Management

Purpose

Provide high level guidance to managers at the company to set them up for success. Managers should primarily act as a coach to help the employee grow at the company, and to help create clear goals on outcomes that are good for the team.

Scope Currently covers providing feedback, delegation, and teaching. Needs more content on the actual structure and processes of management at Countable.

Feedback

Hold monthly one-on-one meetings with your reports. This is meant to ensure the person is enjoying their time at the company, learning, improving and having positive interactions with others at the company.
You should pay lots of attention to the outputs of your team, and provide feedback on those. Give feedback on what they produce NOT how they do it generally (that is micro managing).
Provide feedback often in different channels (public and private). Feedback should be specific and factual (not sweeping or general).
Negative feedback should be private and take the form of how something differed from your expectation, factually. State what you observed, and let the other person speak to it. Ask them how it will be improved next time.
If the above doesn’t fit well, try asking an open ended question about the topic “I wonder if this outcome works well for your team mate…”, and let them fill the blanks.
Feedback should be given as if you’re helping someone remember what they forgot, not what they couldn’t see.

Delegation + Teaching

Make the goal of the task very clear.
When someone new is learning something that you’ve done before, it will be MORE work for you the first time you hand it off, not less.
The learner should shadow you doing the task in slow motion, and be encouraged to ask questions. This means one of you (the learner if possible) completes the task while screen sharing, with you providing instruction.
You do not want to micro-manage nor abdicate. You want to coach, support, and give feedback on outcomes.
Once the person has a basic idea, let them figure out how to do the work, and give them feedback mostly on their outputs. It is often fine if they do it a little differently than you, and they will be motivated if they are more autonomous. Where the teacher comes in is helping them evaluate the work outcomes. Did they actually achieve the required goal? Your job as the teacher is to make that very clear.
Finally, once you’ve validated they understand the expected outputs and what makes those outcomes excellent, and can achieve those outcomes, you’re essentially done. You now have a new peer and you can both provide feedback to each other periodically in order to improve all around.

Resources

Starting with some well-receved, relevant resources.