Julie Zhuo became a manager at Facebook before she was 25, running a product design team with no formal management training and no clear model for what she was supposed to do. What followed was over a decade of learning — some of it painful — about what leadership actually requires. This piece, published by First Round Review to coincide with the launch of her book The Making of a Manager in March 2019, draws on her own experience and the questions she believes every manager must ask themselves.
How do you know whether your reports trust you enough to be honest with you?
One of my teammates shared with me a simple litmus test for assessing the health of her relationships: if she asks her report how things are going and the answer for multiple weeks is "Everything is fine," she takes it as a sign to probe further. It's much more likely that the report is shy about getting into the details than that everything is consistently rainbows and butterflies.
The other test I use is: would my reports gladly work for me again? When you see a manager taking on a new role and members of his former team also make the leap with him, that says a lot about his leadership. In anonymous surveys to track team health, some companies explicitly ask, "Would you work for your manager again?" If your organisation doesn't do this, simply reflecting on the question is useful. For each report, can you say with confidence that he or she would want to be on your team again?
What should 1:1 meetings actually accomplish, and how do you make sure they do?
The ideal 1:1 leaves your report feeling that it was useful for her. The most important and meaningful conversations have a characteristic of being a little awkward. It isn't easy to discuss mistakes, confront tensions, or talk about deep fears or secret hopes, but no strong relationship can be built on superficial pleasantries alone.
Managers shouldn't dole out advice or save the day. Instead, empower your report to find the answer herself. She has more context than you on the problems, so she's in the best position to uncover the solution. Let her lead the 1:1 while you listen and probe. Every morning, I've gotten into the habit of scanning my calendar and compiling a list of questions for each person I'm meeting with — questions that identify what really matters, understand the root of problems, and zero in on how I can be of greatest service.
“Can you say with confidence that each report would want to be on your team again? If you aren't sure that the answer is yes, it's probably no.”
What are the most common ways managers give feedback badly?
The most common request I've read in thousands of upward reviews is simply: "Give me more feedback." The first step is to give feedback more often and remind yourself that you're probably not doing it enough. Every time you see one of your reports in action — delivering a project, interacting with a customer, negotiating a sale, speaking up in a meeting — see if there's something useful you can tell her. Strive for at least fifty percent positive feedback so she knows what she's doing well.
But watch out for only ever giving task-specific feedback. The second most common ask from reports is: "Give me more feedback related to my skills and my career trajectory." I knew a manager who was a designer's designer — his team always knew where he stood on their work. But in their upward reviews, I would read comments like "I want to understand my manager's opinion on how I'm progressing." His team longed for additional attention about them as people, not just on their output.
How do you make sure feedback is actually heard?
The best way to make your feedback heard is to make the listener feel safe, and to show that you're saying it because you care about her and want her to succeed. If you come off with even a whiff of an ulterior motive — you want to be right, you're judging her, you're annoyed or impatient — the message won't get through.
One simple trick is to state your point directly and then follow up with a question: "Does this feedback resonate with you? Why or why not?" If the answer is yes, the person has both acknowledged and reflected on the feedback, so it's more likely to stick. If the answer is no, that's fine too — now we can discuss why that is, and what would make the feedback more useful. To make doubly sure you've been heard at the end of a conversation, ask: "Let's make sure we're on the same page — what are your takeaways and next steps?"
“Feedback only counts if it makes things better. The mark of a great coach is that others improve under your guidance.”
What does great management actually produce, when you get it right?
A group of people working in unison is a wonderful thing to behold. Done well, it ceases to be about you or me, one individual or another. Instead, you feel the energy of dozens or hundreds or even thousands of hearts and minds directed toward a shared purpose, guided by shared values.
If you or I do our jobs well, then our teams will thrive. We will build something that will outlast us, that will be made stronger by all who became a part of it. That's the aspiration, at least. And the path to it runs through asking better questions — of the people you manage, and above all, of yourself.
What are the questions that have most shaped your own development as a leader?
A few I rely on constantly. When interviewing candidates: "Think of a long-term project in your portfolio — if you had two more months to work on it, what would you have done differently?" Thoughtful candidates are the ones who have been so attached to a project that they've thought many times about how they could have made it better. Occasionally you'll get people who say what they ended up with was perfect and they'd change nothing, or who suggest only cosmetic changes — that doesn't come across as particularly thoughtful.
On feedback: "What is the best way for me to give you feedback?" On the health of the team: "What's working well on this team, and what isn't?" And the one I always come back to: "Can I say with confidence that each of my reports would want to be on my team again?" If you can't answer yes, the gap between where you are and where you should be is probably bigger than you think.