How I like to manage people

I’ve been managing people at work for around 7 years at this point, and I thought it would be good for me to crystallize how I think about it, mostly for myself but also in an attempt to explain my behaviour in case anyone I’ve ever managed finds this page (or someone who is in a position where they might be managed by me in the future).

I should say up front that 7 years isn’t really that long a time, there are people who have obviously done it for way longer - nor do I think I’m a very accomplished manager, so this isn’t coming from a place of “advice” or “thought leadership” or anything - it’s just to help me put my thought process and philosophy down in some words.

The strongest opinion I have about management is actually of one of the things you should not do, and that is micro-manage. I have had 4 managers across 12 years of my career, and while nobody has ever been a real micro-manager (I’ve heard some horrible stories from friends/colleagues so I know how bad it can get), the times I have been most annoyed by my manager has been when they have said some variations of the following:

“Don’t forget to reply to that email” (that came in 5 minutes ago)
“How are you getting on with that report?” (which we already decided a due date for, that is still days away)
“Wow, coming in at 9.30 am!” (ignoring the fact that I’ve been leaving the office at 9 pm all week)

Writing all of these down now, there does seem to be a common theme between all of them - essentially a lack of trust. Now I know I’m probably not blameless here, and may have done things to trigger that lack of trust on certain specific (and rare) occasions, but I think a reasonable amount of this can be linked back to the manager’s own personality, specifically a belief that nobody can do as good a job at a task as they can.

I feel pretty confident about this because I’ve felt it myself as a manager! Every single time I have ever handed a task to someone on my team, there is a small voice in the back of my head saying ‘don’t bother, just do it yourself, it’ll be faster and better!’ And that voice is probably correct - but one of the hardest parts of management is ignoring that voice and doing it anyway.

And that’s in a nutshell what I try to do with my management style - quieten that voice. I try to remind myself that a) I hired this person, so they obviously did something to impress me, and b) the best way for someone to learn or grow is by doing and struggling and trying different things, not by following a specific set of instructions imposed on them. When you hire good people, it’s because they are talented and have strong (and good!) opinions and thoughts about how to do things, so the only logical next step is to let them do their work their way - stifling or restricting them makes no sense. So I definitely prefer being more hands-off and only stepping in when needed, rather than forcibly inserting myself into every decision or task my teammates are working on.

What this looks like in practice is: I don’t care what hours someone works as long as they’re available for meetings, I don’t really care how often they’re in the office as long as they have a good relationship with their peers (being in the office more is probably better for your career overall, but that’s a personal trade-off people can make if they want to). As long as you are delivering against your objectives and producing good work, none of the small stuff really matters to me.

However, this “flexibility” comes with a warning - the caveat above goes both ways. If you do not deliver against your objectives or start producing poor work, then I will absolutely get involved and possibly even start to turn into what I hate - a micro-manager.

When do I get involved? Mainly 2 occasions:

If someone on the team actively comes to me with an issue - I don’t think it is helpful for anyone to have a manager who ignores them or trivializes their concern if they’ve plucked up the courage to come to you with it (very rarely people will overdo this, but most of the time they really do need support). So in this case, it’s your responsibility to get involved and help however you can.
I generally keep a distant eye on deliverables from the team, and will step in if I feel like the quality of the deliverables is consistently dropping across 2-3 consecutive examples. (Side note: this is becoming much more of an issue now with AI, as people are slipping into the habit of becoming more and more reliant on it and not exercising their own brain when writing an email, or preparing a deck or a report. It’s probably my most boomer take, but I really strongly dislike being associated with any content that is obviously AI-generated, even if it doesn’t have my name on it. It gives me second-hand embarrassment.)

So that’s basically it - this post had 2 purposes: me consciously trying to write more, and this was just a topic that came to mind (writing more is actually a way of me trying to fight the AI-induced weakening of my brain), and the second purpose was to provide some insight into my thoughts if someone who is ever interviewing to join my team decides to Google my name (or someone who is planning to hire me does?).

Being a manager should be like being the training wheels for your employees’ bikes - the idea is to only spring into action if they can’t do what they need to. As long as they’re capable of riding the bike themselves, you just melt into the background and watch them learn.

(Of course you need to still engage in appropriate long-term mentoring, but this post is more about day-to-day stuff.)