Manager TL;DR Newsletter 📩
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Hey fellow managers and leaders! We’re excited to share that last week marked the 75th episode of Supermanagers – the show that gives you insights, workflows, and best practices from leaders at the world’s best companies.
If you want to be extraordinary at the craft of management, this is a podcast we highly recommend you start listening to. (I learn something new with every interview!)
Now, back to the usual programming. In today’s newsletter, we’re covering…
- How to measure your work as a manager
- Year end reviews: tips for managers & employees
- What comes first: leadership or management?
- Free template: new employee meet and greet questions
- and more…
Let’s get into it!
🚀 Invisible Output: Measuring the Behind-the-Scenes Work of a People Manager (7 min read), Fellow Blog
TLDR: If you’re a manager preparing for an upcoming performance review, this article will give you a good idea of the things you should be measuring and reflecting on. The truth is, a manager’s work is not unmeasurable, even though sometimes it sure does feel like everything you’re doing is fairly intangible. Here are three tips to start measuring your overall effectiveness as a leader:
- Reflect on the inputs that drive impact: A common mistake managers make is to simply summarize the success of their overall team in their own performance reviews. While it’s fine to paint this picture, it’s important to explain your precise contributions as a manager too. What specific managerial input or process did you implement, that helped your team not just meet its goal, but have an impact?
- Use the “RARE” indicators to understand employee engagement: In this context, RARE stands for Retention, Absenteeism, Rate of promotion, and Employee satisfaction.
- Focus on outcomes: Think about measurement as it relates to longer-term outcomes and impacts and set your goals accordingly. Ask yourself, what kind of impact do I want my efforts as a manager to have? Two examples of long-term outcomes include overall team productivity and employee engagement scores.
“Remember this: As a manager, a large portion of your work may indeed go unseen, but your contributions don’t have to be invisible. Don’t get caught up counting outcomes – instead focus more effort on how people are feeling, whether people are growing, and whether or not you are truly making an impact for your employees and your company.” – Samantha Rae Ayoub
🤝 Rebuilding Relationships Across Teams in a Hybrid Workplace (6 min read), Harvard Business Review
TLDR: As people slowly return to some form of hybrid workplace, bonds that tie them to one another must be rebuilt. As leaders it’s important to realize that most people won’t be returning to work as the same people they were before the pandemic, but this offers a marvelous opportunity to refresh and reinvent cross-functional relationships. Here are 3 different approaches you can leverage to reestablish strong connections across your team:
- Create new shared identities: Some organizations have established cross-functional teams to take responsibility for aspects of cultural health such as learning, innovation, and community. Creating an affinity to a team with broader purpose will immediately help you improve cohesion and collaboration across the organization.
- Accelerate solidarity: Recent research from McKinsey revealed that one of the strongest drivers of people quitting is that they lack what some people refer to as organizational solidarity: creating strong ties to one another. One of the best ways to achieve this is to plan round-robin conversations, where people gather to “meet for the first time…again.”
- Build learning cohorts: As you bring employees back to your “new normal,” invest in their development by establishing cohort learning communities that will bind them to one another — and their shared organizational aspirations.
“Fragmentation isn’t a byproduct of remote work. It results from a lack of intentional bridgebuilding to link discrete groups and regions. Silos were certainly prevalent before the pandemic — hybrid work has simply created new requirements for effectively connecting teams that must work together to achieve shared outcomes.” – Roy Carucci
⚖ Leadership vs. Management: Understanding the Similarities and Differences (9 min read), Fellow Blog
TLDR: Leadership doesn’t necessarily preclude management or vice versa. Effective leaders think in terms of ideas, inspire people on their teams, structure their organization’s culture, and think beyond the present into the long-term. On the other hand, great managers use the teams and resources around them to execute organizational goals on a day-to-day basis. Good leaders and managers alike must be masterful at the following 3 skills (out of 6 mentioned in this article):
- Communication: A leader who can’t properly explain their vision may fail to motivate their team or set meaningful objectives and key results. A manager who fails to properly share resources and guidance with their team could encounter missed deadlines or shoddy work.
- Professional development: Leaders and managers can both act as mentors and help team members reach their professional goals.
- Decision-making: Leaders make decisions that affect the entire organization. Managers make decisions that affect daily output. Yes, the scale of these two types of decisions is quite different, but the ability to strategically solve various problems is shared.
“It’s not leadership vs. management – it’s leadership and management: Leadership is more effective when managers are also in the picture, and team members promoted to managerial roles often display leadership qualities. The question isn’t which methodology is superior – it’s how you can best harness both.”
💡 Year End Review Tips For Employees and Managers (12 min read), Fellow Blog
TLDR: As we move into the end of the year, it’s a good idea to get ahead of the game and think about what you need to cover in your year end performance review. In order to get you ready, Fellow has put together a complete guide to end of year reviews with functional tips for both employees and managers… starting with 5 key topics you can cover at these important meetings. Here are the first 3:
- Accomplishments: If you’re meeting with your manager, don’t be shy to bring up the accomplishments that you’ve worked so hard to see through. Nobody knows the details of your accomplishments quite as well as you do, so it doesn’t hurt to talk about the things that you’re proud to have achieved.
- Responsibilities: This is a great opportunity to discuss how much you have on your plate, whether it be too much, or if you have some extra time to take on a little additional responsibility, or the time to take part in some kind of training or development initiative.
- Areas to develop: Even if you’re not outwardly doing something wrong or poorly, there’s always room to learn and grow. For the sake of your own personal and professional development, be proactive in asking which areas you can develop more.
“Whether you’re an employee or a manager, the most important thing you can do for an annual review is to be prepared for it. Although these reviews can feel a little nerve-wracking, they’re the optimal opportunity to learn, grow and build a better relationship with your manager or team member.” – Kate Dagher
📅 [Free Template] New Employee Meet and Greet Questions
Get to know your direct report and set expectations during your first 1:1 meeting by using this collaborative template in Fellow!
🎙 New on the Supermanagers podcast
We interview leaders from all walks of life to tease out the habits, thought patterns, and experiences that help them be extraordinary at the fine craft of management.
- Shifting from Peer to Manager: How to Onboard and Coach Your Team to their Full Potential with Renee Solorzano (Director of Product Design at Faire)
- Most Goals are Wrong: How to Decide What’s Worth Pursuing and Become an Expert in Anything with Paul Lem (Serial Entrepreneur and author of Master Life Faster)
… and that’s a wrap! We hope that the content we curated inspires you to continue growing as a leader!
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Thanks for being part of our community,
Manuela & the Fellow.app team
