How to write a manager manual
Make your manager's life easy (and grow your career)
I hope you’re enjoying the holiday season. 2022 was quite a year for me, and I’m looking forward to say goodbye to it.
I wanted to release 10 issues this year. Regrettably, I failed, but this is my attempt at getting #3 out before the year ends while keeping a high bar.
In my last issue, sent several months ago, I wrote about how to write a user manual for yourself. In this, I referenced a 'manager manual'. This will help set expectations with your manager (without making it awkward). This is, of course, assuming your manager is a good manager: one who cares about your progress and well being.
If you manage teams right now, I'd love to hear from you. Let me know if you'd find it useful if your team members wrote one of these!
Why should you write a manual for your manager?
The manager relationship often offers the greatest upside for learning and growth. Having been a manager and managed by several, I can say that the first 6 months are the most awkward. In this time, a good manager is:
Understanding your working style
Understand how to motivate you
Share context with you
Develop an understanding of how happy/excited you are to be doing what you’re doing
Understand your career goals and how to get you there
You can make this infinitely easier for them by stating these preferences upfront. This is not to say that you don’t develop an emotional bond/relationship with them by going for coffees and beers. But, this document will help your relationship get to the parts that matter, and avoid the initial awkwardnesss. Here’s how you write one:
Section 1: Personal Background and working style
Write a section on yourself (the person, not the professional) and include details such as:
Where did you grow up?
Why did you study what you studied?
What are your hobbies?
What does your family look like?
Or anything that you may be comfortable with. The idea here is to break the ice and show that you’re willing to open up and be informal a bit.
For working style, I recommend taking one of the personality tests. One can argue that these are as accurate as horoscopes. They are, however, directionally right for me. For example, I discovered that I’m an extraverted thinker, ie, I think aloud. I set this context at the beginning and it has helped managers work with me before. For example, my most recent manager stopped asking for async comments. Instead, he started white boarding with me, so that I can showcase my thinking in the best way.
A few tests you can take are here: MBTI (I’m an ENTJ), Truity (has most credible alternatives)
Section 2: Things you’re good at, and things you want to work on
Its always helpful to outline a list of things you’re good at. These could be skills for your job, but also some that are not required for your job but you’re good at. For example, in my case, as a product person I’m good at:
Influencing x-org
Prioritisation
Product Strategy
I am also good at the below things, which aren’t core to be a great product person:
Bringing a below par performer back to above par
Managing c-suite archetypes for large enterprise accounts
I’m not top quartile for the below, and have no current plans of improving that:
Process management
Important here for you to reflect if you want to double down on your strengths or improve weaknesses. I, for one, am firmly in the former camp (many studies have shown this as well). I try to be as aware as possible of my weaknesses and delegate to someone else where possible.
Section 3: How should someone manage you?
Ideally, you want to make the first move in defining how someone should manage you. Questions I would answer are:
Would you like a more directional or hands off style? I find it helpful to ask for a more directive managerial style in the first 6 months, and then hands off. I pull my manager in where required from that point onwards. From experience, the first few months of managing someone involves tiptoeing around ‘how much is too much’. This helps avoid that!
How will you stay accountable? Its important that you flag to your manager your cadence and medium of updates. The single most annoying thing I find as a manager is surprises - no one likes them. Its your responsibility to flag how you will communicate updates and when.
How do you want your manager to utilise 1:1’s? This is key - most managers use these for status updates. I find it helpful to set the agenda right at the beginning - and state that you’ll provide updates in a different forum. I like to use my 1:1’s for unblocking and career coaching - what about you?
There are several other things you can add to this section, but I hope this helps you make a start
Section 4: Why are you here and where do you want to get to?
Its important to call out why you’re at this current job. What are the skills you want to learn? Where do you feel you’ve reached in your career? Equally, it is important to flag to your manager where you want to get to.
When I first started managing teams, I used to assume that everyone wanted career growth. This is not true. For example, someone on my team had recently become a parent. For the immediate future, they wanted to stay at their current level. This was so that they could optimise for work life balance and spend precious time with their child.
Make sure you call out what’s important to you, if you can, prioritise it. For example, for me it is currently 1) Career Growth 2) Family time and 3) Craft improvement. This keeps changing at regular intervals, and I keep my manager posted on these changes.
Last, in this section avoid statements like ‘I want to get from Level X to X+1’ or ‘I want to move from IC to Manager’. Sure, those are good goals but why? You can frame the earlier statements as
‘I’d like to more platform work than product work, so that I understand how product attach works’
‘I enjoy helping people succeed and so I’d like to do more of that’
Both are inputs, which are great. Outputs are then a function and that’s on your manager to work on - set these expectations without ambiguity.
I hope you found this useful, I’d love for you to refer a friend or post on social media:
My next set of newsletters will be on practical product skills and tools. Thank you for reading, and if you aren’t a subscriber, do consider subscribing using the button below: