You're A Manager? Then Teach Your Team How To Manage You
Updated: Jun 13, 2020
Picture this: it’s 11pm and your team is fast asleep. You have a call with your US-based CEO, who asks you whether a strategically important project will be completed this week. Your reportee owns this project and you intended to review status with him today, but you got busy and decided to do so tomorrow. Your CEO is silent, impatiently waiting for your reply…
Not an ideal way to end your day, is it?
You’re not to blame for being unable to sit down with your reportee that day: things get busy at pioneering companies. But as a manager, you must have visibility and control regardless. How to do so without micromanaging?
Explain to your team that they must manage you - and teach them how. A few ideas:
Clarify ownership (1 single owner, no shared ownership), specs of the deliverables, and Estimated Time of Arrival (ETA): don’t mandate, get buy-in
Have them give you proactive and timely updates when specs or ETA might change
Agree “reporting frequency and modality”: it can be daily CRM updates or weekly emails, depending on software available
The exact techniques that you'll adopt may vary, but it is essential that you implement a bi-directional expectation management system, for your company's sake and yours!
