Morning everyone!
Welcome back to my morning reading book session! It's my new habit that I’ve developed to bring back my reading routine after a healthy morning jog. (I hope I can keep this up consistently🤞)
Continuing from yesterday's discussion on the book The Making of a Manager: What to Do When Everyone Looks to You by Julie Zhuo, we’re still on Chapter 1. Today, we're diving deeper, starting with three important questions that can help us become great managers.
The first one is:
Do I Find It More Motivating to Achieve a Particular Outcome or to Play a Specific Role?
This paragraph is particularly interesting to me. As a manager, you are judged on your team’s outcomes, so your job is to do whatever most helps them succeed. If your team is lacking key skills, then you need to spend your time training or hiring. If someone is creating problems for others, then you need to get them to stop. If people don’t know what they should be doing, then you need to construct a plan. This is why adaptability is a key trait of great managers.
The second question is:
Do I Like Talking with People?
You don’t have to be an extrovert—I’m not, and plenty of other managers, from Steven Spielberg to Eleanor Roosevelt, aren’t either—but the role isn’t likely to suit you if what you aspire for in a workday is long, uninterrupted blocks of quiet focus.
The last question is:
Can I Provide Stability for an Emotionally Challenging Situation?
Because management is all about people, and each person brings their own unique experiences, motivations, hopes, fears, and quirks to the table, managers face their fair share of hard conversations. Another valuable lesson from this chapter is that the best outcomes come from inspiring people to action, not just telling them what to do.
If you’re unsure whether management is the right path for you, there are things you can do to get a better feel for it, like mentoring others on the team, taking on an intern, or interviewing managers who have recently transitioned to understand their experiences. If you try management and later realize that it isn’t what you want to do, that’s okay too. Have an honest conversation with your manager about your goals and ask for help in exploring alternative career paths.
Julie Zhuo closes the first chapter with a thought-provoking statement:
This is an important distinction because while the role of a manager can be given to someone (or taken away), leadership is not something that can be bestowed. It must be earned. People must want to follow you.
After reading this, I paused for a few seconds and thought about the same thing. As a new manager, building trust within the team is crucial so that any future tasks and goals can be achieved more easily.
My timer is already ringing💢
what great insights from this book this morning! I hope you all can gain new insights from this post as well. See you tomorrow for Chapter 2!
If you have any recommendations for management books, please leave a comment below!