The Making of a Manager

The Making of a Manager Plot Summary

Introduction

Management isn't simply about overseeing tasks or directing others—it's about creating an environment where people can do their best work together. Many of us step into management roles because we excel in our fields, but soon discover that leading others requires an entirely different skill set. The anxiety of that first team meeting, the uncertainty when providing feedback, or the challenge of aligning diverse personalities toward a common goal can feel overwhelming. Yet within these challenges lies an incredible opportunity for personal and professional growth. Effective management transforms groups of talented individuals into cohesive teams capable of extraordinary achievements. When you develop your leadership abilities, you don't just advance your career—you multiply your impact by elevating everyone around you. Throughout the following chapters, we'll explore practical approaches to becoming the kind of manager who doesn't just supervise but truly leads with purpose, authenticity, and vision.

Chapter 1: Build Trust Through Authentic Leadership

Trust forms the foundation of every successful management relationship. Without it, even the most brilliant strategies fail, because team members hesitate to voice concerns, share ideas, or take necessary risks. Authentic leadership creates the psychological safety needed for teams to thrive. Julie Zhuo, who became a manager at Facebook when she was just twenty-five, recalls her first meeting with a direct report after her promotion. Walking into the conference room, she found him glued to his phone, wearing an expression she describes as "all the surliness of a teenager forced to attend his ten-year-old cousin's Pokémon-themed birthday party." The awkwardness was palpable as she realized a fundamental truth: she hadn't earned his trust yet. She wasn't a better designer than him, nor smarter or more experienced. His skeptical expression conveyed a clear message: "You have no idea what you're doing." Rather than pretending to have all the answers, Zhuo gradually built trust by demonstrating genuine care about her team members as individuals, showing vulnerability about her own limitations, and consistently following through on commitments. In one instance, she shared critical feedback with a manager who struggled with micromanagement. When she saw him deflate at her words, she admitted, "I feel you. I struggle with it too," and shared her own recent example. That moment of authenticity created a connection far more powerful than any management technique could have. Building trust requires regular investments of time and attention. This means scheduling consistent one-on-one meetings, at least weekly for thirty minutes, focused on your report's needs rather than your own agenda. Come prepared with thoughtful questions like "What priorities are you thinking about this week?" or "What's hard for you in reaching your ideal outcome?" When you demonstrate that you value these conversations enough to prepare for them, your team feels the difference. Trust also flows from transparency about performance. Your reports should always know where they stand and what your expectations are. Don't assume they can read between the lines—be explicit about what success looks like, where they're excelling, and where improvement is needed. And perhaps most importantly, demonstrate respect by admitting your own mistakes and growth areas. When managers acknowledge their own imperfections, it creates space for authentic relationships where honest feedback can flow in both directions.

Chapter 2: Master the Art of Meaningful Feedback

Feedback is the essential mechanism through which teams improve, yet many managers struggle to deliver it effectively. The best feedback transforms people in ways they're proud of—it doesn't merely point out flaws but inspires positive change. Drew Hamlin, a former intern on Zhuo's design team, once sent an email pointing out a misalignment of elements on the screen, writing, "Did you mean to make this so terrible?" The team recognized this as "the world's worst critique" – too harsh and not constructive. Contrast this with feedback Zhuo received from her report Robyn, who carefully explained: "Julie, sometimes I get the feeling that when I'm doing well, you're on my side and the two of us are great. But when I'm not doing as well, our relationship suffers, and I don't feel that you trust me as much." This single piece of feedback transformed Zhuo's entire perspective on management because it was delivered with honesty and kindness. Effective feedback comes in various forms. Task-specific feedback addresses something someone did after the fact: "That research report you shared yesterday was excellent. The way you succinctly summarized the most important findings made it easy to process." Behavioral feedback identifies patterns across multiple examples: "Your recruiting skills are top-notch. Candidates often say they leave conversations with you feeling more inspired than when they began." The 360-degree feedback gathers perspectives from multiple collaborators to provide a more complete view. To ensure your feedback leads to positive action, focus on three key elements. First, make it specific—vague comments like "your presentation was complicated" don't provide clear direction. Instead, say: "You lost the room when you shared seven goals for the review instead of just one or two. It was hard to remember them all, so the priorities felt unclear." Second, clarify what success looks and feels like by painting a vivid picture of the desired outcome. Third, suggest concrete next steps or ask, "Given what we just talked about, what do you think should happen next?" When delivering critical feedback, aim to be direct and dispassionate. Skip the long preamble and the "compliment sandwich" approach, which can obscure your message. Try this template: "When I [observed your action/behavior], I felt concerned because... I'd like to understand your perspective and talk about how we can resolve this." Remember that people aren't fragile flowers—they want honest feedback that helps them improve. Telling it straight is a sign of respect and ultimately builds stronger professional relationships.

Chapter 3: Create a Culture of Growth and Learning

A thriving team culture doesn't happen by accident—it reflects the values and behaviors that leaders consistently reinforce. When you nurture a culture focused on growth and learning, team members feel empowered to take risks, admit mistakes, and continuously improve. Facebook exemplifies this approach with their famous motto displayed on posters throughout their campus: "Nothing at Facebook Is Somebody Else's Problem." This value was put to the test when a new intern accidentally took down the Facebook service by introducing an error into the codebase. Rather than firing the intern or placing blame, his manager apologized for not setting him up better. Other engineers took accountability for not catching the error beforehand. The entire team participated in a postmortem to understand why the failure happened and how to prevent similar issues in the future. This incident demonstrates how culture reveals itself not through official statements but through how an organization responds to challenges. Facebook chose to emphasize collective ownership and learning over blame and punishment. The focus wasn't on who made the mistake but on how the team could improve their systems to prevent future errors. To establish your own learning culture, start by clarifying the values you want to embody. Ask yourself: What moments made you feel most proud to be part of your team? What does your team do better than others? What behaviors do you want to encourage? Once you've identified these values, communicate them consistently. Sheryl Sandberg exemplified this at Facebook by repeatedly emphasizing the importance of "hard conversations"—directly addressing tensions with colleagues instead of letting resentment build. She would ask people to raise their hands if they'd had a hard conversation in the past month and share stories of her own experiences. Through this repetition, "hard conversations" became ingrained in the company vocabulary. Your actions as a manager speak louder than your words. If you say you value feedback but never ask for it yourself, team members notice the disconnect. Similarly, ensure your incentives align with your stated values. If you claim to value thoughtful design exploration but reward rushed work that meets deadlines, you're sending mixed messages. Create traditions that reinforce your values, whether it's celebrating "fail of the week" to encourage learning from mistakes or establishing regular skill-sharing sessions to promote growth mindsets. Remember that culture isn't just about feeling good—it directly impacts outcomes. When team members feel safe to experiment, collaborate, and speak honestly, they solve problems more effectively and adapt more quickly to challenges.

Chapter 4: Run Meetings That Actually Matter

Meetings consume a substantial portion of a manager's time—often up to 60 percent of their day. Yet too many meetings feel like the "necessary evil" of management: wasteful, bureaucratic, and boring. The difference between productive and painful meetings often comes down to clear purpose and thoughtful design. Julie Zhuo learned this lesson when she established a weekly status meeting where everyone on her growing design team shared updates about their work. Initially, this seemed like standard practice for keeping people informed. However, as the team expanded, the meeting became increasingly problematic—some team members gave concise updates while others rambled about every email debate they'd had that week. Looking around the room, Zhuo noticed glazed eyes and the tap-tap-tap of keyboards as people tuned out. Eventually, a brave team member sent her an email: "To be honest, this meeting doesn't feel like a good use of time." Zhuo canceled the series and switched to weekly email updates, which worked much better. Great meetings serve one of five specific purposes: making decisions, sharing information, providing feedback, generating ideas, or strengthening relationships. Before scheduling any meeting, ask yourself: What does a great outcome look like? For decision meetings, success means reaching a clear conclusion everyone trusts was made fairly. For feedback meetings, success means honestly representing the current status of work and getting useful input to improve it. Once you've clarified your purpose, invite only the people necessary to achieve that outcome. Too many attendees dilute focus and waste collective time. Help participants prepare by sending materials in advance—this demonstrates respect for their time and enables more thoughtful discussion. During the meeting, create psychological safety for everyone to contribute. Some people naturally speak up while others need encouragement, so consider structured approaches like "going around the room" or using Post-it note exercises where everyone writes down thoughts before sharing. After the meeting, document decisions and next steps. Specify who is responsible for what actions and by when. This accountability ensures the meeting translates into progress rather than becoming an isolated conversation that leads nowhere. Finally, audit your own meeting attendance regularly. When Julie was working late nights and weekends feeling overwhelmed, her husband asked a simple question: "Do you need to be in all those meetings?" She tracked her participation for a week and discovered that for about 40 percent of meetings, she wasn't critical to the outcome. Declining unnecessary meetings freed up time for higher-impact work. Remember, your time is precious—guard it carefully and focus on meetings where you truly add unique value.

Chapter 5: Hire for Excellence, Not Just Experience

In a growing organization, hiring well is perhaps the single most important responsibility of a manager. Each person you bring on board shapes your team's capabilities, culture, and future trajectory. Yet many managers approach hiring as a problem to solve quickly rather than an opportunity to build something extraordinary. Early in her career, Zhuo interviewed a new graduate named Tom. Throughout the interview, she noticed his hands shaking slightly as he tackled her technical questions. Though he didn't completely solve all the problems she posed, she observed his thoughtful approach, the quality of his questions, and his persistence when facing challenges. Despite not getting as far as other candidates on the technical assessment, Zhuo had an intuition about Tom's potential and advocated for hiring him—the first time she had "gone out on a limb" for a candidate. This decision proved transformative. Within a few years, Tom progressed from new graduate to senior engineering leader, consistently earning deep respect from colleagues. His trajectory demonstrated that hiring well isn't about finding people who perfectly match a checklist of requirements but identifying those with the right mindset, potential, and values to grow with your team. To improve your hiring process, design your team intentionally. Each January, Zhuo maps out where she hopes her team will be by year-end, analyzing gaps in skills and experiences to create a targeted hiring plan. This prevents reactive hiring where you say yes to whoever seems available when you're desperate to fill a role. During interviews, examine past examples of similar work—the best predictor of future performance. Seek trusted recommendations and references, particularly from sources who know both the candidate and your organization. Involve multiple interviewers to reduce bias and catch subtle red flags any one person might miss. Look for passionate advocates rather than weak consensus—if nobody feels strongly positive about a candidate, they're unlikely to be exceptional. Prioritize diversity in all aspects—from gender and race to work history and life experiences. As Zhuo discovered when Facebook hired managers from larger companies despite her skepticism about their "fancy processes," diversity leads to better ideas and results. The new managers brought valuable perspectives on scaling that complemented the existing team's strengths, demonstrating how diversity creates resilience through complementary viewpoints. Remember that hiring is a long-term investment in relationships. Even when candidates decline your offers, maintain positive connections—many of the leaders on Zhuo's team only joined after saying no once or twice before. Jobs may be short, but careers are long, and cultivating your network ultimately leads to better hiring outcomes.

Chapter 6: Balance Short-Term Execution and Long-Term Vision

The most successful managers navigate a constant tension between addressing immediate needs and building for the future. Without balancing these perspectives, teams risk either becoming reactive firefighters with no strategic direction or dreamers who fail to deliver tangible results. When Facebook was working on extending the Like button in 2016, this balance was crucial. Users had consistently provided feedback that not everything they saw on Facebook felt "likable"—sometimes they wanted to express support for a friend having a bad day or react to sad news stories. The most common suggestion was adding a Dislike button, which seemed like a quick solution to implement. However, the team took a step back to consider their long-term vision of "bringing people closer together." Would a Dislike button truly serve this purpose? After deeper research, they realized that when people asked for a Dislike button, they typically wanted to express one of several emotions—sadness, anger, sympathy, or surprise. This insight led them to develop a system of reactions that allowed users to express a wider range of emotions while staying true to Facebook's mission. The short-term fix would have been easier, but the thoughtful approach better served their long-term vision. Managers often struggle with carving out time for future-focused work when immediate demands feel overwhelming. One effective approach is taking a portfolio view, as one of Zhuo's colleagues did by ensuring a third of her team worked on short-term projects (weeks), another third on medium-term projects (months), and the final third on innovative, early-stage ideas that might not show impact for years. This balanced allocation ensured they could maintain their core features while still exploring future opportunities. When making decisions, work backward from your long-term vision. If you're not clear about where you're going, as Yogi Berra said, "you might wind up someplace else." Remind your team constantly of your ultimate purpose—not just what you're doing but why it matters. This context helps everyone make better day-to-day decisions aligned with your larger goals. Be careful not to conflate your purpose with the metrics you use to measure progress. If you care about providing excellent customer service, you might track how quickly complaints are resolved. But if representatives start making hasty decisions just to close tickets faster, quality suffers. Always connect actions back to their higher purpose to avoid optimizing for the wrong outcomes. Finally, embrace the reality that perfect planning is impossible in an uncertain world. Jeff Bezos advises making decisions with about 70 percent of the information you wish you had—waiting for 90 percent often means moving too slowly. Create processes that balance thoughtful planning with quick execution and regular reassessment based on new information. The most resilient teams aren't those that never make mistakes but those whose mistakes make them stronger over time.

Summary

Throughout these chapters, we've explored how effective management transcends mere supervision to become true leadership—building trust through authenticity, delivering feedback that inspires growth, cultivating a culture of learning, running meaningful meetings, hiring for excellence, and balancing immediate execution with long-term vision. The journey of management isn't about perfection but continuous improvement. As Julie Zhuo powerfully reflects, "Looking back on my management path thus far, it looks like a toddler's attempt at drawing a straight line—full of squiggles, swerves, and mistaken meanderings." Your growth as a manager begins with a single commitment: to focus less on yourself and more on empowering others. Start by scheduling regular one-on-ones with each team member, asking thoughtful questions about their challenges and aspirations. Listen more than you speak, and when you do provide direction, connect it to your team's larger purpose. Remember that your actions speak louder than your words—the small, consistent ways you demonstrate care, authenticity, and fairness will ultimately define your leadership legacy far more than any grand speech or brilliant strategy.

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Julie Zhuo

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