Essential Tools for Managers

When I first started leading a team, I struggled a lot.

My lack of experience and inability to get them to contribute their best made them look bad.

I tried my best to learn the science of managing.

My go-tos were books: I remember reading Peter Drucker’s The Effective Executive , Ken Blanchard’s The One Minute Manager and other books to figure out HOW to manage my team better.

I learned by trial and error and by observing others.

Then I discovered the Manager Tools podcast.

I fell in love with it right away.

I devoured episode after episode. It helped that the episodes were fairly short (by then standards) and the hosts had good chemistry and a great sense of humor.

But mostly, I loved their very practical advice and some great tools, some of which I use and recommend to this day.

The most important idea I learned from MT was how to “operationalise” management — how to put together the processes and forums for managing deliberately rather than reactively.

Their signature teaching is the Manager Tools Trinity: 1-on-1s, Feedback and Coaching.

Over a series of episodes, they explain how to think about, structure, and deploy these foundational tools every manager MUST use to be effective. This includes useful advice on how to get your team ready for this new way of working.

I also learned about interviewing, running appraisal sessions, preparing for my own appraisal, and lots more.

It’s been 15 years, maybe longer, since they’ve been doing this. And they’re still going strong — with a vastly expanded set of offerings.

2023/013 #atomicessay #ship30for30

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