1 simple thing to do every day to become an amazing manager
The single most powerful habit for becoming a better manager:
Show up for your team everyday.
At 25, with no business experience, I was running a 50-person company. I wasn’t delusional about my management experience, I had no clue how to be a manager, but like any habit, I figured the best way to get better was to practically manage the people who worked for me everyday.
Along the way, this meant that each day I would try to do one of these things:
Give honest feedback for their sake at the risk of not being 'liked'
Study our financial performance transparently with the team
Get to know the people who worked for me deeper than what they did for me
Track the promises I'd made to the leaders and the company
Prepare for my meetings so they weren't time wasters
Ask my team, "I'm new to leading meetings, how can I improve them?
Ask my partner or my team, "What am I missing?"
Solicit feedback from my team on my management methods
Solicit feedback on the tools (tech stack) we used as a company
Study the data behind the business with the teams who tracked it
Show up in an unexpected place on behalf of my team
Ask an employee to teach me what they did regardless of their level
Take a customer service call
Take ownership of something that wasn’t working
Get in the trenches with a team member to solve problems
Take a team member to lunch or schedule a virtual coffee
Spend 30 minutes one day a week writing emails saying 'I've noticed' or 'Thanks'
Even on the days when I failed as a manager or wanted to hide away in my office, I would show up. Because I knew effective management compounds into big wins, and even if I suck as a manager, improving as one only takes effort.
