The Manager's Path: A Guide for Tech Leaders Navigating Growth and Change

Making the wrong person a manager is a mistake, but keeping her in that position once you’ve realize she’s wrong for it is a critical error.

One common sign of a struggling first-time manager is overwork. A new manager who is working all the time is probably failing to hand off her old responsibilities to other people on her team, and so she’s attempting to do two jobs at once.

First, Break All the Rules

She also needs to be on top of the team’s performance and delivery, guiding them to focus on their goals and deliver results

A new manager who is working all the time is probably failing to hand off her old responsibilities to other people on her team, and so she’s attempting to do two jobs at once

When people start quitting because their manager hasn’t given them a career path or isn’t inspiring them, it’s ultimately your responsibility. Use skip-level meetings to help you detect areas where you need to support your new manager fully, and let her know that you’ll be holding skip-levels frequently as you help to guide her most effectively.

What should you do if you find yourself managing someone in this situation? Help the person feel safer saying no and externalizing more decisions so he doesn’t take failure personally

You might think people pleasers create teams that feel safe to be vulnerable and fail, but in fact the opposite is true. These managers make it hard for the team to fail in a healthy way, because of the manager’s own fears of failure and possible rejection

People pleasers who focus externally can be a huge blind spot for their managers: because they’re so focused on only talking about good things and saying yes to everything that comes their way, their managers often don’t even know about problems on the team or within projects until it’s too late

This may seem surprising, but this people pleaser struggles to have difficult conversations internally so she avoids talking about serious issues within the team, and this can actually lead to a refusal to acknowledge good work as well as problems