132: The Making of a Manager with Julie Zhuo

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What's next? This is a question we're all having to ask and answer more frequently. I'm Jenny Blake, your host of the Pivot podcast and author of Pivot. The only move that matters is your next one.

For show notes from this episode, visit pivotmethod.com podcast. If change is the only constant, then let's get better at it. Here we go.

Hello everybody. I'm so excited to introduce you today to Julie Zhu. She is the author of a wonderful book called the Making of a Manager. What to do When Everyone Looks to you. A little bit about Julie before we jump in. She loves learning about people. We share that in common among several other things. She's currently one of Silicon Valley's top product design executives, leading Facebook's product design team. She's been there for 13 years and her primary role there is guiding the teams behind some of the most popular web and mobile services, as we all know, used by billions of people around the world. So what an epic place to be at the center of which we'll get into on the show, Julie also writes about technology, great user experiences and leadership on her popular blog, the Year of the Looking Glass, as well as publications like the New York Times and Fast Company. And today I'm really excited to dive into this concept of the making of a manager because as you say, Julie, it's not something we're necessarily born to do, but we can learn to do so. Welcome to the show.

Thank you for having me, Jenny. I'm so excited to be here.

We have a similar management origin story you introduce in the very first pages of the book, and I have to read this part word for word because this will give listeners a preview of your delightful writing style. You say I was 25, working at a startup. All I knew of management could be neatly summarized into two words, meetings and promotion. Everyone knows this conversation is the equivalent of Harry Potter getting a visit from Hagrid on a dark and stormy night, the first step in an adventurous and fulfilling career. And I just laughed like that. Language is throughout. But I was also promoted to Manager. When I was at Google, I was 24 and many of my peers and friends, people who were older than me, who'd been at the company longer than me, suddenly became my direct reports and it was so awkward. So I would love for you to take us back to those early days when you were starting out at 25 and looking back at the either preparation or maybe lack of preparation you had going into that first role as a manager and how it kind of inspired you to write this book.

Yeah, absolutely. So like I mentioned, I was at a startup because Facebook was very small at the time. It was about 100 people. And I joined even two or three years prior as a product design again onto a very small team. We had one manager and we had reached the point where we were scaling the team. And so my manager says to me one day, I really need someone to help me manage because we're hiring more and more people. How about you? You get along with everyone and so will you do it? I honestly didn't think.

This wasn't like, oh, I'd been working on this path for years and years and I had felt I had been preparing for it for a long time because imagine it's a startup environment. We're all putting on different hats. We're designing pixels and we're checking in code and we're trying to get our friends to come and join this company. We're used to doing a lot of different things just to help support the startup.

I said yes, just right away because I thought this would be another thing that.

The company needed me to do. So I did it. To your point, Jodi, it wasn't until I was sitting down having a one on one with someone who the prior day was my peer, somebody that actually considered better at their job than I was, someone who's a more experienced designer, had more years of doing this work, whose work I really admired. And I'm in the meeting being like, what am I supposed to talk to this person about? How am I supposed to add value for this person?

I really wasn't very prepared for the job. I went into it and I made tons and tons of mistakes along the way. That was a lot of what inspired me to write this book. You know, because when you are new to the job or when it isn't something you know that you feel like you've taken tons and tons of leadership courses on or gotten an mba, you know, or been on a path to do, then all of these experiences are new, all of those emotions are new. And. But at the Same time, you know, you will, you will be able to get through it.

It's interesting what you said about you even perceived some of these people who are now reporting to you as better at their work than you. What do you think is the role of a manager? And, and what differentiates it from, let's say, an individual contributor who might be very, very skilled at the work that they do? How can somebody who's even young in comparison to the rest of their team step into a role like that and think that they can give guidance? Because I remember getting pushback from some of my peers, rightfully so, who were saying they were kind of, they were very, I mean, let's be honest, they were disappointed at first, some of them, and they thought, what can you teach me? What can I learn from you? Turns out I was doing coach training on the side, so I actually had a deep passion for helping them grow and connect to the work that they really love to do. Probably the things I was weaker at was giving feedback. And it's true that I simply didn't have decades and decades of work experience like another manager might. So it's, it's such a self conscious feeling at a young age. But I think also you say in the book, at any age, even managers of managers feel like an imposter sometimes.

Yeah. And this is not something that I knew when I started at 25. It's something that I learned over the course of managing. But, you know, the job of a manager is not to be the best at the thing. You know, even, even if they're managing a team of designers, a team of engineers, to be the best at that craft, it is a different role. The job of a manager is to ensure that a team of people can get to the best outcomes possible for that team. And the way that you're going to do that, you know, isn't by going in and trying to do the job yourself. Right. That's the difference between your individual contributor versus a manager. The job of a manager is to make sure that the team has what it needs to be successful. And the major, you know, the major levers that a manager has are primarily people, you know. So, you know, you can, can you coach people to do their best work? Can you help, you know, match this person's strengths to the biggest problems that the team needs? Can you h. And attract great talent? Can you help manage performance and see if someone is actually creating a toxic environment for others and manage that appropriately? So people are one of the biggest levers. I think the second lever is around process. You might have very talented people, but if there are no norms around how they should work together, then the work isn't going to get done well and it's not going to get done efficiently. Process is really important. I think the third one is purpose. Because let's say you have great people, let's say you have good norms. If people don't feel like they know what success looks like and what this team was brought together to do and what a good job looks like, what a great job looks like, what a poor job looks like, then they might not be rowing in the right direction. Right. They might be at conflict or trying to do things that are at odds with each other. So those are the primary levers. And when it comes down to it, and I wish I knew this at 25, I wish this is what I would have said to my report, who was who I considered a much more experienced and better designer. I wish I had said, look, my job is to ensure that you can do a great job and you and the rest of the team together can come up with the best design work that we think is possible.

I'm successful if you're successful and I want to know what I can do to help you do your job better. I want to know what your ideas are for how our team can work together better. And your success is my success. And I'm not good at everything. It actually is a bad situation. If I am somehow more skilled at all of these things than any person on my team, it probably just means I don't have a strong enough team. But I can help talk to people, listen, I can help coach them. I can understand what their career aspirations are. I can help match them to the best projects or the initiatives. And I can try and take their ideas and make that real for the team.

I love those three Ps, people, process and purpose. So clearly stated. And you've emphasized a few really crucial points in there. One, that management, as you say, is no longer trying to just get something done by yourself. It's to generate better outcomes from a group of people working together. But also that it's actually a problem if the manager remains the best, highest skilled technician, more so than anyone on their team. It either means you don't have the right team or you're not delegating and you're not teaching and training and developing that team. And I'll say that one breakthrough moment that I had reading your book, I've known for a long time the importance of scaling and managing. Even I'm running my own business. It's been over eight years now, and yet it wasn't until I read your lemonade stand analogy that I just kind of hit myself over the head. So I'm gonna read a little snippet. I mean, it's about two pages, but it is so good because Julie really gets into the. The details of the analogy of running a lemonade stand. And toward the end, you say, if I spend all my time personally selling lemonade, then I'm contributing an additive amount to my business, not a multiplicative one. My performance as a manager would be considered poor because I'm actually operating as an individual contributor. And a little backstory was that the lemonade stand owner maybe knows they can sell more lemonade, at least in the beginning, than anyone else on their team, but that still doesn't mean it's the right thing to be doing. I would love for you to flesh this out a little bit for listeners, because again, for some reason, and there's a lot of side hustlers and solopreneurs listening, this is such good motivation to kind of release our greasy meat hooks off of every single task in our business or for people in companies, off of things that you feel you're the only one that can do them. But. But in the end, that's really reducing the impact you can have on the team.

Absolutely. And to me, a lot of this comes down to the short term versus the longer term. Again, today, let's say I am operating a lemonade stand. I started the business, and really I'm a very good salesperson. So if I mand a stand, I'll sell a little bit more lemonade. And let's say I hired someone and they don't. Their productivity is not quite as. As high as mine. Right. And so in the short term, if it's just about how many lemonade you know to sell today, then obviously I would make the. I would be like, okay, well, I should man the stand for more hours, and we're going to sell more. But this isn't scalable. And the thing with teams is that you want to be able to get to the point of growth. You want to be able to get to the point of scale because you believe that a group of people working together is going to get more done and going to have a better outcome, you know, higher output than one or two people. Right. And so if I spent my time instead training my new employee, helping, making them more effective at selling lemonade or hiring the next employee or documenting all of the Things that I do that are effective at being a salesperson and then being able to distribute it to every employee that then joins in six months. That is clearly going to be a better ROI on my time investment than me just actually selling the lemonade. I think that's how we have to think. We have to think not in terms of day to day or week to week, but where do we want this to go in six months time, in one year's time and three years time? And are we making the right investments today that will allow us to be able to get to that aspiration of what we want our team or a business to be able to accomplish in that longer term period?

This is actually something that I've struggled with, which might explain my difficulties delegating or scaling. I actually worked under Sheryl Sandberg's part of the organization, online sales and operations, before she moved over to Facebook. And I remember one day we all admired her. We couldn't wait till her all hands meetings. We loved hearing her speak, even internally. But I remember one day, a few years into my time at Google, I looked up the ladder and I realized I actually don't want to be Cheryl. I don't want to manage such a massive team. And I think it's really interesting hearing about your role because you've been with Facebook through such massive growth. I mean, 13 years, you're now managing managers. I'd love to hear a little more about the scope of your purview, but do you feel like how do you juggle the feeling of. I think sometimes in business there's a notion that it's always about growth and scale, but then there's got to reach a limit at some point. I know that's not a very Silicon Valley thing to say because most of the companies are just grow to end the, the extent that you can and serve however many you can, whether it's millions or in Facebook's case, billions of people. But I wonder if at some point the lemonade stand reaches a good size and like, what's, what's big enough?

Yeah. And I, you know, I think that is a very, very personal, you know, decision and a personal aspiration for each person who is, you know, running a team or running a business or starting their own company. Right. And there's no right answer. The right answer is definitely not you don't, you know, you have to make. And that to me is a lot of the difference between the decisions that we make in our careers, why some of us choose to get more fulfillment out of Being an individual contributor versus managing a team of a certain size versus managing and trying to scale a much larger operation. I think the question I would ask is, and I think the major question that distinguishes people who may be more fulfilled by the management path versus the individual contributor path is do you care more about reaching a particular outcome, or do you care more about your contribution and the craft of the thing that you do in getting to a particular outcome? That, to me, is the difference. Because if you answer, actually, I care more about getting to an outcome and I will do whatever it takes to get to that outcome, then that is a little bit more of the manager mentality. Because.

Some days that means that when your lemonade operation is getting started, you're selling lemonade. But if your outcome is okay, I want to have a thriving business, I want a lemonade stand on every block in my city. Or if you want to think even bigger, I want a lemonade stand on every block in the country or in the world, then that means on day one, you're manning the stand, but then on day two, you're trying to think about how you can hire people and then how you can be opening up more stands and how you can kind of scale that and your job will the day to day of what is most important for you to do to be that multiplicative.

Influencer on the team. It's going to change. If you look at, for example, CEOs or what Cheryl is doing, her job today and her day to day is very different than what she was doing five or ten years ago when Facebook was a much smaller company. But if your whole thing is, look, I love the craft of what I do, and I love just, just getting deep into code, or I love the actual moving pixels around and designing, or I love just sales and just talking to clients every day, or I love just coaching individuals, then that's great as well, right? And that's just what you want to do. And so go in and take that path and find it. And you can obviously grow, especially if it's a creative discipline. You can continue to grow in your ability to impact and influence and kind of make the harder and harder, you know, decisions in that craft. But it's a very different mindset than I'm going to do whatever it takes to get to this outcome.

Thank you, that's super helpful. And even for solopreneurs, let's say someone who thinks they're never going to manage people, there's often partnering with others on projects or hiring a virtual assistant or hiring it's just it. I think it crops up more frequently even if someone's job title isn't manager or they're not on a path within a company. You mentioned how a role changes over time. And even when I was at Google, I was fascinated by people who had a long tenure at that time. Five years was a really long time back when I was at the company. And now some of my former colleagues and still friends, they've been there 10 years, they've been there 15. And you've been 13 at Facebook. So I could imagine your role has shifted a lot. But also how do you navigate how the company changes in that time? Because I know we experienced at Google where some people who really thrived in a startup, agile, scrappy environment start to feel very weighed down as the company grows. So of course everyone's happy for its success. But the whole operations of a business at 100,000 employees are so different than back in the day when it was 10,000.

Yes, absolutely. And that is, you know, sort of. I would say that the reason, one of the reasons I've stayed for so long is because I've cared a lot about the kind of outcome of the team and are we able to produce and scale our design work to meet the needs of more and more consumers? And that means that every six months, practically, it feels like a different job. Because all of the things that we had figured out, processes and norms and what we think is important and purpose, like, all of that changes basically every year. All of the things, the way that you run a meeting when it's six people and you're trying to make sure everyone understands what's going on and who does what, that doesn't work anymore when you're 20 people. And then that process for 20 doesn't quite work when it's 40 or when it's 80. And so it is a lot of, I think learning to manage well through growth or through change is about flexibility and it's about adaptability. But it's. But it's always about looking at like, okay, what do we want to achieve? What's that outcome that we consider success? And then let's make sure that we have the right people, the right processes and the right understanding of success to make that happen. And let's evolve, let's adapt, let's try new things. We'll make mistakes along the way, but we will figure out what works and do less of what doesn't work. And that's how we adapt.

One thing I loved you said that when a new Manager joins. You always like to ask them what turned out to be more challenging than you expected and what was easier than you expected. I have to say, I've never thought to ask anyone on my team these questions. I'm curious how you came up with that and what types of responses or what do you learn when you ask this of a person?

Well, the reason why I ask it is because. For two reasons. Right. The first is, you know, obviously that person had an expectation coming into a role where they thought it was going to be like this. I want to make sure that even as they're in their first few weeks or their first few months, that we are aware of what those expectations are and whether or not reality is close enough. If it isn't, then that's usually a sign that maybe this isn't a good fit or maybe we should ask questions like, is this person actually satisfied or is this actually not what they expected and therefore this isn't really what they want to do? I want to do that to just try and understand how is that person feeling. The second reason I ask it is because it gives me more data on how I can set better expectations for the next person who joins my team in the future. People all start and then they all say, oh, you know what, it actually was really difficult to feel like we understand.

What success looks like. Then that's a signal to me, okay, I'm not doing maybe a good enough job of helping onboard and communicating what success looks like. And so maybe I should spend a little bit more time thinking through a better process, a better onboarding document a training program, more one on ones for new people so that in the future it's not like we're having those same problems or opportunities come up.

Speaking of expectations, which that word triggered something for me. I've been a long time advocate that millennials are not just some entitled generation because there's so much shame and blame in the media. And ever since my first book, Life After College, came out in 2011, I was often asked questions about this entitlement factor. And I always saw myself sort of campaigning that, no, they've made it through the 2008 crash. They've seen people they love be laid off or lose their jobs or businesses. They are just trying to find passionate work that they love. Of course, a small percentage of people in this world of all ages, are legitimately entitled. But still, almost 10 years later from the first book coming out, and now we have even a younger generation entering the workforce. I wonder what you say to this comment I have people I really respect who will say to me, no, straight up, millennials are entitled. Hear it from me, I've had them on my teams. They are impossible to work with. Their expectations are out of control. They just don't get it. And I'm wondering, especially at a company like Facebook where it's hiring kind of high performing younger people in general, what's been your experience with this? Do you agree? How do you answer this when you hear people say, oh, managing millennials is impossible, or again, now the younger generation?

Oh, yeah. To be honest, I always actually have the same reaction to you. I'm always a little bit surprised by that because I do think that everyone comes into a role and has expectations and those expectations are built from past experiences or what we read or what we see in the media, or what our friends tell us. So for sure, we all come into a situation, a job, you know, whatnot, with our set of expectations. But, you know, like any relationship, you know, like a lot of times, if we don't understand each other's expectations, then that's when disappointment later on occurs. Right? So, you know, if I have someone join my team and I don't do a good job of establishing what my expectations are for them, you know, what, hey, if they're going to do this job, like, what does great look like, what does mediocre look like, what does a bad job look like? If I don't do a good job of telling and establishing that, then later on, if they do something, then, yeah, maybe they're coming in and they have a very different picture of what success looks like for them and their role and we're going to encounter those frictions and tensions. But I think with all of these things, it's just really about having that clear communication up front. It's not, I don't ever want to sell someone, you know, just because I'm desperate for someone to join my team, like, tell them things that they want to hear that isn't actually matching reality, you know, to me, like, being able to hire a great employee is about, it's like, it's like dating. It's a matter of fit, you know, so, and the way that we make sure that's a good fit is like, is the thing that I need, you know, and what I, the job that I need this person to do and the expectations I have of that person, does that match what that person, person's expectations are and what they want for their career or their next role? And if it's a good fit, then it's going to work out. But if we are trying to represent.

Our expectations or our needs or wants in a way that's not actually true, then we're probably going to be. Then when we actually get to working together, we're going to have conflict.

Very helpful. Thank you. I agree on all fronts, and especially the one about not trying to trick anyone into a job and vice versa. You give great advice on the flip side of this question, which is you encourage team members. I'm kind of shying away from the word employee for some reason. Maybe that's very millennial of me. But you give advice to treat your manager as a coach. What do you mean by that?

Yeah, you know, the experience that I had, and I'm sure, you know, many of us have, is that, you know, you go through life, right? You go to school and you have this idea that your teachers and these people in the positions of authority are often handing out judgments. So you go and take a test, and then you get an A, you get a B, you get a C. You get something that tells you, was my work good enough? Right. And so I think it's actually quite common. I know I certainly went into the workplace with this mentality where I'm like, oh, my gosh, my manager is like that teacher where they look at how I'm doing and they tell me if I get an A or B or C, and if I'm failing, they fire me. And if I get lots of A's, then they promote me. And that's the relationship, right? So I need to impress this person, you know, I need to make sure that this person thinks that I'm awesome all the time, you know, and if I'm really struggling, then maybe I shouldn't tell this person, because then they might judge me to be less capable and I'm going to get a worse grade. And that was the relationship that I had. I realized over time, especially as I also became a manager, that that is not the most productive way to view that relationship. And in fact, if you think about it much more like a coach, your coach's job is to just help you be better or do your best, right. And to give you feedback and push you, but with the goal of helping you achieve your best performance. And that's a very different mentality than someone who's just judging you, right? Who's, like, putting on a scorecard, you know, are you. Are you an A or are you a B? And when you have that mentality of your manager as a coach, then you actually change a lot of your behaviors, you know, because the person who you believe has your back and who you believe is just helping you do your best. You want to tell them what your problems are. You know, you want to talk to them openly about, you know, your hopes and dreams. You want to admit to them, hey, you know, like, this is like something that's hard for me. Can we work on it together? You know, can you help me, you know, overcome this problem? And a coach is also, you know, it doesn't have to be someone who's like somehow way, way better than you at the thing that you're doing. And I always go back to, you know, if you look at our top elite athletes in the world, every single one of them has a coach. And you would not say that that coach is somehow better at the sport. Serena Williams coach is not better than her at tennis. But yet she is going to get value out of someone who is watching her, talking to her about her performance, giving her feedback, pushing her to do better. And we all need that and we can all benefit from someone.

Who is on our side helping us, us achieve our goals.

Yes, it reminds me of the book Trillion Dollar Coach that Jonathan Rosenberg and Eric Schmidt just came out with about Bill Campbell, the Notorious.

Yes, I just, I read that just a few weeks ago and loved it.

Yeah, it's really good. And one thing that stood out to me from that book was exactly as you're saying. Even the highest performing athletes and executives have a coach. And also Eric Schmidt describing his career Pivot. And he's of course at the top, top, top of his game, but, but still wanted a coach during a time of transition. And it's been surprising to me that one of the biggest requests I get or have gotten since Pivot came out in 2016 is within companies actually equipping managers with coaching skills to do, to improve at holding one on one career conversations. And so I love both sides of this coin. The advice to treat your manager as a coach, see them as on your side, increase that sense of transparency and vulnerability. And then also teaching managers how to listen and coach and not just feel. One thing I'm often telling managers is you don't have to solve every problem. You don't have to in a career conversation, try to fix everything or have to know every single resource and next step available to the person that actually there's so much value in listening deep, deeply listening and exploring what's important to this person in front of you. Then later, you guys together can work on what the resources or potential pilot projects might be, but also taking the pressure off of managers. That a coach doesn't mean you have all the answers, just as you're saying.

That's right. And I think the best coaches, you know, they. They don't. I mean, you know, and that's why I think it's, you know, I've worked with a coach, and that coach isn't necessarily, you know, she doesn't come from a design background. She doesn't necessarily come from a background of even knowing how to build products. But a lot of what is so valuable in our relationship is that she listens and she asks great questions that push me to think about problems in a new way. But that's. I think what a great coach does isn't, again, that you're giving the answer to that person. It's. You're helping them discover the answer for themselves. Because, you know, I guarantee you, like, having now worked with, you know, hundreds and thousands of people, it's. I'm like, I'm not going to be usually the one that solves your problem, but if I can help you solve your problem, you know, see problems in a new light, maybe reframe something or just figure something out for yourself that enables you to, you know, get to that next level that you want to get to, then that's my job, right? My job is to kind of help.

You get there, which is so much more empowering for the person as well, because it models, and this is something I'm always teaching too, it models that your team members have what it takes. They. They can solve problems. They do have these skills. Otherwise, if the manager is only ever giving advice, then it doesn't empower people to think I can solve my own problem. They just think, well, I better set up another meeting with you. You know, which is okay, too. But not. Not I. Not as ideal, I think, as empowering people to learn how you tackle problems, how you think through things.

So, listeners, you have to know that Julie's book arrived in this delightful box. I didn't. It was like book Christmas somehow, which is how I always feel when books arrive unprompted. We actually share the same publisher, but I had never seen it came in a box. There was the book, maybe a sticker. There was like a cartoon of the stork on the COVID It was just not remembering it exactly. But one of the parts of this box is this wonderful guide. It's clear this book was created by someone with a design background. And it's called how to Write a User guide to your management style. And in fact, we're going to give you a digital version. So if you want to see what this looks like as we talk about it, you can go to pivotmethod.com 1. That's where you'll get the show notes for this episode. And you can download this guide that Julie put together. But, Julie, I'd love for you to tell us a little bit about what's important about giving people a user guide to your management style and how can people do the same.

Yeah, I got this idea. I think I read an article some years ago when another manager kind of talked about this process, and I instantly was like, wow, that is such a great idea.

Because let's say you got a new vcr, you got a new microwave, you got a new mobile phone. Oftentimes it comes with an instruction manual that tells you how to operate this thing. Nowadays, there's less of that because it's built into the UI or the way that you experience the product as its own. But the idea that people need to understand how this works, what do the buttons do, and how do I actually have a relationship and. And interact successfully with this thing, that can apply to people, too. And the reason why I think it's so important, especially for people, is that all of us are wired differently. I have, because of my unique background and the experiences that I went through and my personality, I have things about the way that I communicate or what I tend to view success as or. Or what are the things that trigger me and totally ruin my day, or what are the environments that help me operate at my best. And that is likely different than what all those things are for you or for the next person. Because we are different people and we have different backgrounds and personalities. And so oftentimes when we think about misunderstandings between people, it isn't usually because, you know, even of like, okay, well, I'm black and you're white, and you know, we clearly disagree a lot of times. It's just we're not. We're speaking past each other, you know, where I'm talking about things in one way and you see the world in a different way, and we're, you know, we're not being able to kind of communicate and. Or Luba, you might be doing this thing that annoys me a lot, but, like, you're not aware that it annoys me because it's like, not actually that big of a deal, you know, for you or for the majority of other people out there. And so the idea of a User guide is to just actually get into, to kind of put all the things about you that are kind of uniquely you. What are the things that you get really excited about that maybe the average person doesn't? Or what are the things that you get peeved about that may not peeve the next person and to put them in a document that you can then share with the people that you work with. So I did this and I wrote it down. It's like a three page document where I wrote down, okay, what are my values? What do I consider success to be when we're looking at the team? What are the ways that gain my trust or lose my trust? Like behaviors or interactions that we could get to? What's maybe unique or different about my communication style? What are things that I'm working on? You know, what are the things that maybe are my pet peeves that annoy me more than they annoy the other, the next person? And I wrote this all down so that I can share it with the next person who joins my team. And then I encourage each person in my team to write their own version and give it to me so that I can read it and I can better understand them. It helps also open the door for us to be able to refer to these things. And I think the best user guides are the ones that aren't like. Because if I write something like, I like honesty, that's usually not that helpful because I think everyone in the world would probably write the same thing in their user guide. But if I write something like, one of the ways that loses my trust is if.

You blow me off a lot or you don't show up to meetings on time. You might not feel, feel that that's something that decreases trust for you. That's something that might be particular to me, but it's better for me to be open and vulnerable and kind of say it so that you know you can then tell me if so you can understand where I'm coming from. And you can also kind of check me if, like I'm coming to an incorrect assumption because of I'm reading too much into the little things.

I thought you did a great job in the book as well as the user guide to not being afraid to admit areas of your own development. So things you're working on for this exact reason that it's not just here are all my quirks so you can deal with them, but here's what I'm working on just so you know and you can help me with that. I thought it was really Nice. That give and take.

Thank you. Yeah, it's been so, you know, I actually, I just, I'm like really passionate about this idea and I hope it helps other people.

Yes. I love it. I know. I think everybody should have one. Again, listeners, you can go to pivotmethod.com to check out the great guide, the user guide to Julie's Zoo, in case you ever work with Julie. But otherwise to look at it and make your own. And it's very in line. I just, as I've been growing my business, did a workshop for momentum on 20 operating principles. How I think about what I do, because I realized I had certain operating philosophies that were very overt and then I had others that were hidden. They were almost operating in the background of how I made make decisions, how I deal with things. And then, and then sometimes there's an operating principle missing. You know, anywhere there's frustration or tension or friction in the business, it might be one of my principals needs an update. So this is a great follow up because I've even written job descriptions thinking about, well, who would I love to hire for this or who would we ideally want to add to the team? But I still never gave them a user guide to me, which is such a great idea. I just love it. I love that idea of even when you get a new phone. Now, I just got a new pair of headphones and they came with an app like a How to use these headphones app, which was very fancy.

Awesome. Well, as we start to wrap up, what I always like to leave listeners with one experiment they could try. It could be a piece of advice, but it could also be one thing to try. So maybe we could give two One, if you have a manager and you want to improve that relationship somehow, and then one practical or experimental thing that you would offer to managers that they can try out, in addition to, of course, writing a user guide to your management style.

So my general purpose advice for everyone in dealing with their managers is to try this one thing the next week. Ask yourself, do I really believe, do I think that my manager.

Knows at a very deep level where I want my career to go and what's important to me over the next one to three years and ask yourself that question. And if the answer is kind of or no, then go and have the conversation with your manager where you sit them down your next one on one or you send them an email. You say, hey, I'd love to share a little bit more about my aspirations and what I care about and where I want my career to go. And I want to tell you this so that we can work together. And hopefully you'll help me find opportunities or give me feedback so I can develop towards those aspirations. And I think this is so important because at the end of the day.

No one else can know what it is that we really want for ourselves. I don't think we should assume that our other people can guess or read or even if you've kind of said it in what you think are clear terms. I think it's just really important to make sure that our manager knows that at a deep level. And they only can know that if you tell them very, very explicitly. And I know that this can be hard because sometimes it's like, oh, my gosh, well, if I tell them that I really want their job or I really want to be the leader, but I'm so far from it right now, like, what are they gonna think of me? It can be like a very vulnerable act to actually express your hopes and dreams, but you also owe it to yourself to do it. Because if you don't tell them, how can they help you in the best way to get there? Right. How can you enlist them in being an advocate and a supporter and a good coach for you towards those goals? So that would be my one. Like, reflect on that question. Do I believe that my manager really, really understands my aspirations and my values and what I care about? And if not, find a way to tell them. Find a way so that they can understand it and so you can ask for their help, support, feedback and coaching together. And for managers, other than writing a user guide, I think my. My biggest piece of feedback for managers is to.

Reflect on where they want their team to be in six months, in one year and three years time is to go in, and I know you got 20 things to think about in your day to day just to keep the lights running and to deal with all that's on your plate right now. But we got to take the time. Time as well, to step back and to ask ourselves, what would make me super proud and excited about my team in six months time or in one year's time or in three years time, you know, what do we want? What do I want my team to be known for? What do I want my values to be? What kind of people do I want my team to kind of have? What are the characteristics? And to keep. To sort of sit down, write that down, and then refer to it month over month. Right. Because the more that we have that clear aspiration for the kind of team that we want to build, then that way it can serve as an anchor for all of the day to day decisions, whether it's a hiring decision or whether it's a process decision to get us closer to that ideal.

I love both of these pieces of advice for everybody, and this one specifically for managers especially, because hiring so often happens when something is bottlenecked or broken. Like, okay, now you, now something's hurting, we need to hire. But I love this idea of stepping back. And it's funny because the first Pivot stage, the most crucial stage, is setting a one year vision. But I've never really thought about doing it at this team level of setting the vision for the team as a whole, not just the output of the work. So I'm really thankful that you shared that.

That's.

That's perfect.

Perfect.

Next Steps Julie where can people find you if they want to learn more or keep in touch?

Yeah, so my book came out in March. It's called the Making of a Manager and it's been such an exciting journey to be able to talk about it and to engage in conversations about management. And you can find that basically everywhere books are sold. Amazon, Barnes and Noble, your local bookstore, and I am also online. You can find me on all of the various social media channels, on Twitter and on most social media channels. My handle is Uliej O U L E E and I tweet often, I share often on Instagram and through all of those channels. And finally, I have a blog. It is hosted on Medium and it is called the Year of the Looking Glass. And I'll periodically talk about articles and other things that are on my mind related to management or building products or technology. Finally, I also do have a mailing list and it's basically Q and A. So readers send in questions that they have about any of those topics and then once every few weeks I compile all the questions and send out an email that answers them.

Amazing. Thank you so much. And again, you can also get show notes for this episode with all of these links@pivotmethod.com 132 Julie thanks again so much for being here.

Thank you so much. This is awesome.

Likewise.

Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the Pivot podcast. Make sure you don't miss an episode or my insider tips and templates by signing up for Pivot List, a curated twice monthly newsletter where I share the inside scoop on what I'm reading, watching, listening to, and the latest tools. I'm geeking out on sign up@pivotmethod.com pivotlist get show notes from this episode at pivotmethod.com, podcast and connect with me on Twitter at Jenny Blake.

Remember, build first, then your courage will follow. Hasn't it always.