
M2
“Senior Manager/ Manager of managers/ Head/ Director/ startup VP …”
Course will cover
Methodologies for common M2 challenges (hire, coach, promo, fire, reorg, conflicts, politics ...)
For each challenge: what to do, what not to do
Audience/ level
Anyone preparing for M2 interviews/ aspiring to be M2
Any M1/M2 wanting to grow/ overcome challenges
Any employee wanting to better understand/ work with your manager/ M2
You’ll learn how to
Ace M2 behavioral interviews (tech/ non-tech)
Avoid pitfalls/ detours during challenges as an M2
(Manager/ IC) better work with your manager
Recommended
First take my M1 course: “Ace Manager Job Interview & Career”
My Course: “Ace Manager Job Interview & Career”
What’s Management
Starting to Manage
IC to manager
Inheriting a team
Delegate
Growing in Management
Feedback
Manage team’s time
Interviews
Caring
Promotion
Tough Management Issues
Difficult talented reports
Reports confronting you
Fire
Blames
Goals & Vision
Collaboration
Alignment
Plan
Degree
Role model
Reorg
Hire/ Perf
Conflicts
Diversity
Don’t add unless have to
When need
Team growing
I’m bottleneck
Team weakness
What to look for
What team misses
Top 3 criteria
Knew what to avoid
Internal > external
Good understanding
Trust already
Reversible
Keep talent
Set example
Easier to coach
When can’t grow internally
Team too far off
All peer managers are first-timer
Senior guy lacks support
Senior folks unwilling
Find the potential one
Match team’s need
Already trusted
Already influencing
Myths
Expert
Vocal
Liked
Grow
Co-design checklist 1 year ahead
Create opportunities (with fairness)
Don’t do prematurely
Team consensus
Lateral trial
Risk of wrong hire
Existing manager with overlapping domain
Interview
Committee
Dig motivation: why leave/ apply…
Behavioral, can use questions from my other courses
Ace Manager Job Interview & Career
Ace Behavioral Question & Leadership Principle Job Interview
Mock 1:1
Ideal hire
Can be my successor
Can be my boss
Optional follow up intro, for them to double check
Begin with keeping status quo
Encourage team to give feedback
Heads up
Expect conflicts
Escalate only when tie
Focus on rapport, not right/wrong
Create psycho safety, remove stress
External mentor
Observe team dynamics
Endorse; Feedback offline
1:1
More frequent/ on demand at first
Recognize positive feedback
Ask for feedback/ need
Listen, care about WLB
Coach on relationship
Respect different management styles
Allow mistakes, retro later
Skip 1:1: Take pulse
Attrition: understand
Adjust career dev plan
Why they hired you vs.
… promoting internal M1s
Higher expectation (SMART)
… sharing internal M2s
Unavailable/ unwilling
Team dysfunctional/ burnout
… folding into other teams
Business challenges
Potential challenges
New company/ org
New people
Disrespect
Dysfunctional team
Time pressure
Importance
Stay in reality
Costly if inaccurate
Unblock team
Pitfalls
Time spent wrong
Let go disconnections
No demo
Tips
Prioritize
Review with experts
Ask questions
Skip-level 1:1 with experts
Engage with customers
Focus on Relationship
Manager (execs)
Expectation (SMART); my strengths; resources; needs
Partners
Allies; learn; common goal; mutual benefits
Reporting M1s/ senior ICs
Earn trust/ acceptance
Different types: obeying; independent; rebellious/ passive aggressive
Plan B (leave; escalate; fire)
First 90 days
Week 1: All hands
1st impression
Month 1: Observe
Meet, listen & learn
Keep things as is
Identify gaps/ priority/ resources/ allies
Month 2: Start
Small improvements
Share my styles/ preferences
Plan for new work
Month 3: New
Seek team input
Establish team process/ culture/ rules/ KPIs
Deliver early wins
Critical
1:1 with each
Mediation
3 people meeting
Ground rule
Moderate
Common ground
Win-win
Follow up
Tell when to enforce
Prevent to begin with
Meeting/ morale
Feedback
Separate boundaries
Training
Destructive
70% attrition related to manager; 50% quit due to toxic manager
Mental health & family happiness; team health
Indicators
Escalations; conflicts; team morale; team performance; survey; attrition; complaints
Causes
Ethics
Not working; abusive; manipulative; favoritism; selfish agenda; politics; aggressive; passive aggressive; backslash; bully; lie; 2-faced; steal credit...
Management skills
Can’t get along; not coaching; micromanaging; close-minded; team burnout; not hiring; too hands off;...
Expertise
Can’t grasp work/ status; not technical; wrong direction/ execution; lost trust;...
Pardon
External uncontrollable reasons (high workload; dependency issue; accidents)
Prevent
Co-design career plan
Regular 1:1s
Appreciate, listen, unblock
Feedback
One-off corrections before forming pattern
Specific notes
Dedicated time
Count the cost
Seek feedback (my issue)
Understand (personal/ family) -> understood
Goals for change (SMART)
Mentor
More skip-level survey
Risky
When to reorg
Team broken
Acquired teams/ headcounts
New business
Manager left
Manager needs split
Downsizing/ layoffs
Plan
Realign new direction/ strategy
Strength/ weakness parts
Minimize impact to strength/ working parts
Visualize options on org chart
Consider relationships, career plans, talent distribution, risk for attrition
Feedback from exec/ HR
Take pulse from key managers without disclosing
Communicate
Debrief with managers right before announcements
Announce: all hands, QA, feedback
Follow up concerns/ individuals
Track success metrics
If feedback/ mentor doesn’t work
Demote to IC
Smooth transition
PIP
Document
Reassign/ shadow
Hire
Watch out toxic
If PIP doesn’t work: terminate
Upside: productivity; team morale; keep talent; stop loss
Successor
Communicate
Be humane
Don’t burn the bridge
How to tackle M2 situations (hire, grow, coach, fire, conflicts, reorgs ...)
Goal: avoid pitfalls/ detours, overcome challenges, grow career successfully; pass M2 job interview
Help me! Rate & Review
Hello, and welcome to the course.
How would you hire a manager, coach a manager, grow a manager, promote a manager, fire a manager, do reorgs, handle conflicts and politics?
Let’s call this role of managing managers as M2. Different companies give it different titles such as Senior Manager/ Manager of managers/ Head/ Director/ or VP for a startup.
If you’re applying for an M2 job, either for an engineering role or non-tech role, they’ll likely ask you these behavioral questions.
If you are a manager wanting to grow into M2 or if you’re already an M2 that are facing these challenges, you'll need to handle these challenges well in order to be successful.
Solving these challenges is very important during both interview and career. In today's world of remote hiring and cultural conflicts, behavioral challenges are more difficult but more critical for companies.
Meantime, the M2 job and career is very different from M1’s. In comparison to M1, an M2 needs to evolve the organization to deliver a larger vision for the department, to align strategies across upper executives and other department heads, to solve escalated challenges that your M1s cannot handle, and also to set an example of leadership model for M1s, just to name a few.
As a result your M1 experience is not enough at the M2 level. You can ace all the M1 challenges but still fail the M2 interview or career. You don't want to use free-form ad-hoc actions to respond to those challenges. You need a structured system and methodology to guide you to navigate through them.
This course enables you to use the minimal time to prepare for M2 interview questions or career challenges, in a systematic way. Based on my 18 years of experience in top software companies/ institutes, 11 years in technical management, 4 and half years as a director, I have accumulated the methodologies to tackle these challenges.
I’ve selected a set of most common challenges in the form of "How would you..." questions, so you can use this course as a dictionary to look up for the solution to a specific question.
If you haven’t taken my other course for M1, which is called ‘Ace manager job interview & career’, then I recommend you to take that course first, so you build a foundation for this M2 course.
Hope you use this course to achieve a high ROI in advancing your career!