6 Mistakes I made as a manager

I was a lousy manager. I recently attended a session where the instructor asked me about my mistakes as a manager, and I thought I had made all the possible mistakes as a people manager. I am still making mistakes and learning from them every day.

I want to talk about my top 6 mistakes here. These are also the mistakes that most of us starting on the managerial path make, and hence I hope some of the readers will learn from my mistakes and avoid making them on their own.

Not giving critical feedback properly

I managed a small team and project; I was not happy with some of the crashes we saw in production. I reviewed the code for this product and found several glaring mistakes. I blasted the developer in front of everyone.

Years later, one of the team members became friends and told me it was her first day, and she was petrified of me, and her focus was on avoiding mistakes instead of creating innovative products.

The feedback was me venting out frustration. If you have heard of the term manager from hell, this was an excellent way to describe me at this point. It didn't help me, my team, or the person receiving feedback. I am not proud of the behavior I displayed.

In most cases, I now praise in public and give critical feedback in private. I also ensure that my feedback would benefit the recipient.

Not doing 1-on-1s

I didn't do 1-on-1s with my direct reports till I got a manager who did goal-setting discussions every quarter and met me to discuss my goals (even outside work). I still remember telling him I wanted to start learning Python (when I was deep into C++ in my day job).

I started doing 1-on-1s seriously only in 2013 and learned more about the sessions from founders who believed in the power of 1-on-1s. When I look back, I can't understand how I managed to lead any people without meeting them regularly and understanding them deeper.

1-on-1s have helped me understand what bothers my teammates the most; many of these insights have helped me push for different policies at the workplace. They have helped me connect with my team better at a personal level too.

Some of my friends maintain a shared document for 1-on-1s. I don't do this yet. I keep private notes around feedback that I have given and received in these 1-on-1s. I recommend this for all managers.

Not delegating

I think I got over this one very quickly, but I did walk into my CEO's office to complain about getting a lot of juniors to mentor when I had a lot of work myself.

This CEO patiently explained the virtues of delegating, leverage, and how each of these bright engineers will contribute as much as me within six months. There is no better task for me than making sure these engineers get mentorship and challenging tasks (which I was keeping to myself so far) to achieve our goals as a team.

A lot of management gurus talk about becoming redundant. I knew about the concept but didn't appreciate or implement it. I failed to recognize and groom my next in line and often could not ensure that more people combined in the team could fill my role.

I contributed to coding, planning, and execution with my future teams, but I made sure I was not the bottleneck because I didn't trust my team.

Not communicating and documenting enough

I think this is where I still drop the ball sometimes. Assuming everyone is on the same page and that all the information is read and understood is a recurring mistake.

Sometimes, I am working on a specific problem, and I have read documents, code, etc., related to this topic. I have a lot of context about this problem, but my team members don't have the same context. I need to articulate the context before looking for opinions, decisions, and solutions from my team.

I have since fallen in love with documenting design decisions and creating detailed engineering proposals. I still falter on both these points, but I am only a manager.

Failing at pressure management

For the most prolonged period, I failed at pressure management for my team. I worked long hours, and my team thought they should be doing the same.

Everyone in my team should believe they have the flexibility to choose their work hours. I did not realize that my works hours influenced them and formed wrong expectations.

While this was a direct pressure from me to my team, I also failed at moderating pressure from above. I often transferred communication and stress from the top to my team in the interest of transparency and team alignment. I learned relatively late that I should be saying no to a whole lot of asks. I also didn't realize that new changes should be discussed and prioritized, and what gets sacrificed when we add new things is essential.

Incorrect form of communication

The propensity to speak a lot meant I talked more and did not listen enough. Only when I started working with colleagues who could understand people much better in interviews and short meetings, I realize I was doing something wrong. While I still get into "communication is speaking" mode, I actively listen to my team members in 1-on-1s and other settings.

A big thank you to Arindam Mukherjee for giving me a ready list of the most common mistakes he has seen managers make. I seem to have made more mistakes than he expected.

If you are starting your managerial journey, I hope you learn from my mistakes and be a better manager for your team than I was at the beginning of my career.