Management: Become A Great Manager!

As a manager, communicate with your team by clarifying style preferences (oral, written, email), adapting to others' styles, and addressing emergencies, level of detail, and update frequency.

Learn to lead your first team meeting as a new manager by introducing yourself, setting cadence and norms, and planning one-to-one follow-ups while listening to your team's ideas.

Schedule formal monthly one-on-one meetings to build trust with direct reports, listen more than you talk, and explore priorities, progress, obstacles, and growth goals.

Navigate mixed reactions to your promotion by understanding who may resist change and why trust may be low. Learn to leverage supportive teammates while the company’s faith fuels your success.

Explore the big challenge of working with people, how manager interactions affect turnover and frustration, and embrace best practices guided by Marcus Aurelius's leadership wisdom.

Involving your team develops people, unlocks ideas, and boosts commitment to execution, acknowledging it's not democracy but balancing consensus with decisive leadership.

Encourage knowledge sharing among managers and discourage rivalry to build collaborative teams and better products and services. Use performance reviews to recognize shared knowledge and reinforce teamwork.

Narrow the applicant pool by applying essential knowledge, skills, and abilities criteria, use resumes to screen quickly, and conduct brief interviews to identify candidates for full interviews.

Prepare thoroughly by reviewing the job description, resume, and a full interview checklist. Conduct the interview on time, welcome candidate, ask real life questions, and capture notes for next steps.

Explore how to build a fair, consistent interview question list for every candidate, including general, behavioral, situational, and skill-based questions, with concrete examples and tips for preparation.

Follow your company’s policies to prepare a formal offer, then address questions on pay, benefits, parental leave, growth, and fit with the team.

Explore the risks and rewards of hiring friends or relatives, weigh nepotism policies, and learn to protect both performance and personal relationships when making staffing decisions.

Invest in training and development to boost productivity and performance, reinforce best practices, and promote from within; track progress and cultivate a learning culture.

Set clear expectations and maintain written guidelines on performance, reporting, availability, and response times to effectively manage remote teams across time zones.

Give timely, specific positive feedback that highlights impact and recognizes achievements, avoid credit theft and overpraise, and avoid underdoing it by balancing praise.

Learn how to deliver specific, behavior-focused negative feedback that explains impact, asks for the recipient's ideas first, and guides improvement through clear actions and possible training.

Apply the sandwich technique to deliver negative feedback by starting with a positive, discussing the issue and steps for improvement, then ending with encouragement to support behavioral change.

Motivating others hinges on aligning individual self-motivation with organizational goals, beyond carrots and sticks, by shaping work environment, flexibility, and meaningful work to boost engagement, creativity, and job satisfaction.

Learn practical steps for managing challenging employees, including defining the issue, talking one-to-one in private, focusing on behavior and results, setting timelines, exploring training, and applying consequences if needed.

Learn practical strategies for managing underperformance: diagnose root causes, provide resources and mentoring, set clear goals with timelines, and implement fair performance improvement plans or humane termination.

Learn how to conduct humane, timely terminations by following fair performance management processes, partnering with human resources, and considering team morale and survivors.

Learn to conduct a humane termination meeting in collaboration with HR, stating that the decision has been made and outlining next steps, including final pay, benefits, and returning company property.

Learn how to run fair annual performance appraisals by addressing recency bias, avoiding favoritism, and using notes and improvement plans to protect relationships and guide development.

Adapt your leadership style to the environment—stable, high growth, or crisis—balancing vision with management and operations, and delegating to capable experts while directing inexperienced team members.

Identify your leadership strengths with a practical checklist of qualities like inspirational, honesty, committed, passionate, reflective, decisive, creative, problem solving, and supportive, approachable leadership.

Shift from seeking the spotlight to empowering your team, letting individuals be the star and supporting their success. Your outsized impact grows as people make the difference.

Follow the top 4 action steps and a bonus extra step: review lessons, pick 1–2 focus areas, develop a plan, and commit to lifelong learning to become a great manager.