Managing Down: 1. Be human not a recorded tape by upper management. 2. Be transparent almost every time (You cannot be transparent every time. You will know what I am saying) 3. Give space to your IC to experiment and fail and encourage them in failures. 4. Provide all kind of supports (personal/professional) to your team. 5. Take responsibility for not achieving the target and do not let the team know that you had a tough time with your boss for missing deadline but just tell them that upper mgmt are concerned for the deadline and watching us. 6. praise publicly but use the private time for criticizes but not 1:1. 7. 1:1 is an opportunity to listen to the employee. You speak only if you'd like to share something related to their goal for the team or something you would like to share. Talk critical if both of you are really working on some kind of plan or you officially want to keep track of something. 8. Provide them all sort of training based on the interest of employees for their next goal or target. 9. Encourage employees to keep practicing LC kind of things to be relevant to technology and sharpen programming skills.( It's the reality and no harm to accept it.) 10. Encourage people to read books (career-based) of their interest and reimburse. 11. Help them to find a mentor for them based on their next role. You can build a relationship with others in the course of finding mentors. 12. Celebrate all small or big win by having lunch together or take a half-day off and go for some kind of outdoor activities. 13. The most imp point. Once you join as a manager, start looking for a successor. This person will help you succeed plus you get someone who can trust you and you can trust that person. I am not talking about nepotism or doing any favor. It's all to help that person if he or she is looking for a manager in the next role and help to prepare for the role. Manage Yourself 1. I will encourage to spend at least an hour to review code. This will help you be relevant. (do not mention this in the interview. Some people take you as diminisher especially when you are being interviewed by the team member) 2. Real useful books. You will find a bunch of recommendations over places. 3. Read blogs related to people skills. 4. Sounds funny but learn some good writing skills. You can find some courses online. (Even I need this :P) (English is my second language) 5. Keep track of the work daily specially release related. 6. Make daily to-do tasks list and work off of the list. 7. The most important, find a mentor to do this job efficiently. Your life is too short to learn from your own mistakes. Managing Up: 1. Meet your boss regularly share what is going based on point number 5 to manage yourself. 2. Ask priorities from the boss and offer what can you do to make his/her job easier. 3. You manager may need help to attend some meetings on behalf of him/her and this will give you an edge. 4. Have empathy for your boss too because s/he also taking heat from her/his boss. He may be busy or getting stress out every day. You are there to support her/him. 5. If you do not have the answer, politely ask for some time and give detailed info with a summary after discussing with the team. 6. It's good to be proactive instead of reactive. Managing Peer. 1. Meet with your sister team or other teams regularly specially when there is some % of work is overlapping. 2. Try to understand their pain points and see how can you or your team help them. 3. Talk only good thing about your team. This will help your team to do the internal transfer if they are not happy with you for any reason. 4. Learn about their team and members and this will help you have good relationships with their team plus help you to back fill any position if someone interested. I may be wrong and someone experienced can improve these points. I am IC now but this is my goal when become Mgr. Not sure when the time will come but I do practice some in my capacity. If you are an IC, Peer(mgr) or up(Dir or above) please comment to add info if needed and help others too. If you are reading this and you are director or above, what are your suggestions to add in managing up from your point of view? #salesforce #linkedin #Microsoft #Apple #Facebook #Google #Amazon #management
I just want to say Thank you for the post. It has tips for how to succeed as a Manager. 👍🏼🙏
Thanks, bud!
Thank you for sharing this. ✌🏻
OP are you Indian? This is some solid stuff
Yeah.
I have seen very few Indian Managers who has such high work ethic. Most of the time, they just do not know how to Lead the Team, and what it takes to be a Manager. Keep up the good work Sir.
You don't have to be transparent about everything. If you pass on every message from above it's pretty overwhelming and management changes their minds alot. It's better to filter somethings.
You have to judge what is concrete to share not everything like tape recorder.
Great share!
Thanks.
Thanks for this!!
These steps will work if your manager is good. Else, it will be difficult to be transparent.
Great points for managers. Any new points @HYkX20?
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Those are some excellent points. Did you write them up or found them somewhere ? Looks in alignment with Salesforce values and such.
most of the items are my own feelings and plans before joining salesforce. I did not copy any single line from anywhere. Maybe a 1 or 2 points additional based on spending enough time with salesforce.
Can you check your DM. Thx.