“Be a goldfish.”
“Believe.”
“There are two buttons I never like to hit: panic and snooze.”
There are scores of coaching cliches to be savored in “Ted Lasso” — a moony chronicle of an American football coach’s misadventures guiding his team of underdog UK footballers. Amid the British dreamscape that is Coach Lasso’s world, a cogent leadership lesson emerges: There is no universal playbook for management.
While there exists an infinite number of vital texts on the topic, Lasso’s unconventional coaching tactics prove that world-class management lives beyond the page. Instead, it starts with earnest human connection.
“What do I have to learn here?” Lasso often asks his reports as he navigates the unknowns of being a first-time soccer coach.
In this empathetic question lies the crux of Lasso’s management acumen — leading each individual the way they are led best.
Beyond the pitch of Ted Lasso’s fictional world, there are many lessons to be gleaned from burgeoning tech leadership. Built In Boston sat down with first-time managers from SmartBear, Rue Gilt Groupe and InterSystems to talk about how they found their footing in the field of tech management.
InterSystems is an information engine behind key applications in healthcare, business and government for over 40 years.
How did you prepare for the shift from individual contributor to manager?
By talking to managers in my new department and across the company to understand what they went through when they started out. I also read management books and articles, specifically about leading people to succeed in technology.
This helped me hit the ground running — or jogging. I didn’t question every decision I made. I could focus more on the tasks at hand. Thanks to the preparation, I immediately had a better sense of what kinds of meetings were useful. That wasn’t something I was used to — being the driver, organizer and scheduler of all sorts of meetings.
Reading up on the role helped me decide the frequency, length and expectations for one-on-one meetings with direct reports. It also helped me understand which project meetings were useful and which issues my team could handle through an email chain or a quick conversation.
What was the biggest adjustment to make upon becoming a first-time manager?
Becoming busier; I was also responsible for setting my own schedule.
When you’re an individual contributor, you have a queue of tickets building up. But when I became a manager, I had never juggled so many different things at once — such as the number of people reporting to me and their different projects.
To succeed, I needed to come up with new organizational techniques for myself. I had to figure out how to schedule more effectively and how to handle back-to-back meetings. I even had to learn what types of meetings are okay to schedule back to back. Some go long, while others generate action items that require extra time afterward.
I also learned to schedule one-on-one meetings with my direct reports across the week. Initially, I grouped them together on the same days, which was inefficient because it led to an imbalanced week and prevented me from following up on action items quickly.
Equally important, I began blocking out time for long-term tasks that needed my singular focus. That meant figuring out how to find time in my schedule to give them the necessary attention, instead of squeezing three tasks into the 30 minutes I had between meetings.
How do you quantify or qualify your success as a first-time manager?
My biggest responsibility is removing roadblocks for the people who work for me, including any barrier to their success. If one of my direct reports has a question that’s critical to a project but can’t get an answer, I make sure they know who to ask and how to get a response. I step in.
My biggest responsibility is removing roadblocks for the people who work for me, including any barrier to their success.”
Roadblocks may be nontechnical. A colleague may have something going on in their personal life that they need to talk through or they may need help with scheduling their day.
My primary responsibility is removing roadblocks. I define my success by whether the people on my team can keep moving their projects and careers forward.
People are comfortable enough in one-on-ones to tell me, “Hey, this is something that’s still in my way.” One of my management superpowers is following up on these issues. When people raise an issue, I never drop it. It builds trust — which is critical for every manager, team and company.
Rue Gilt Groupe strives to be a premier off-price, e-commerce portfolio company — connecting more than 35 million shoppers with coveted designers and in-demand labels at an exceptional value.
How did you prepare for the shift from individual contributor to manager?
When I joined Rue Gilt Groupe as an assistant buyer, I partnered very closely with a merchandising coordinator. This working relationship set my foundation on how to set and manage expectations.
Once I had more experience as an assistant buyer, I was charged with onboarding new assistant buyers. While I wasn’t a direct manager to my new peers, my role as a mentor in their onboarding provided me a unique perspective on the role of being a manager.
I learned to teach, mentor and lead — and realized the importance of understanding the individual needs that make each associate successful. This has been crucial.
What was the biggest adjustment to make upon becoming a first-time manager?
Shifting my work mindset. Before I was a manager, I would come to work, put my head down and focus on getting my work done. The keyword here is “my.” Once I became a manager, I quickly realized that I needed to expand my mindset to include the needs and management of the output of my team.
I quickly realized I needed to expand my mindset to include the needs and management of the output of my team.”
Now, I start each day by checking in with my team first to ensure everyone is in a good place and has what they need to be successful that day. I continue to stay present and accessible to my team throughout the day. On some days, I find that I need to put my team’s needs ahead of my own.
What tips would you share with other first-time managers to set them up on the path to success?
For first-time managers, a few tips of mine would be:
Check in with your associates. It sounds simple – but with working remotely or hybrid, it’s critical to stay connected and have live conversations versus relying on Slack or email to communicate.
Set a regular one-on-one cadence with your direct reports and let them lead the conversation about what they want to learn, where you can help them grow and how you can help them achieve these goals. Between one-on-ones, I do my best to ensure that my team feels empowered to come to me with their challenges or hurdles. I serve as a sounding board and support system.
Lead by example. While it may sound obvious, leading by example is critical. It doesn’t force the idea of perfection — instead, it holds me accountable to demonstrate what I consider success.
As a leader in your company, you need to embody the values that drive the culture. I model our values of being kind, passionate, collaborative, innovative, tenacious and empowered so that my team can identify opportunities to infuse these values in their day-to-day work as they prepare to be future leaders.
SmartBear aims to provide a portfolio of trusted tools that give software development teams visibility into end-to-end quality through test management and automation, API development lifecycle and application stability.
How did you prepare for the shift from individual contributor to manager?
I was given advice by my manager early on in my career at SmartBear that you interview for your next job every day. I made sure to always come prepared for meetings, be engaged, take notes and ask questions.
I was given advice by my manager early on in my career at SmartBear that you interview for your next job every day. ”
I found this advice also applied to earning the respect of my peers who would one day report to me. To prepare for the transition from individual contributor to manager, I came up with creative new messages for the team to try, proactively shared what was working and followed up on messages from my manager to offer clarity.
These exercises not only showed my peers how seriously I took my career but also allowed me to find my voice as a manager by getting reps to share my message with the team.
What was the biggest adjustment to make upon becoming a first-time manager?
Letting go of having absolute control. As a rep, you own the deal. You own the communication, presentation of the pricing and follow-up. As a manager, I had to learn to let go of the urge to type a message out the way I would say it. I had to learn to let reps draft up the email or role play the talk track.
From there, I could make tweaks, but I had to allow them to deliver the message in their voice and learn for themselves. In the end, if the same message got across, it was important it came from the rep both for their development, as well as for my time management.
I was getting stretched too thin trying to control the message for all the deals in play on my team. Once I took a step back, I was able to effectively spend my time on strategic planning and proactively find ways to help the team — as opposed to typing up an email for a rep. That behavior stunted the rep’s development and took time away from my new role as a manager.
What tips would you share with other first-time managers to set them up on the path to success?
Be authentic in building relationships. It’s imperative that a rep feels comfortable bringing you good and bad news. To feel comfortable doing that, there needs to be trust between you and the reps. Those genuine relationships come from being authentic to who you are.
Don’t be afraid to defer to someone who knows more or to admit to mistakes. It goes a long way in gaining reps’ respect. Building these relationships helps you understand what motivates each rep, what makes them tick and how they best receive feedback.
Another tip is to define what your core values are as a leader. This helps set the stage for the standard you create for your team. If you allow it, you encourage it. Any behavior that is not consistent with the standard you set for your team needs to be nipped in the bud, otherwise, you are encouraging it.
Finally, always explain why you want the reps to do something. It is not enough in today’s day and age to just do something because a manager says so. I have found reps are most engaged when they understand why I am asking them to do something, and how it fits into their goals.
