HOW TO BE THE MANAGER YOU NEVER HAD
And how it drives performance.
MOST PEOPLE DON’T BECOME MANAGERS BECAUSE THEY’RE GREAT AT LEADING PEOPLE.
They become managers because they were great at doing the work.
You crush your role, hit every deadline, and one day someone says:
“You should lead the team. Here’s a promotion.”
Or maybe you start your own business, make your first hire, and suddenly you’re floundering—no clue how to manage someone.
You’ve gone from top performer to being responsible for others’ performance—with no training, manual, or examples of what “good management” looks like.
It’s a quietly cruel career transition. We assume leadership is intuitive, but it’s not. Most of us survive management rather than learn it. Few work under great leaders; most work under unclear, reactive, or burned-out managers.
Good news: management isn’t innate. It’s a practice. Anyone can learn to lead—with curiosity, consistency, and humility.
Your job as a manager? Drive performance. Not just metrics, but helping a group consistently deliver exceptional results. It’s human work—more human than most realise.
THE HIERARCHY OF STRONG MANAGEMENT
Every organisation—nonprofit, startup, small business, or corporation—wants the same thing: exceptional performance.
Meeting revenue targets
Delivering outstanding work
Producing consistent results
Sustaining long-term growth
The only way that happens? Strong leadership and management.
As a manager, your core objectives:
DEFINE WHAT EXCEPTIONAL LOOKS LIKE
KEEP MOTIVATION HIGH by connecting daily work to meaningful goals
CREATE ENVIRONMENTS where people can take smart risks and learn from mistakes
MODEL SUSTAINABLE BOUNDARIES to maintain long-term energy and focus
RETAIN AND DEVELOP GREAT PEOPLE
Everything else—listening, empathy, feedback, advocacy—are tactics that make these objectives real.
Soft skills aren’t just nice-to-haves—they’re the engine behind high-performance cultures. Trust, clarity, and psychological safety consistently outperform pressure and fear.
LISTENING + FOLLOW-THROUGH BUILD TRUST
On my first day as a manager, a friend said: “Bring in a cake—it builds rapport.”
I didn’t. I listened.
I met one-on-one with every team member to understand:
What they were working on
What frustrated them
How they defined success
Then I compared job descriptions to reality, clarified goals, and identified quick wins. When I said I’d fix something, I did it—fast.
Trust isn’t built through grand gestures. It’s built through listening and following through.
Teams that trust their manager:
Move faster
Take initiative
Speak up early—before small problems get expensive
CONNECT THE TEAM’S WORK TO THE GREATER WHY
Being busy without purpose burns people out.
If your team can’t see how daily tasks connect to company goals, motivation dies.
Your job: connect the dots. Show how the spreadsheet ladders up to a campaign, the campaign to a launch, and the launch to revenue.
Line of sight is magic. Employees who see purpose are 2.7x more likely to be engaged, and engagement drives 21% higher profitability.
Purpose isn’t a pep talk—it’s performance infrastructure.
BOUNDARIES, REST, AND RECOVERY PROTECT PERFORMANCE
Working at midnight? Not commitment—it’s a warning.
Leaders set cultural defaults. Firing off weekend emails, skipping breaks, or skipping PTO signals: the system isn’t protected.
You can’t sustain a high-performance culture without operational support. Even generous PTO collapses if the team is overstretched.
Elite athletes build rest into cycles. So should managers. Research shows peak cognitive performance happens around 30–35 focused hours per week. After that, output drops and mistakes rise.
Boundaries aren’t indulgent—they’re operational.
EMPATHY AND PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY
Empathy isn’t a vibe—it’s a tactic.
Put yourself in your team’s shoes
Understand their perspective
Give benefit of the doubt
Psychological safety = foundation of high-performing teams. Teams that feel safe:
Ask questions
Admit mistakes
Share feedback
Google’s Project Aristotle and Harvard research show high psychological safety leads to 12–20% higher performance.
Empathy isn’t weakness—it’s operational advantage.
ADVOCACY AND FEEDBACK: THE RETENTION ENGINE
Retention is performance. Losing a strong team member = lost momentum, context, and knowledge.
Advocate for your people:
Push for raises, visibility, opportunities
Teach them to advocate for themselves
Feedback matters:
Specific, actionable feedback drives growth
Sugarcoating leads nowhere
When advocacy + feedback flow both ways: loyalty, momentum, and trust flourish.
THE TAKEAWAY
Effective managers aren’t the toughest or smartest—they’re intentional.
Connect work to meaning
Balance empathy with accountability
Build systems that allow humans to deliver exceptional results
Management = performance work. Performance = purpose, trust, clarity.
Listen first. Set boundaries. Give feedback. Advocate. Connect the dots.
Be the manager you never had.
Not because it’s nice.
Because it works.
WORK WITH ME
Connect on LinkedIn
Keep building work that actually works for you. I’ll be here cheering (and nudging).
