Link to buy: Amazon (it’s an affiliate link. I probably won’t get a cent because I’m under the threshold to earn with Amazon.)
Published: 2019
Read: April 2024
The book in one sentence: Julie Zhuo shares her learnings from leading large design teams since she was 25 years old.
Would I read it again? Well… I enjoyed the read. But I’ve found my go-to leadership books already (The Engineering Manager and Radical Candor), therefore I won’t read it again.
The The Making of a Manager: My Takeaways
Below are insights from the book that resonated with me. It’s in no particular order and by no means an entire book summary.
- Keep iterating, even on small things such as weekly status send-outs.
- Walk the talk. For example, if you say you want to foster a feedback culture, you should ask for feedback too.
- Leadership is a craft on its own. You don’t need to be the best SEO expert or designer to become a team lead. If you’re good at the craft, that’s nice. But eventually, you will lose touch because as a team lead you’re busy with other tasks such as hiring, roadmap planning and reporting up.
- Community builders tend to be skilled leaders because they care. Watch for signs in the team, such as someone taking care of lunches.
- We need leaders to orchestrate. As soon as people are working together, you need someone (or some people) to take care of “organizing” the work. If it’s not apparent how everyone is supposed to work together or what the team’s values are, then even simple tasks can become enormously complicated. Note Corina: I’ve experienced this lack of clarity as a direct report and can relate to this quote.
- Running effective meetings is the manager’s job. Iterate on meetings and ask the team and peers for feedback on how you facilitate meetings.
- “Working together allows us to create things bigger than what we’d be able to achieve by ourselves.” That’s an important note for me personally, as I tend to prefer working by myself.
- Julie mentions that writing is good for reflecting on your learning and that one should not postpone it for later. I can relate. I love writing, but during times of high workload, I postpone it. To when?
- Managing involves context-switching and lots of meetings.
- The relationship between direct reports and their manager will never be equal. Managers have the power to decide over the future of the role of the direct report; direct reports don’t.
