Episode 92: Resilient Management: Building & Managing Highly Functional Teams

Just when you thought you had a handle on your job... it’s time to lead a team! Time to be responsible for others. Their career growth, emotional well-being at work, and job satisfaction.

 

You’re excited by the new opportunity and want to grow into this role, but it feels like you are starting from scratch. You felt highly competent in your last role. Now it feels like there is a steep learning curve ahead of you, and you may or may not have mentors or role models to help.

 

If you’re already in a leadership role, maybe you chose it or were promoted into it based on previous performance. But you may or may not have a lot of experience leading a team through a number of contexts such as tight deadlines, conflict situations, peacetime, and re-orgs!

 

As a result, in the first few months of your transition, you might have struggled to feel like you’re making progress. Overrun by meetings and constant context switching has left you feeling unaccomplished at the end of your workday. You wonder if you're using your time wisely.

 

You might be left asking yourself, “Am I doing this right?” And, “Should I go back to being an individual contributor?”

 

I’m here to tell you that all these doubts are normal.

 

It might not seem normal because no one took the time to map out what a day in the life of a leader would look like. Or maybe they did but only shared the glamorous parts ;)

 

Well, it’s normal to have doubts, and it does get better!

 

In this month’s Build episode, we’re going to tackle the topic of being a first-time leader, and to help us out I’ve invited Lara Hogan, who is a coach and trainer for managers and leaders in tech. She is currently the Co-Founder of Wherewithall a consulting and advising company dedicated to helping tech startups and non-profits grow and execute with ease. She was previously, a VP of Engineering at Kickstarter and a Director of Engineering at Etsy.

 

Lara has a new book coming out called Resilient Management, and in the Build episode, she’ll be sharing insights from it.

 

 

Here are the highlights with approximate timestamps:

• @5:00: Why Lara chose to focus on helping new leaders and managers hone two skills: human growth and resiliency
• @7:30: How every team (old and new) goes through four stages of development: forming, storming, norming, and performing, and what you as a leader can do in each stage to support your teammates
• @10:00: The six core needs we all need at work, and why even missing one might have caused you to feel emotions like unappreciated, distant or detached, or underwhelmed
• @14:40: Why Lara no longer suggests using a README to help your teammates get to know you, and what to do instead, especially when it comes to setting expectations
• @16:30: Know what you are optimizing for—instead of fixating on a management style or philosophy
• @18:00: How to spot areas of friction and handle them!
• @20:00: Why many first-time leaders default to mentoring (aka advice giving) and need to switch to coaching (guide teammates to discovering solutions)
• @24:20: Do highly functional teams even exist?
• @24:45: How to handle delivering bad news because as leaders that is one of the things we often have to do

Want a copy of Lara’s new book Resilient Management? Leave a review for Build on iTunes, then hit reply to this email to let me know you left a review, and I’ll share an e-book copy of Lara’s book with you! (Limited to the first 5 people who respond.)

 

Here are some additional resources Lara mentions in the episode for you to check out:

 

• Core Needs: BICEPS by Paloma Medina
• Four Stage of Group Development by Bruce Tuckman

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Build is produced by Femgineer (http://femgineer.com/).