“It starts with you. As a manager, invest in yourself. If you don’t know how to manage yourself, you’re going to struggle managing a team.”
– Cristina Georgoulakis, Founder Outcomes Partner at 776 (episode 105)
Hey fellow managers and leaders! Welcome to the Supermanagers TLDR newsletter. We’re excited to share these new resources to help you level-up your management skills.🚀
In today’s issue, we’ll cover:
- Why “giving away your legos” is half the battle (lessons on delegation from Cristina Goergoulakis)
- How to apply the hierarchy of communication to even the remote playing field (with Time Doctor founder, Liam Martin)
- Building confidence within yourself and your team (with Carly Brantz, CMO at Digital Ocean)
- The value of divergent thinking and team building (with Zack Onisko, CEO at Dribbble)
- New Udemy course: A manager’s guide to one-on-one meetings
Let’s get into it ⬇
Giving Away Your Legos is Half the Battle: How to Leverage Task-Relevant Maturity and Situational Leadership
TLDR: Delegation is the most basic function for managers. However, most managers have not mastered it. In episode 105, Cristina Georgoulakis (Founder Outcomes Partner at 776) explains why asking about your teammate’s task relevant maturity is an essential step in the delegation formula:
“We need to separate the person from the task,” said Christina. “Every time we delegate something to a team member, we need to be having a discussion with them like ‘Hey, what is your confidence, and what is your competence in this task? Depending on where you land, I’m going to support you differently.’
It’s really understanding the individual, the task and where they need the support from you as a manager. Once you give your team that vocabulary, and ideally do that exercise with them, by modeling it first and being vulnerable, and showing the tasks that you have low competence and confidence in but are going to do anyway, it really builds a great way to have that discussion and be able to play that player coach that we talk about all the time in management, in a really authentic, tactical way.”
🌏Running Remote Teams: Applying the Hierarchy of Communication to Even the Remote Playing Field
TLDR: In episode 106, Liam Martin (co-founder at Time Doctor) shares his “rule of three” to build a knowledge management process through documentation.
“I have what I call the rule of three, which is the first time that I do something, I don’t document it. The second time that I do something, I think about how I’m going to document it. And then the third time, I absolutely do document it,” said Liam. “The reason why it’s the third time and not the 100th time is that you could lose some of the details inside of that documentation.
And then you immediately send that process to the people that will be using it, but you don’t ask them: ‘Is this a good process?’ Because everyone will say, ‘Oh, yeah, that’s great.’ But they won’t actually give you any feedback. You’re looking for feedback. So I instead say, ‘what are three things I can do to improve this process?’ And then you iterate through that.”
📈Reaching a Constant State of Improvement: How to Build Confidence Within Yourself & Your Team
TLDR: One of the most important (and overlooked) elements of leadership is relationship building. In episode 107, Carly Brantz (CMO at DigitalOcean) shares why networking with other leaders has been crucial for her career development.
Carly’s advice: Network with people not just in your team but also in surrounding teams and even in different functions. Get to know people not just in their roles but in their personal lives. The relationships you build will help you work better together over long periods of time.
“Think outside what you might normally think of who you need to build relationships with,” said Carly. “So traditionally, in marketing, you need to build relationships with sales and customer success. You might not think as much, you know, building relationships with finance. But because the financial metrics were impacted by what activities we were doing, on the marketing side, I needed to see that correlation. So I built those relationships with finance. I would say, reach out and just learn about different areas and how you can work together.”
🧠Lessons from a Bootstrapped Startup: The Value of Team Building, Divergent Thinking, and Tiger Metrics
TLDR: In episode 108, Zack Onisko (CEO at Dribbble) shares his insights about the transition from individual contributor to manager, how to build a collaborative culture, and the importance of separating emotion from design.
“As an IC, you’re so used to just getting the job done yourself,” said Zack. “As you start to build a team, you really have to start to share your Legos, and really trust that other people can get the job done for you. I think it always seems easier, faster and more efficient to get things done yourself and then move on to the next thing versus asking somebody for help.
There’s an old proverb, you know, you give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, you teach him to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.”
… and that’s a wrap! We hope that the content we curated inspires you to continue growing as a leader.
If you enjoyed this issue, please share the newsletter with a colleague or friend –they can subscribe here!
Thanks for being part of our community,
Manuela & the Fellow.app team
