Nikhyl Singhal: evaluation

Transcript context

…I love that tip. You talked about managers and how often managers are not great at managers. Maybe they don't identify development areas, maybe they're bad in other areas. So maybe just a question here of just, why are managers often not great? And then two, if you're a new manager, I think a lot of listeners are maybe transitioning to management or about to transition, what's your advice for being successful as a new manager? I'll start by saying that, in a hundred years when the archeologists look back and they see tech in the sort of early years of tech, the first 34 years, they'll say that the biggest surprise was how much we thought it was okay to not train managers. The military probably didn't make that mistake for very long before they corrected it. And most immature industries really train managers, but boy, if you're a good coder, you are ready to manage. That's the way the industry works. If you can talk, you are ready to product manage. If you can product manage and ship something out the door, you should definitely tell people what to do. I think that there's such a loose coupling between the skills to be successful at building things and teaching people how to build. It's the difference between if you can make a good car, you must know how to make the factory that makes the car. I don't think that's true at all. I think that this is a massive epidemic, that I think there's the thousand challenges that stem from this, whether it's challenges around bias, challenges around enabling coaching and teaching and solving development areas. My hope is that one day as an industry we find ways to improve and fix it. But podcasts like yours are actually quite meaningful steps. I would say that your podcast might be more meaningful than most L&D departments in most organizations today. So that's powerful because you're having a tremendous amount of impact, and I think learning is essentially a lifelong opportunity and I think that is the type of resources that just didn't exist a decade ago. I think to answer your question around what are the common pitfalls, if you're a first time manager listening or maybe someone who's considering it, I think there are probably two quick things that I would say you have to get bravely thoughtful about as you enter into this journey. One is, your challenge is going to be to share the steering wheel with the person or the set of people you are managing. And I think that there's this three modes that people have in their head. They're like, "Oh, management is divide and conquering. You go there, I go there, we meet up." Or they'll say it's like riding a bike, or teaching to ride a bike, I should say. Someone starts out on the bicycle, I hold your hand, I let go, and then I hope that you fly. I think it's more like the sidecar on the motorcycle, where person's driving the motorcycle and I'm on the sidecar and whether I like it or not, I'm attached, but I have this relatively specific role of giving counsel. I think that that model of how do you share the steering wheel, not just say you got it or I got it or I got it for a while, and then I hand it to you is the key question. And then I think that the second miss that people tend to have is they tend to, because they have power, by the way, organizational power, not because they've earned that power, they start managing whatever they define that to be. nd miss that people tend to have is they tend to, because they have power, by the way, organizational power, not because they've earned that power, they start managing whatever they define that to be. And what I find is that you're more like the vampire knocking on the door of someone. You have to be invited in. You just can't walk through the threshold. And I think that no matter how senior the person that is the manager, you have to earn the right to be the person's manager. So maybe to be specific, well, if I start managing someone, the thing I'd like to understand is like, "Hey, well, what can I help you with?" And they can invite me in. Oftentimes, the answer is, "I don't need you. I actually wasn't excited about you as a manager. I don't need another layer between you and the CEO. Get out." And I'm like, "That's cool," because anything I say after that is just going to be annoying and it's going to backfire. Now, one day they will need help, and I will be in the sidecar waiting to say, "Perhaps I can assist." And then when you finally get to that moment where you're invited in, you pick an area or two, and then you really partner with that person on that area. I can give examples on that, but I generally think that it's this invitation picking specific and then making sure we're sharing the responsibility is the key set of notes that I would share with you.…

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