Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How to be a Manager – A step-by-step guide to leading a team

getweeklyupdate.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 235 posts

Re: How to be a Manager – A step-by-step guide to leading a team

#191

Post by adamdrake »

bb88 wrote: post #81

A better title would be "How Management Works in 2018." Half of being a manager is managing other's behaviors to produce a great product. The other half is managing your own behaviors -- i.e. being consistent with your communications and consistent in your behaviors. Both of those topics have been left out of this piece.

Spot on. I usually summarize it with clients as "you have to show people you can lead yourself before you can lead others" and that usually gets the idea across. If you wouldn't follow yourself as a leader, then you have some personal work to do.

To your second point, one definition of leadership is "getting people to want to do what you want them to do." That's also a pretty reasonable definition, and the way to do that is by providing context.

I always ask 3 questions in my discussions:

What is the company's mission?

How is your team contributing to the mission?

How does the work you're doing today contribute to the mission?

If a leader, and everyone on their team, knows the answers to all three of those questions, at all times, then they will probably be very effective.

https://adamdrake.com/three-things-your-people-need-to-know....

Re: How to be a Manager – A step-by-step guide to leading a team

#193

Post by sarabande »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #128
piyh wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What were a few differences you ran into?

Asians have massive respect for authority. This, in effect, mean that they won't ever say no to, or disagree with, their boss. I had to learn to ask open questions, because if they could say yes they would. They would still guess at what I wanted to hear and tell me that. I got told different things than other members of the management team, not because anyone was trying to deceive, but purely as a show of respect. M…

I'd love to read a blog post about this if you write one!

Re: How to be a Manager – A step-by-step guide to leading a team

#194

Post by lostcolony »

krolley wrote: post #170
gowld wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? ICs don't pay so much attention to the CEO of the company. An IC is CEO of themself. A manager is CEO of the team. > needs to keep his folks productive in a way that's aligned with the company goals How is that different from "Setting the culture" ?

Because you don't set the values of the company, you just align your team to the goals of your larger organization / company.

Yes and no.

My current company favors consensus over correctness. They don't realize they do this, but they do, largely because most of the decision makers deal with subjective things, where you can spend hours bikeshedding. When they then hear disagreement on objective things, technical things, they want agreement, and view arguments over technical things as being disagreeable.

As a manager I could take that value, consensus > correctness...but I choose not to. Instead, I create an environment where my team instead chooses correctness > consensus, hashing it out internally, hidden from the rest of the company (thereby specifically eschewing 'transparency' as a value, even though it is both one we value internally, and one the business claims is a corporate value), reaching out for more information as needed but not venturing or asking an opinion until we come up with the 'one true decision' that we will pitch to them, saying it has everyone on the team's backing. At that point, the pressure to achieve consensus usually leads to all the stakeholders agreeing, too.

This is, obviously, not ideal (to where I'm looking for a job elsewhere), but it's the best I could come up with given the realities of the values the business has taken hold of. But my team's values, both their declaration and their interpretation, are not the company's values.

Re: How to be a Manager – A step-by-step guide to leading a team

#195

Post by Malice »

gowld wrote: post #162
Bahamut wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US military is efficient at what it does, generally speaking - it is the product of a can't fail fighting force, and all the implications that come out of that. As an enlisted infantry Marine who transitioned very easily into software engineering, I find my leadership training in the Marine Corps a distinct advantage I have over my peers. I have been called the best manager other engineers have ever had by multip…

What's a "can't fail fighting force"? Military can certainly fail.

It's a mantra that the military use. Train, train, train and fail in training because you can't fail in the real fight. If you read "can't fail" as "can't afford to fail" rather than "failure is an impossibility" you'll get the intent.

Re: How to be a Manager – A step-by-step guide to leading a team

#196

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

lostcolony wrote: post #194
krolley wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because you don't set the values of the company, you just align your team to the goals of your larger organization / company.

Yes and no. My current company favors consensus over correctness. They don't realize they do this, but they do, largely because most of the decision makers deal with subjective things, where you can spend hours bikeshedding. When they then hear disagreement on objective things, technical things, they want agreement, and view arguments over technical things as being disagreeable. As a manager I could take that value,…

Stated values are usually bullshit. If you want to understand a culture's real values, see which behaviours and traits are rewarded and which are punished. (Also applies to individuals.)

Real values are often unconscious, generated by the unconscious goals of the leaders.

This is not always a bad thing. Someone who has their shit together as a person can be a very effective and inspiring leader, and can even minimise the effects of dysfunction elsewhere in an org.

But any suggestion that you can have a "My/Our values are..." meeting or brainstorming session, and make it happen just by stating it and/or writing it down, is wildly naive and unrealistic.

Re: How to be a Manager – A step-by-step guide to leading a team

#197

Post by shadowmint »

bb88 wrote: post #151
Pyxl101 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Half of being a manager is managing other's behaviors to produce a great product This part has not been left out. All of the content about establishing culture, vision, expectations, responsibilities, and so on, is a direct part of managing others' behaviors to produce a great product. What am I missing? > The other half is managing your own behaviors -- i.e. being consistent with your communications and consistent…

If it was really as simple as the author has posited, then anyone can be a manager, but this just isn't the case. Many companies have this framework in place, yet the management and the culture is terrible. (Amazon, HP, Microsoft to name a few) In a number of companies I worked at the number one reason people left was a conflict with their supervisor. I think a much better introduction to management is the manager to…

This is really great advice, thank you.

I think it really crystalized the issues I had reading the article; you can do (or try to do...) all the ‘right things’ and still have a terrible result.

If it was easy to get right, things would be great... but its not. Its hard. ...and a slide deck of protips doesn’t cut it as a solution.

Re: How to be a Manager – A step-by-step guide to leading a team

#198

Post by lostphilosopher »

(New-ish manager here.)

_Peopleware_ by Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister is the best management resource I've encountered.

https://www.amazon.com/Peopleware-Productive-Projects-Tom-De...

It also helped to keep careful track of things I really valued (and hated) about people I've worked for.

Just one example:

Depending on team size and culture it can concerning if your manager schedules a 1:1 meeting with you out of the blue and outside of your normal cadence. I had a manager that did this, on a Friday, with the meeting scheduled for Monday. Worrying about it would have bugged me over the weekend. Not a ton, but some. He followed the invite up with a Slack (team chat app) message explaining what the meeting was and what he wanted to talk about, turns out it was nothing to worry about. Him taking the time to clarify made a difference in my morale and it stuck with me.

Super small thing, but it matters.

Re: How to be a Manager – A step-by-step guide to leading a team

#199

Post by lostphilosopher »

lostphilosopher wrote: post #198

(New-ish manager here.) _Peopleware_ by Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister is the best management resource I've encountered. https://www.amazon.com/Peopleware-Productive-Projects-Tom-De... It also helped to keep careful track of things I really valued (and hated) about people I've worked for. Just one example: Depending on team size and culture it can concerning if your manager schedules a 1:1 meeting with you out of the…

While I'm at it, 2nd best: _Managing Humans_ by Michael Lopp (aka Rands).

https://www.amazon.com/Managing-Humans-Humorous-Software-Eng...

Re: How to be a Manager – A step-by-step guide to leading a team

#200

Post by KarenSatantsby »

lostphilosopher wrote: post #198

(New-ish manager here.) _Peopleware_ by Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister is the best management resource I've encountered. https://www.amazon.com/Peopleware-Productive-Projects-Tom-De... It also helped to keep careful track of things I really valued (and hated) about people I've worked for. Just one example: Depending on team size and culture it can concerning if your manager schedules a 1:1 meeting with you out of the…

my last weekend was ruined by a bad experience with Spectrum Cable and my supervisor on a Friday.
Post reply on HN