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You know that one of our goals at Fellow is to help you master the art of management. Here are four articles and two podcast episodes that will help you continue working towards that goal:
🌱 5 Key Steps to Create an Employee Development Plan
TLDR: Employee development plans are a win-win situation. They motivate team members to learn and acquire new competencies and are a great way to show your team that you care about their growth. Here are three best practices to create a professional development plan with your direct reports:
- Create an action plan with short, medium, and long-term goals.
- Write down the skills and training needed to achieve those goals.
- Once a month, use a one-on-one meeting to check-in on professional development.
📅 5 Meetings Every Manager Should Schedule… Immediately
TLDR: Meetings are one of the tools in your management toolbelt that are often overlooked and under-appreciated. In this article, Erin Blaskie (Fellow’s Director of Marketing), shares five meetings that have been tried and tested at our company, and perfected over time. Here’s a sneak peek at three of the five meetings mentioned in the article:
- Daily standup meetings
- Weekly leadership meetings
- Asynchronous meetings
📘 A User Guide To Working With You
TLDR: Everyone has their own preferences for how they like to operate and be treated. Maybe the way you show care and the way your reports perceive care is different. In this article, Julie Zhuo (former VP of Product Design at Facebook) shares a template to help your colleagues understand your personality and communication style. Here are three things you can include in your personal “user guide”:
- How have other people described your communication style?
- What can others expect in receiving feedback from you?
- What are your blind spots? What are you working on?
💻 Google’s Remote Work Policy Has 9 Great Tips You Should Definitely Steal Today
TLDR: Chief Executive Sundar Pichai recently announced that because of the Covid-19 pandemic, Google would extend its work from home policy until at least July 2021. That’s a telling decision considering that Google quite possibly has access to some of the richest data sets in the world. After surveying more than 5,000 Google employees, the company came up with the following recommendations:
- Make team meetings a priority. They’re one of the only ways to keep teams connected.
- When working remotely, it isn’t as easy to say a quick ‘thanks’ or ‘good job’. Be sure to check-in frequently and thank your teammates for their work.
- Make well-being a priority. Google recommends getting up every hour for a short break and setting limits on your work day.
🎙 New on the Supermanagers podcast
- Episode 11 (43 min): Michael Watkins, author of The First 90 Days, discusses strategies that new leaders can adopt to be successful in their roles and climb up the learning curve.
- Episode 12 (38 min): David Sakamoto, VP of Customer Success at Gitlab, shares a framework to build and scale high-performing teams and best practices to onboard new team members at rapidly growing companies.
