yet settled on the floor plan.”

Doing a Retro

Once a project or big task is done, perform a retro with everyone on the team. Here are some notes on that:

You invite the team to come together for an hour or two to reflect on what happened. What went well, what didn’t go well, and what would the team do differently next time?
The goal of a debrief is not judgment. Don’t treat it as a trial that’s the fastest way to kill the practice. Instead, consider it an opportunity to mine the experience for future lessons
A resilient organization isn’t one that never makes mistakes but rather one whose mistakes make it stronger over time.

Delegating Work

The author suggests the following when you are delegating work for the project:

You can’t do everything, so you must prioritize
Delegating a hard problem doesn’t mean you simply walk away. It means that you have to work with reports and provide necessary guidance.
The author’s manager once said, “So there’s a lot going on, but what I’m most interested in is the team. Do we feel like we have the right people on the right problems?” His question cut through the noise and reminded her of what mattered most. People trump projects. A great team is a prerequisite for great work.
The rule of thumb for delegation goes like this: 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.

Creating Culture

A manager I admire once told me that an organization’s culture is best understood not from reading what’s written on its corporate website but from seeing what it’s willing to give up for its values. — The Author

Culture describes the norms and values that govern how things get done. It’s not just about your relationship with the team. It’s also about their relationships with each other, and with the group as a whole. As you manage more and more people, you’ll play a bigger role in shaping culture. Don’t underestimate the influence that you can have.

People watch their bosses closely to understand the team’s values and norms. Our radars are fine-tuned to spot instances where someone in a position of authority says one thing and does another. This is one of the fastest ways to lose trust. If you say something is important to you and you’d like the rest of your team to care about it, be the first person to live that value. Otherwise, don’t be surprised when nobody else does either.

Incentive Traps to avoid

Here are some other common incentive traps to avoid while building a culture in your team:

Rewarding individual performance over anything else
Rewarding short-term gains over long-term investments
Rewarding lack of perceived issues or conflict
Rewarding the squeaky wheel

The way to identify and resolve incentive traps is to regularly reflect on what the difference is between your stated values and how people are actually behaving on your team.

Celebrating your team’s values

Here are some examples of teams using different traditions to celebrate their values:

Personal prompts (like “Favorite childhood movie” or “Best gift you ever received at Christmas”) at the start of a meeting so people can get to know their teammates better
Monthly “Learn how to paint/sculpt/craft” nights to encourage creativity and a beginner’s mindset
A gigantic “customer love” stuffed teddy bear was awarded to the person who went above and beyond to help a customer in the past month
An annual Oscars-style award ceremony so people can recognize all the ways in which their coworkers are awesome
Monday morning yoga sessions to promote mindfulness
“Fail of the week,” where people share their mistakes in a safe forum to encourage authenticity and learning

Outro

The book concludes with a list of signs of a good manager:

adaptability is a key trait of great managers.
The mark of a great coach is that others improve under your guidance.
Having a great bench is one of the strongest signs of stellar leadership because it means the team you’ve built can steer the ship and thrive, even if you are not at the helm.

One of the best compliments I’ve ever received: “You’ve built a great team, and I’m excited to be a part of it.” — The Author