The Making of a Manager Julie Zhuo Review

Book review: The Making of a Director by Julie Zhuo

"The Making of a Director" is the starting time book by Julie Zhuo, VP of Production Design at Facebook. In "The Making of a Manager", Julie shares her experiences and learnings with regard to her transition from being a personal contributor to becoming a managing director. "This is a volume almost how someone with no formal preparation learned to become a confident manager" is the starting point for Julie'due south volume.

When she started her beginning function equally a manager at Facebook, Julie had very little feel under her belt and she describes what she thought a manager's job was:

• have meetings with reports to help them solve their problems,
• share feedback nearly what is or isn't going well, and
• figure out who should exist promoted and who should be fired.

Without wanting to spoil the residuum of "The Making of a Manager", this is how Julie sees a manager's task today:

• build a team that works well together,
• support members in reaching their career goals, and
• create processes to get piece of work done smoothly and efficiently.

Julie summarises that "Your chore, every bit a manager, is to get better outcomes from a group of people working together." She puts a great focus on outcomes and refers to her sometime manager Chris Cox, ex VP of Product at Facebook, who explained that one-half of what he as a manager looks at were his team's results and the other one-half was based on the strength and satisfaction of his team.

I liked Julie's inclusion of Richard J. Hackman's enquiry into what helps create successful teams (see Fig. ane beneath). She uses a like approach to managers creating the correct atmospheric condition for their teams:

• Purpose — The purpose is the outcome your squad is trying to accomplish, otherwise known as the why. The first big part of your job as a manager, Julie writes, is to ensure that your team knows what success looks like and cares about achieving it.
• People — This is all about the who. Are the members of your squad ready to succeed? Exercise they accept the right skills? Are they motivated to do great work? To manage people well, Julie explains, you lot must develop trusting relationships with them, understand their strengths and weaknesses (as well every bit your own — see below), brand good decisions about who should exercise what (including hiring and firing when necessary), and coach individuals to do their best.
• Procedure — This describes how your team works together. Julie clarifies that process in her mind isn't virtually stacks of paperwork and frameworks for everything, but enabling teams to make decisions and work together effectively: "In a squad setting, it's impossible for a group of people to coordinate what needs to become done without spending time on information technology. The larger the squad, the more fourth dimension is needed."

Staying on the topic of defining management, Julie provides a useful distinction betwixt leadership and management. Managing director is a specific role, with articulate principles outlining what a manager does and how his success is measured. Leadership, on the other hand, is the particular skill of being able to guide and influence other people. Julie makes the point that a leader doesn't have to be a manager; "Anyone can exhibit leadership, regardless of their role."

In "The Making of a Manager", Julie covers a lot of different facets of becoming and beingness a director. From recounts her first couple of months as a manager to breaking downwardly her views on strong direction, Julie offers a ton of insights and tips for those of us who are managers or would similar to take on this role. Let's selection some aspects that resonated with me virtually:

• Trust is the most of import ingredient — It may sound obvious, but the importance of investing time and effort into creating / maintaining trusting relationships can get easily overlooked. Julie mentions that the hallmark of a trusting relationship is that people experience they can share their mistakes, challenges, and fears with you.
• Giving and receiving disquisitional feedback — Similar to Kim Scott and Amy Edmondson, Julie talks about how managers and their direct reports need to exist able to give each other critical feedback regularly without it beingness taken personally. If your report does work that you don't think is great, are you lot comfortable saying that direct? Similarly, would your report tell yous if you if he thinks you've made a mistake?
• Be honest and transparent almost your written report'southward performance — As a manager, your perspective on how your report is doing carries far more weight than his perspective on how you're doing. Later all, you're the 1 who determines what he works on and whether he should go a promotion or be fired.
• Admit your own mistakes and growth areas — Julie shares how she tries to admit when she doesn't accept the answers or when she's working through her own personal challenges, and shares a number of useful phrases that she'll typically apply when doing so (run into Fig. 2 below).
• Managing yourself — Here, Julie talks most the so-called imposter syndrome, i.e. where you lot doubt your accomplishments and worry beingness exposed as a "fraud". She raises the question why imposter syndrome hits managers particularly hard and gives ii main reasons. Firstly, considering managers are frequently looked to for answers. Secondly, managers are constantly put in the position where they're put in the position if doing things they haven't done before. She as well talks about managers identifying their ain strengths and weaknesses, and "existence brutally honest with yourself".
• Astonishing meetings — I liked Julie's points about meetings, the bane of most managers' lives. She distinguishes between decision-making meetings and informational meetings and explains how being clear about the meeting objective (and structuring the coming together appropriately) can lead to much more effective and enjoyable meetings (see Fig. 3 beneath).

Fig. one — Richard J. Hackman, Hackman's 5 Factor Model:

Being a Existent Team — One with clear boundaries and stable membership.

Compelling Direction — Provide the team with articulate goals, which are both challenging and consequential.

Enabling Structure — Where possible, offering the team multifariousness in the tasks they undertake improves the team's success. Within the team's structure it'south also key to ensure that team members have stiff social skills.

Supportive Context — A supportive context is essential for companies and organisations, every bit they are made upwardly of small groups which when combined grade a larger grouping.

Expert Coaching — This is about coaching and mentoring the team to assistance achieve the outcomes they need to achieve and back up team members developing their individual skills.

Fig. two — Julie Zhou, The Making of a Manager: Sample things to say when you don't have the reply or are working through personal challenges:

• "I don't know the answer. What do you think?"
• "I desire to come clean and apologise for what I did/said the other mean solar day …"
• "I of my personal growth areas this half is …"
• "I'k afraid I don't know enough to help you lot with that problem. Here's someone you should talk to instead …"

Fig. iii — Julie Zhou, The Making of a Manager: Decision-Making Meetings and Informational Meetings:

A bang-up controlling coming together does the following:

• Gets a decision made (manifestly)
• Includes the people most directly afflicted by the decision besides as a clearly designated decision-maker.
• Presents all credible options objectively and with relevant background information, and includes the squad'southward recommendation if in that location's one.
• Gives equal airtime to dissenting opinions and makes people experience that they were heard.

A bang-up informational meeting does the following:

• Enables the group to feel like they learned something valuable.
• Conveys key messages conspicuously and memorably.
• Keeps the audience'south attending (through dynamic speakers, rich storytelling, skilled pacing, interactivity).
• Evokes and intended emotion — whether inspiration, trust, pride, courage, empathy, etc.

Chief learning signal: "The Making of a Manager" provides an honest, no bullsh*t account of what it means to be director and how to best transition into a managerial role. Definitely worth a read if y'all're manager or looking to become ane.

Related links for further learning:

1. http://www.juliezhuo.com/
2. https://medium.com/the-yr-of-the-looking-glass
3. https://hbr.org/2009/05/why-teams-dont-work
4. https://marcabraham.com/2018/03/12/book-review-the-no-asshole-dominion/
5. http://www.free-management-ebooks.com/faqld/development-03.htm
6. https://www.cnbc.com/2017/01/xxx/sallie-krawcheck-says-a-lack-of-diversity-leads-to-bad-decision-making.html
7. https://marcabraham.com/2019/01/27/my-production-management-toolkit-35-effective-one-on-one-meetings/
8. https://world wide web.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQUxL4Jm1Lo
9. https://hbr.org/product/becoming-a-managing director-how-new-managers-master-the-challenges-of-leadership/1822-PBK-ENG
10. https://www.tmbc.com/
11. https://strengthsprofile.com/

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Source: https://maa1.medium.com/book-review-the-making-of-a-manager-by-julie-zhuo-c6ac21886dc4

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