The Making of a Manager: What to Do When Everyone Looks to You

A MANAGER’S JOB IS TO . . . build a team that works well together, support members in reaching their career goals, and create processes to get work done smoothly and efficiently.

Your role as a manager is not to do the work yourself, even if you are the best at it, because that will only take you so far. Your role is to improve the purpose, people, and process of your team to get as high a multiplier effect on your collective outcome as you can.

When you are in survival mode, you do what it takes to survive. When you’re beyond survival in your team’s hierarchy of needs, then you can plan for the future and think about what you can do today that will help you achieve more in the months and years ahead.

Traditionally, most advice you hear about management assumes a longer time frame where if you spend a little today, you’ll reap bountiful rewards in time. But that’s only true if your organization isn’t on fire. If it is, then all bets are off. At that point, you need to do whatever you can to extinguish the flames.

This is an important distinction because while the role of a manager can be given to someone (or taken away), leadership is not something that can be bestowed. It must be earned. People must want to follow you. You can be someone’s manager, but if that person does not trust or respect you, you will have limited ability to influence him.

If the job is defined as getting better outcomes from a group of people working together, then a great manager’s team will consistently achieve great outcomes.

Being awesome at the job means playing the long game and building a reputation for excellence.

“My framework is quite simple.” Half of what

The first big part of your job as a manager is to ensure that your team knows what success looks like and cares about achieving it. Getting everyone to understand and believe in your team’s purpose, whether it’s as specific as “make every customer who calls feel cared for” or as broad as “bring the world closer together,” requires understanding and