I was recently asked to share "management secrets" with other executives at an internal conference. The reason was the low turnover in my division and a healthy spirit within the team - this was the case in all my jobs. I refused, citing the fact that I was not doing anything special for this. The internal "don't be an upstart" mindset worked.
Then I remembered that I live in a world of windbags who do not hesitate to bring "knowledge" to the masses: business consultants without a business, career consultants without a career, coaches for anything after two months of courses from the same coaches. Inexperienced minds, having listened to them, think that this is how the world works, and then they grieve that nothing happened. And experienced twists at their temples and remain silent.
So I turn off the “don't be an upstart” toggle switch and share my “secrets”.
There will be no standard “delegate”, “set up the process”, “stay in the correct position on the stand-up” - enough has been written about this. It will be about something else.
For some, the article may look like a captain's "be smart and don't be a fool", because there are no super-recipes in it: simple things, but for some reason many forget about them. And someone, perhaps, will see harmful advice in it.
But I'm sure that after reading it, someone will want to send a couple of tips to their boss or take notes for themselves.
Be human
This is the first and most important point. Never forget that we are all human: Vasya, Katya, Ruslana. It sounds, in my opinion, trite, but for many managers, people at work only turn into man-hours.
And that is convenient after all. A watch person cannot have problems: they don't have a bad mood, they cannot get a headache.
Even if you call them all by name, the guys still feel who they are for you: people or man-hours. And a man-hour will never come to you with his problem, because you will start bargaining: let’s go home today and work tomorrow. It is easier for a man-hour to endure until the end of the day.
For me, being a person means discussing with a person his personal problem and not interfering with work issues. This is when, between saving a burning project and a person, you choose a person and solve his problem, not the problem of the project. This is when you are not a boss, but a friend.
The work will end sooner or later, and relations with people will continue. In my practice, I have not seen that this was abused, much less perceived as weakness. And projects have never suffered because of this.
Learn to manage
When you were a performer, you constantly read technical literature, articles and watched video tutorials. When you become a leader, people become your tool, but you continue to read only technical literature.
Managing people is not something that comes naturally from a mother's milk. Of course, without books, you will also be able to command, but you will do it unprofessionally, dude. It's like writing your own sort instead of using a function built into the language just because you don't know it exists.
You, as a leader, will need to defend the interests of your team, and you will cope with this much better if you master the theory of negotiations and understand the psychotype of the person you are talking to.
Therefore, having become a leader, be sure to read books: not only "How to manage", but also literature on psychology, thinking, hiring people, negotiations, marketing, project management, economics.
Understand what you control
Someone wrote that there is no authority without fear. Like, if they are not afraid of you, then they will not reckon with your opinion. I've seen executives who really think so. Their life principle: "I am the boss, you are a fool, the rest does not matter."
In my world, authority can only be gained by expertise: you must understand the things that you control. This applies to a manager of any level. A top manager can and should have specialized assistants, but when managing the rocket industry, you must understand at least something about it. Without this, there will be no authority.
If you lead a development team, you must know the design principles and basic things: patterns, collections, algorithmic complexity, etc. Ideally, you should be a programmer, at least in the past. You may not know all the subtleties of the language, especially if you have a large team and many languages ​​are used, but you should be able to read this code and know about the existence of the main frameworks.
Without understanding what you are managing, you will not be able to assess the timing, risk, or cost.
Talk to people in the same language. No "I am not interested in how you will do it" - so the team will stop respecting you and will call you "an effective manager" behind your back.
If you don't understand something, then either study it, or don't try to control it. You don't have to try to be the smartest, but you don't need to be the dumbest either.
Admit your mistakes and others' mistakes
I have made many mistakes in my life and at work. And he always honestly recognized them. Right at the meeting he said: “Damn, guys, I got screwed. You did the wrong thing for three weeks, because I was wrong. Now let's do it differently. " You still won't fool anyone by trying to play around, like in a frying pan. And all the more, there is no need to try to dump your cant on someone - this is immediately minus 200 in your authority.
Public acknowledgment of your jambs has a magical effect. The team has a clear understanding that it is not scary to make mistakes and it is absolutely normal. They understand that because of mistakes they do not look stupider, no one scolds them much. They become more daring in their work, take responsibility, take risks more often - all this over a long distance gives strong competitive advantages both to the people themselves and to the company.
If people always work under fear of making a mistake, then they will be very conservative, they will
stop applying innovative approaches and fresh knowledge. This is clearly visible in the state. a sector where the punitive mechanism is developed: there a person can work well for 5 years, and then lose the bonus for one mistake. Nonsense.
Let the man correct his mistake himself
I often stand in a copy of letters where my guys are in correspondence with someone. Sometimes I see someone on my team suggesting the wrong solution.
In this case, I do not go into general correspondence, showing how smart I am at the cost of putting my employee in a bad light. Instead, I write or call the person and say that he made a mistake in the letter. We are discussing the correct solution, and he writes it on his own behalf.
There is no need to publicly put people in an uncomfortable position - give them the opportunity to rehabilitate themselves.
Protect your people
You have to be the shield that takes the whole blow. Always defend the solutions your team suggests. Even if they are not always correct, act as a damper anyway, and then, within the team, figure it out and correct them.
No one in the company should have the right to influence your team past you. Even your boss. If someone wants to criticize your employees, let them do it to you, and you will figure it out yourself.
If necessary, protect the team from the company itself. They introduced some new bureaucratic rule - think about how you can not distract the team with it.
Be honest and talk about your plans
Always say it as it is. If the project has stopped receiving funding and will soon fail, tell us honestly. If you have plans to change something - also tell about them in advance, and do not put them before a fact.
If the company has plans to cut staff, don't be silent about it. Better then say that the plans did not come true, than to hand over the notification in fact. If the company plans to raise everyone's salary, tell me too.
The team should always be aware of what is happening in the company and it is better if they learn it from you.
Make only those promises that you can keep. Unable to raise their salaries - say so. Don't need these ones: "now there is a difficult economic situation, but tomorrow everything will definitely work out." You do not know whether it will improve or not, and the index of trust in you will fall.
Behave naturally
If in life you are a fun-loving person who loves to tease friends and relatives, stay that way at work.
If you want to call something shit, then call it shit, not feces. If someone wrote crappy code, tell him so: "You wrote crappy code."
Everyone within the team should have a fair salary
I'm not talking about high salaries, but about fair salaries among the company's employees. Sometimes you can't make it the highest on the market for everyone. There is always a company that pays more and a person who gets more.
To understand whether it is fair or not, I use the following technique for myself: if one day all salaries in the company become public, will I be ashamed in front of someone from the team? If yes - bad, you need to fix it.
Promote people
Always keep an eye on the market and seek promotions for your team. If you understand that after Vasya leaves, you will need to look for a person in his place for a higher salary, do everything to raise it for Vasya.
If you see that a person wants to grow in a career, help him in this. If you cannot do this within your team, find a place for him in another. If you cannot within the company - let the person go and give him a good recommendation. Take it directly and call his future leader and tell him about what a cool specialist leaves for them.
Just don't accidentally make the mistake of making a good developer a bad manager, or when you “appoint a boss” someone who didn't really want to and can't refuse. If in doubt, try to promote a person in "demo mode": temporarily put on new functions, and then ask if he liked it. Or, having gone on vacation, leave him in charge and see how he copes.
If you constantly grow your team, then you yourself will grow.
Take responsibility and blame
I attended meetings where managers brought their subordinates to tell the customer why they messed up. It looked sooooo strange to me.
You, as a leader, are responsible for everything that happens. You get paid for this. When someone messes up, you take all the blame on yourself, and then you decide for yourself whether you need to deal with the employee or not.
This often leads inexperienced executives to micromanage. Like, if the fault is always mine, then only I make decisions - this is a trap error. So you risk becoming the center of making absolutely all decisions, drowning in work and making your team dependent. And you will still make mistakes.
The team must make decisions without you, and you, as a true leader, must be responsible for them.
But this in no way means that people should not have any responsibility. They should have a lot of it, but you don't need to take it out - you endowed the person with this responsibility, you ask him.
Trust
Highly paid specialists work with you, who were specially taken for their knowledge and skills - trust them. No need to double-check their work and no need for them to chew on what to do.
There is no need to arrange stupid meetings at which nothing is decided. Everyday status meetings for 1.5 hours are due to a low level of trust. 15-minute stand-ups in Scrum including - I can write a separate article about their inefficiency and blind adherence to any methodology.
The team must be able to work without you
Do not make yourself a person without whom the work will stop - this is a path to nowhere and a false sense of need. You will not be able to rest on vacation, you will not be able to calmly cheer. Processes should be built so that the team can work without you. The ideal option is when you have never been disturbed during your two weeks of vacation.
This in no way makes you a useless person. Quite the opposite - this suggests that you have managed to build processes in such a way that there are no points of failure.
The team shouldn't have irreplaceable people
Always consider the Bus factor. It is clear that someone copes better with certain tasks and there is a temptation to give these tasks to him, but this is a dangerous path.
We really had a Bus factor at work when the main sys. the admin was hit by a car. There were instructions, access, and a lot of things. There was only a person who could take advantage of all this. There was an illusion that everything was documented and this would help to quickly pick up the case. In practice, it took the smart guys six months to move in.
Therefore, try to rotate tasks. Yes, Vasya will make it slower and worse than Petya, but Vasya will have expertise and it will be interesting for him to poke around in something new - a double benefit.
In the same way, find a person who could fulfill your function too: entrust him with part of your task, teach. Your replacement should always be ready.
It saved me more than once.
Don't be afraid to be stupid about something. Sometimes on purpose
You cannot know everything. For this, teams are recruited to use the knowledge of each. Do not be afraid to ask stupid questions and openly admit that you are not strong in something. Sometimes I do it on purpose. Especially when new people appear on the team. This is how I signal that not knowing, asking for help and learning is okay. And also so we psychologically change places, when not I explain to them, but they explain to me - it really works great.
Give a little more than the company gives
If you can give yourself some convenient buns beyond what the company gives - be sure to do it.
Can you work at home for two days in a company? Give your guys 3 days.
The company standard is Windows. Knock out for your Linux or Mac.
All salary indexation by 5%. Convince the management that yours deserve 7%.
A man came out to save the company on a day off - give him +1 day of rest to the compensation due according to the law.
Then your unit will always be a little elite and people will want to get into it. They will want to work not just in the company, but in your department.
Respect boundaries
Don't pretend to be people's personal time. Do not campaign actively for any team building. People will want to socialize outside of work anyway and will do it without your “let's-let's”.
The working day is over - don't bother people and forget about work yourself. They have already given most of the day to work, do not try to take away the remaining time from them. Of course, they will answer you and even go to work if you ask. They only read it very quickly if it was an artificial deadline, and not a real production need.
Vacation is an inviolable time. If someone needs to call a person on vacation every day, and even more so ask him to work, you did something wrong, you need to fix it. This person is a bottleneck. Only without exaggeration: it is clear that to call for 2 minutes to ask something is normal.
Watch your appearance
Cook the tomatoes. You will throw yourself at me now :-)
No matter how many people say that “if only a person is good,” people still pay attention and draw conclusions based on your appearance.
The smell of unwashed clothes, a ring in your nose, pink hair, a collar with spikes, a T-shirt "AUE" - this is a cross on your career. They can still close their eyes to this if they hire you as a tester or developer, but you will not have any career growth. You can talk as much as you like about justice, individuality, bias and so on, but still, your appearance affects much of what is happening around - this is how human psychology works.
A fit, nice-smelling charismatic leader who knows when to put on shorts and when a suit will do more than a dude with a greasy pink head stinking of sweat and socks, even if he's smarter.
There will be no second first impression.
Get feedback
Periodically ask the team what they like or dislike, what they would like to change. You can do it 1 on 1, you can collectively, you can anonymously. After receiving feedback, be honest about what worries people.
If you are subordinate to other managers, you must have a mechanism for anonymous feedback from any employee. And in general, always have such a mechanism: people may not like something, but they are not ready to say it openly either.
Have administrative leverage
Sometimes difficult people get into the team. You could not determine this at the interview, or you got a ready-made team. They decompose the entire team, and the inability to do something with them demotivates everyone even more.
For such cases, you must have administrative leverage to influence these people: it can be a bonus, an opportunity to transfer a person from your unit, or even a correctly drawn up employment contract and job responsibilities. There must be something more effective than "ay-ay-ay, how bad you are."
It's good if you never have to use it, but there should be a lever. Like a car airbag.
Keep in touch after getting laid off
And you change the company, and the guys will leave too. This is not a reason to stop communicating, sometimes even the opposite. Always break up normally and try to keep in touch after you leave. It is possible that in the future one of them will become your leader.
Take an interest in their affairs periodically and ask if they would like to return. Someone may be disappointed in a new employer and hesitate to ask back. And then you yourself suggest.
There are only two things you can take away from work: experience and connections. Appreciate these things.
Demand result
Be kind, but not weak. Be loyal, but don't put it on your neck. Know how to demand results from people. If there are any agreed rules, they must be followed by everyone, including you.
Do not allow the opinion that your orders can be ignored. Be able to publicly praise people and be able to privately scold them. Learn to negotiate to defend your position and get your way.
In general, fulfill your function, and do not be just a formality.
Have a financial pillow for six months of your life
This is general advice for any specialist in general. A person who is not afraid of being fired will be able to come up with bold risky decisions.
The financial cushion will allow you to defend your position with the leaders above and will add courage to say "let me do it, if it doesn't work out, fire it." This is a very strong move that deserves respect, but be prepared to actually get fired.
A person who is afraid of losing his job works less efficiently - he does not take risks, remains silent. Refuses to be promoted because he is worried that he will not cope and will lose his job.
Yes, even without a financial cushion, you can find a new job tomorrow. And in my head at this time a worm "what if you can't, what will you do?" - he bothers you.
Is that all?
No. This is just the tip of the iceberg. Only theory is not enough - you need, as elsewhere, practice and your mistakes, your victories.
But adhering to these simple rules, you will have a head start of a hundred miles in front of those who do not know about them.
Successful management.