What was your approach / philosophy to managing your first direct report or team?
How did you guys manage the learning curve that comes with becoming a people manager for the first time?
You need to really assess what your direct report needs and not get visibly frustrated.
If the person needs a teacher, yelling at them because they didn't get a concept is going to fuck with their head and they'll get nervous to work with you. If the person needs someone to help with time management, you need to have constant check-ins with them.
You need to take the onus of communication and not expect them to know everything at the start.
Finally, it's about trust and relationship. They need to trust you have their back and that you're on their team. If they think you're trying to fuck them or grind them into dust, they're not going to get their stuff done.
In short, management is a lot of EQ. You're not going to be perfect on the first one, but err on understanding vs. thinking that the person is incompetent. A lot of the mistakes are the manager's fault, not the kid who is clueless.
That's a great write-up, thank you.
What do you think is the best way to approach not having managing experience during interviews? I'm at a Mgr / Sr. Mgr level but have always been in individual-contributor roles (due to CFO wanting a really lean team, etc.), so it's a question I run into pretty frequently during interviews.
I would think about ways you've "managed up".
You don't need to explicitly say you've had no one underneath you (unless they ask), but there is always the factor of managing someone and how you navigate those relationships.
It's a bit tougher, but you can definitely think through your interactions and frame them that way.
The other thing is, you can say you had no direct reports but you managed relationships with the business lines or something like that.
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