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

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

#41

Post by jph »

kolpa wrote: post #32
LgWoodenBadger wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Core-hours are 9am-5pm? Aren't those just the normal busines hours for white-collar work?

Wow. "core hours" is full time, but there's also mandatory overtime. Anyone not in the boss's timezone has to to work weird hours to satisfy the micromanager's desire for fiefdom face-time. Work starts before 9am every day, to prep for a 9am dressing-down. This is not a place where anyone with a choice would want to work. > * Each workday has a team standup meeting. We choose 9 a.m., because it sets the tone for the…

You make great points and I'll edit now to make it more clear that the goal of the ground rules is to be communicating, and the goal of the writeup is to show a bunch of examples gathered from many teams in many industries.

Can you refresh the repo page now and see if it is more helpful and clear? Thank you!

For example, the item about 9-5 core hours actually comes from a bank that has tellers, call center operators, and an IT staff that needs to be onsite and available for helping with physical hardware. Again, the point of the ground rules isn't the hours per se; the point is that the team writes its expectations so everyone has a good understanding.

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

#42

Post by newfoundglory »

viridian wrote: post #35
jph wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes and I'll detail that in the repo now, and emphasize that these are examples gathered from many teams. Can you try reloading the repo page and see if it makes better sense now? Thanks for the feedback!

As Kolpa said, your core hours mean a lot of mandatory overtime. Why would anyone want to work under these conditions?

Did you read the updated response? They are examples from different teams.

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

#43

Post by humbleMouse »

jph wrote: post #41
kolpa wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow. "core hours" is full time, but there's also mandatory overtime. Anyone not in the boss's timezone has to to work weird hours to satisfy the micromanager's desire for fiefdom face-time. Work starts before 9am every day, to prep for a 9am dressing-down. This is not a place where anyone with a choice would want to work. > * Each workday has a team standup meeting. We choose 9 a.m., because it sets the tone for the…

You make great points and I'll edit now to make it more clear that the goal of the ground rules is to be communicating, and the goal of the writeup is to show a bunch of examples gathered from many teams in many industries. Can you refresh the repo page now and see if it is more helpful and clear? Thank you! For example, the item about 9-5 core hours actually comes from a bank that has tellers, call center operators,…

9-5 core hours is bullshit. The whole point of core hours is to be a window of time where you can guarantee a meeting can be scheduled with people across time zones. This doesn't mean you have 8 hours of core hours. That's literally insane.

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

#44

Post by horsecaptin »

kolpa wrote: post #33
im_down_w_otp wrote: post #25

Having read through the piece, I'm a little confused about why "leader" and "manager" are being conflated. They're very different roles. The former is a navigational role and the latter is a facilitating role. Given the differing dominant archetypal personality traits required for those distinct modalities, it's unlikely they'd be strongly expressed in a singular person, and there's some reason to think they may be n…

"leader" == "manager" is a bright flashing warning light for a toxic work environment with self-important ladder-climbers.

Hey, this is interesting. Would you care to explain?

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

#45

Post by icelancer »

humbleMouse wrote: post #43
jph wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You make great points and I'll edit now to make it more clear that the goal of the ground rules is to be communicating, and the goal of the writeup is to show a bunch of examples gathered from many teams in many industries. Can you refresh the repo page now and see if it is more helpful and clear? Thank you! For example, the item about 9-5 core hours actually comes from a bank that has tellers, call center operators,…

9-5 core hours is bullshit. The whole point of core hours is to be a window of time where you can guarantee a meeting can be scheduled with people across time zones. This doesn't mean you have 8 hours of core hours. That's literally insane.

Agreed. When I run teams the core hours are typically 10 AM - 2 PM or some band of 4 hours around a key time.

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

#46

Post by mnctvanj »

ucaetano wrote: post #13
crsv wrote: post #9

This isn't a guide on how to be a leader, this is a guide for building version 0 of a team and trivializes a great deal of the complexity that goes in to being an effective leader. It's a great content marketing piece though, and at first glance, far outstrips the value of the tool they're marketing to - but this is still meant to drive people to a SaaS product.

Being a leader and being a (people) manager are very, very different things. So, of course this isn't a guide on how to be a leader.

A good manager is absolutely a good leader, and v/v. In my experience, there is no role that, if done properly, isn't equal measure both. They are sub-set skills of any position to which people report. Be it middle manager (important to execute, important to give meaning and direction within that area) or C-level (CEO can't afford to be a non-manager).

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

#47

Post by scruple »

ramses0 wrote: post #39
nomel wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m a bit guilty of confusing the two, as well. Could you describe the differences in personality?

Leadership is outward facing, attracting followers by sharing a vision, inspiration, goal and working with the team to achieve that goal. Management is inward facing, paying attention to the people you are responsible for, and knowing the right thing that's needed at the right time. "If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long f…

This is an interesting idea and it certainly seems to make sense to me to see it described this way. I am curious, though, can leader be a manager, and vice versa? Or, are these roles so distinct from each other that they should be separate? Maybe these roles can't co-exist at that level because it's exactly the problem that leads to so many of the problems we discuss on this site?

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

#48

Post by dahart »

humbleMouse wrote: post #43
jph wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You make great points and I'll edit now to make it more clear that the goal of the ground rules is to be communicating, and the goal of the writeup is to show a bunch of examples gathered from many teams in many industries. Can you refresh the repo page now and see if it is more helpful and clear? Thank you! For example, the item about 9-5 core hours actually comes from a bank that has tellers, call center operators,…

9-5 core hours is bullshit. The whole point of core hours is to be a window of time where you can guarantee a meeting can be scheduled with people across time zones. This doesn't mean you have 8 hours of core hours. That's literally insane.

It feels like you didn't even read the comment you replied to. FWIW, I've worked in a company where the whole point of core hours was to have a working set of people in the building at the same time, and wasn't related to time zones or even meetings.

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

#49

Post by anothergoogler »

jph wrote: post #18
jonny_eh wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those ground rules are great. How do you "enforce" them, or at least keep them at front of mind on the team?

Thank you! If you have ideas, I'd like to hear. To keep ground rules at front of mind, each teammate is responsible and self-directed. * I have a teammate who likes to write the core rules on the whiteboard before each meeting, and point to them when he starts the meeting, and each time a participant needs reminding. This is amazingly effective with a good sense of humor. * I have a teammate who uses chat private mes…

I'd have some sign language for anybody who tried enforcing "sign language ground rules."

> * I have a teammate who likes to write the core rules on the whiteboard before each meeting, and point to them when he starts the meeting, and each time a participant needs reminding.

Are you working with school children or professionals?

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

#50

Post by john_moscow »

foobaw wrote: post #27
piyh wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What were a few differences you ran into?

Much more politics.

Oh, there's plenty of politics in American companies as well. It's just culturally you have to pretend that you haven't even heard this word and are honestly acting in the best interests of the company/team/customers, while using the dirtiest tricks in the book when nobody's watching before your competitors do the same to you.
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