Latest / DevQuestions with Tim Corey / 313. The Role of a Manager

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313. The Role of a Manager · DevQuestions with Tim Corey

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: What are the most important things a manager should be focused on?
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: Being a manager isn't just telling people what to do.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: Management at every level will have different responsibilities, and different companies treat managers differently.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: However, I think there are five key things that every manager should be doing for their team.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: Let's talk about it in today's episode of Dev Questions.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to the Dev Questions Podcast with Tim Corey.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: Software development is more than just writing code.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: So let's talk about the rest of it.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: Specifically, let's talk about the five things every manager should do for their team.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: Now, to be clear, these aren't the only tasks a manager needs to do.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: But I think these are the most important things a manager should be doing.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: And while I'll approach this from the perspective of software development, these really do apply to managers everywhere at every level.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: So, number one, I think the one of the biggest things a manager should do is remove blockers.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: Now, when you look at management and you start thinking about what does a manager do, too often you think that management is about being better or somehow the next level up means they're more important.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: But the reality is managers are there to support the people underneath them.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: That's their whole job.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: That's the reason they exist.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: They don't actually do the work, they do the support role.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: So management is a support role, not a primary role.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: So when you think about what your job is as a manager, number one is to remove those blockers.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: So if your team, if someone on your team is blocked up, they cannot do their job, and it's because of something that you can solve, solve that for them.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: So this could be simple, it could be complicated, it could be, you know, for example, maybe a software developer is looking to fix a bug, but the person who submitted the bug isn't responding back to that person.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: There's, you know, the developer saying, hey, I can't replicate this.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: Can you tell me more about this information, about this situation?
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: And just crickets.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: You don't hear anything.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: Well, a manager's job is if the software developer can't get that unblocked.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: They cannot get information back, or maybe it's systemic from a certain department where they submit high priority tickets but then never respond, then it's the manager's job to go talk to that manager and say, hey, can we facilitate getting this thing done?
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: We want to help you, but you got to help us help you, right?
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: Simple example.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: There can be other ones as well.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe there's you know things that have to come from higher ups or there has to be decisions made at a higher level.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: Well, your job as a manager is to make sure those things happen so your team has the ability to get the job done.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: If your team needs something, you need to figure out how to make sure that happens so they can do their work.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: Because your team's job is to do the work.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: So, therefore, when your team isn't doing the work, they're not being successful.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: And that's your job is to help make them successful.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: Now, if you're a manager of managers, well, you're you're both higher up in the corporate ladder and even more of a support role than before because now you're supporting managers who are supporting the people who are doing the work.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you're farther and farther removed from the actual work being done.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: It gets harder and harder, but your job is to remove blockers.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: Number two, your job is to push you, is to push your people forward in their career.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: So when you look at your team, you shouldn't look at your team as, hey, I have five cogs.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: I want those five cogs to just work.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: Because you want your team who is doing the job to do it better over time.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's the goal, is your your goal to see them do it better over time, which also means that you're investing in their career because you want to see them succeed.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: And this is there's a weird balance here because some companies only want to focus on how do you provide value to the company.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: It's a one-way street, right?
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, we provide you money, therefore you should provide us with everything, right?
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: But for the most part, even in those companies, good management is going to focus on people and not just see people as a cog, but instead as a vital piece of the team that's helping you, the manager, get your job done, which is to accomplish the mission of the company.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: So your job should be, in my opinion at least, to help push your team forward in their careers.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: It will help them be better at their current job, but it will also help them be more satisfied and protected.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: Because if, let's say, the company decides, you know what, we're going to lay off 20% of all employees, therefore your team of five is now a team of four.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: Well, but if you have helped that one person who has to leave move forward in their career, well, that's not a bad thing necessarily because they're more prepared to go and get another job or get a better job.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: And they feel more comfortable.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: And you feel the rest of your employees can at least feel like, well, maybe our job isn't totally certain, but at least my manager cares about me and wants to see me succeed long term, even if some things are out of control.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: So there are things you can do, even in a bad situation as a manager, to make sure your people know that you actually care about them as a person.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so number two, push forward, push your team forward in their careers.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: Number three, help them set their priorities.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: Too often, management says, I want you to do something, and then they judge you, maybe not even necessarily on what they said, but what they felt, right?
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: Like they have an idea of what they wanted, but they didn't really communicate clearly.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: And so now your annual review reflects, you know, something you didn't necessarily understand was your priority.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: As a manager, you need to help set priorities clearly.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: Say, this is what I'm looking for.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: This is my priority.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: If your priority is, I want you to clear through as many tickets as possible, that's your top priority.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: Well, communicate that and say, hey, this is what we want you to do.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: This is where the focus needs to be, is on just doing this.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: That's the priority.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: What that also means is you need to understand that you are saying these other things aren't as much of a priority.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: Too often managers say, this is a priority, it's number one priority.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: This over here, also number one priority.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: This over here, well, you guessed it, it's number one priority.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: That's not prioritization.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: That's just saying, I want everything.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: You can't always have everything.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: You need to prioritize and say, I want it all done, but this is the first and most important thing, this is the next most important thing, and so on down a list.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: And you have to understand that maybe your entire list doesn't get done.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: But if your team understands what your priorities are, then you're not frustrated at them for not achieving those priorities if they're going in the order you told them to.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: So if you don't communicate priorities, what happens is every team member listens to you and says, Oh, they think objective A is the priority.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: That's what it sounds like from the boss, therefore I'll do objective A, where the next person says, Oh, I thought objective B was no work on objective B, and all of a sudden nothing gets done because there's always too much work to do and not enough time.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: So what happens is that you're upset and then you give them bad reviews, right?
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: So instead of setting up yourself for failure, set your team up for success by saying this is our priority list and then sticking to it.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: Number four, your job as a manager is to protect your team.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: You are the umbrella over your team.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: Your goal is to enable them to do their work.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes that means shielding them from corporate nonsense.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it means shielding them from stuff that they shouldn't have to deal with.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's you know, frustrated customers.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: Well, can you do that?
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: Because it's probably more effective for your team to do their job, and it's probably easier for you to do the PR side of it, or to protect your team from upper management who's upset or something else.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: You want to be the shield for your team.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: That's your goal.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: So number four is protect your team, whatever that looks like in every circumstance.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: And then, and that also includes, by the way, you know, layoffs are coming.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: And the boss says, We're cutting 20%.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: Well, is that wise just to say 20% off the board?
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: Because maybe you're you want to protect your team by saying, hey, my team is more valuable than that.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: I think that my team shouldn't be, you know, cut.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: And your boss might say, nope, 20% across the board.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: And you need to have data to back up the fact that your team is more valuable than if you cut them.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: You know, so our team makes the company more money than they cost, or our team brings more value to the company than they cost.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: And so if you can bring that kind of documentation, it can help offset some of those conversations and get your boss to go, oh wait, that doesn't make sense, does it?
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: And then you can kind of push back and protect your team from even layoffs.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: Now, management will still do management things, but if you're in management, you know that there are things you can still do inside of management.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: So protection is number four.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: Number five is communicate the vision.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: This is this is not a number order list as a most important to least important.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: This is all really important stuff.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: And communicate the vision is probably the first or most important thing to do.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: But you want to communicate the vision of what your roles are.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: So you want to communicate the vision of what your each individual role, what is supposed to do, and then what the team is supposed to do, and then what the team is supposed to do inside the scope of what the company is trying to do.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: And the reason why is because otherwise you have people pulling in different directions who all think that they are doing the best possible to help out in their situation, but they're not being effective.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: And so they get frustrated because they're doing their best and they're working hard.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: And it feels like management just gets angry at them for no reason.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_00: Well, if you're pulling the wrong direction, it doesn't matter how great you're pulling.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, it can be worse if you're pulling hard.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: So you want to make sure you're all focused in the same direction.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: Get everybody pointed in the right direction by communicating the vision.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_00: What is the vision for your specific job?
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: So when you're talking to an employee and say, hey, you're the database administrator, here is what I'm looking for from you.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to protect the database at all costs.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: That's the vision.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: That's your goal is to protect the database.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: That means making sure it's efficient.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: That makes sure that there's no security breaches that can damage our data.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: That makes sure, you know, making sure that you back the data up, making sure you test the backups, making sure that you check for bad queries going into the database, making sure that you work on those queries, make them more performant, and so on down the list.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: But you're setting a vision of this is your job.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: You are the gatekeeper.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: You are the protector of a database.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: That's setting the vision for what that one individual role is.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: Set that for every employee.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: But then set it for the team as well.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: Our job is to create software that supports the business.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: And when you start thinking that that mindset is different than just we create software or we do, you know, we create stupid features that management asks for.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: No, our job is to support the business and make the business better.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: So, because of that, your team will have new ways of thinking about features and bugs and all the rest, because they can prioritize those things based upon the vision.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: Where you know, you may get a CEO or CFO or somebody else may put in a ticket and say, hey, this is a feature I want for our application.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: And you look at it, maybe even your junior developer looks at it and they look at the feature and say, well, this is this looks great, but it doesn't seem to support the vision very much compared to these other things, which goes back to priorities.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, you don't have your junior developer telling the CEO no to things.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: Again, protect your people.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but at the same time, they can be empowered to talk to you and say, hey, I see this, but I also see this as our priorities.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think the vision and the priorities are aligning right now because they know both.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: And all of a sudden, it allows them to make better decisions.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_00: It allows them to make wiser decisions that you don't have to micromanage.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_00: So, what you're doing here is you're setting your people up for success, allowing them to do their best work, and then letting them do that.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_00: So these are the five things.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: Now, yes, there's a lot more that a good manager should do.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot more things that when you're in the role that you should think through and how you do things.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I have other ideas on that.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, one of the things that I hate personally is the annual review.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: I think that process is broken.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_00: I don't do annual reviews with my employees.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_00: And so what I do is I have the if there's a problem, we're gonna talk about right now.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: And then we'll talk about how to make your role better once a year.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um, not as a punitive thing, but as a celebration of what you have accomplished and then, you know, new new goals, things of that nature.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: But that's for another video, that's for another episode.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but for now, these are the five things I think are most important for a manager to do.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: Number one, remove blockers.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: Number two, push your team forward in their careers.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_00: Number three, help set priorities for your team members.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_00: Number four, protect your team.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_00: And number five, communicate the vision for your team.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_00: Now, as a manager, if you can do those five things, you're gonna be setting your team up for success, which by the way, sets you up for success as well.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for listening.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: As always, I am Tim Corey.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for joining us for this episode of Dev Questions.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_01: When you're ready to learn to think and code like a professional developer, head over to I amtimcorey.com and enroll in a course.