Junior managers fail in doing nothing | GrowthMail #9
Your manager doesn't suck - they are being sandwiched
This week I’m going slightly sideways with this newsletter as it feels to me it would be very useful for many readers.
Next week - back to product growth with the Wrapped feature review for Spotify, Reddit and more goodies!
Junior managers fail in getting out of the way.
I wouldn’t be surprised if you’ve felt it yourself recently.
As the person being managed, the symptoms you’d experience are:
Frequent “Sync meetings” , often titled as “YourName / TheirName”, with no clear agenda set prior to the meeting.
Questions about the tiny details of your work.
Frequent requests from “high-management” / C-levels.
This becomes particularly alarming for senior employees - this is the last thing they might look for.
The last thing they want is to be micro-managed and what you often hear is that “their manager don’t let them do real work”.
For the junior manager, this might feel like:
It is hard to trust their employees.
They don’t know what’s happening / being worked on at any given moment.
They desperately feel that they need to make their own manager happy.
What you can do:
Do less:
As a midlevel manager - try doing half of what you do today when it comes to syncs. Let them come to you. Trust that they will. Knowledge workers are on the smarter side of the spectrum - when they need you they’ll know to reach out.
This sounds easy, right? To do less? Yes, try it.Process:
Strict planned rituals - weekly syncs, monthly 1 on 1s.
Eliminate the guesswork of “when’s a good time to talk about X”.Running docs - a document where 1 on 1s are documented ongoingly.
With a template for what you go over every week (blockers, project status, personal matters….).Fallbacks - observe and take note what’s recurrently isn’t good enough - then decide together on a better default. Align on:
- What you fallback to when you are not available?
- What you fallback to when C-level ask for something stupid?
- What you fallback to when you realize a project would miss a deadline?
Mentorship:
Pair your employee with a more experienced manager who could help in dealing and evaluating the requests from “high-management” / C-levels.
Help with understanding when to push back, how to push back, when to execute. Help with time and project management.
In summary:
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