Good morning, fellow managers and leaders ☕️

Last week, I had the honour of interviewing Nir Eyal, who is the bestselling author of Hooked and Indistractable. One of the things he said really stuck with me:

“If you want to beat your competition, if you want to be the best person in your workplace, I’m going to give you a competitive advantage. I’m going to give you the secret to getting ahead… Make time to think. Do you know why? Because nobody’s doing it.”

If you take away one thing from today’s issue, it should be this: schedule some time on your calendar to reflect on your goals and think about whether you’re running in the right direction. 

[Read the recap of my conversation with Nir here]

Now, here are this week’s hand-picked tips to help you on your journey to becoming a great leader:

📰 Ruth Porat on leading through crisis and Google’s latest moonshot to rebuild the U.S. economy (9 min read) | Forbes

TLDR: Ruth Porat, the Chief Financial Officer of Alphabet and Google, is no stranger to a crisis. She has navigated economic downturns, government investigations and regulatory hurdles. Of course, a global pandemic is a new obstacle. Here are three lessons shared by Ruth in this exclusive interview:

• Having a “can-do” attitude and fortitude is the essential recipe for not just surviving crises – but emerging stronger as a result of them.
• Great leaders bridge divides to find solutions.
• If you want to do something, then do it. Life doesn’t know it’s supposed to follow a schedule.

✏️ Managers: here are 3 ways to support your team during the back-to-school transition (3 min read) | Fellow Blog

TLDR: Sending your kids back to school during a global pandemic is especially difficult. That’s why, as a manager, it’s important for you to ask the parents on your team how they’re dealing with the transition and if there’s anything you can do to support them. Here are three tips shared by Erin Blaskie:

• Talk about the back-to-school transition during your one-on-one meetings.
• Be flexible and compassionate. It will go a long way to building morale.
• Affirm and model family responsibilities as a company. 

➡️ Individual contributor to manager: how to position yourself for the jump (3 min read) | Ivy Exec

TLDR: How do you position yourself as someone capable of managing when you haven’t officially done it before? And, most importantly, what skills do you need to be successful when you finally get the opportunity to make the leap? Here are a few of the most important elements to focus on:

• Think more strategically: make efforts to understand the big picture and how all the various pieces are interconnected.
• Be vocal about your ideas, take initiative to implement them, and bring others on board. Influence is an important leadership skill.
• If you’re not a manager (yet), start positioning yourself by taking the lead in supervising a contractor, managing a vendor relationship, or overseeing a new hire’s onboarding process.

👥 10 expert tips for effective and meaningful one-on-one meetings (9 min read) | Fellow Blog

TLDR: We asked a panel of experts for their advice and best practices to keep your team engaged and excited about one-on-ones. Here are three of their ten tips:

• Avoid status updates and project management conversations. Focus on employee wellbeing and building a positive relationship. 
• Encourage your team to show up prepared by explaining the value of 1:1s.
• Use 1:1s to talk about professional development and feedback.

[Here are 200 questions you can use with your team]

🎙 New on the Supermanagers podcast

• Episode 17 (35 min): Bo Brabo, Former Director of HR at the US Army and White House Communications Agency, talks about how leadership, team culture, and everyday behaviours at work collide in the military and in the corporate world. 
  
• Episode 18 (36 min): Melinda Briana Epler, CEO at Change Catalyst, explains what it means to be an anti-racist organization and what it looks like to be a good ally in the workplace.

And that’s it for today. I 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 and the Fellow.app Team