3 Tips For Better People Management

I talk to a lot of founders who believe hiring a full time employee is going to make their life easier or take work off their plate.

This is a fallacy.

Hiring somebody is always going to add work to our plate; or at the very least, change it around.

Because we're the boss.

We set the tone.

We're driving this thing.

The buck stops with us.

So if you hire somebody thinking they're going to take care of this work, and I don't have to think about it anymore, it's out of our hands, we just made our first mistake.

Even if it's a job you've done yourself and understand, managing someone to do that job is a totally different skill set than doing the job itself.

And we need to learn how to do it if we're going to be a successful CEO.

So there's a couple of baseline rules that can make managing people a lot easier.

Rule #1: Never Skip Your 1:1's

This tells your employee that you care.

This tells your employee you're not too busy for them.

Every human being on earth wants that.

The 1:1 is where you do your checking in and make sure that things are going well. And if we skip them, things go off the rails really quickly.

So you set the meeting, you set the agenda, you show up prepared to have the conversation. This will give them space to grow in their job.

Rule #2: Pursue Clarity

We have to dig clarity out of the ground!

Employees are people, and people have their own little problems. We have to make sure that what's inside of our brain gets to them, and vice versa.

We can never assume! That's where people get into really hot water really quickly.

So you need to make sure that your thoughts are clear and that they understand them and vice versa. You need to listen hard and make sure that what they're saying is getting through your skull.

That's the job of a people manager, to build clarity.

Rule #3: Evaluate On What's There, Not On What Could Be

I personally have spent a lot of time with employees saying, "Wll, they'll get it next time. They just need a little bit more coaching."

But eventually I came to realize: sometimes they won't.

Not everyone is cut out for every job.

We need to set really clear goals and milestones. We need to evaluate them honestly and objectively. And if we're missing them, we need to take action.

Luckily, if we're following rule number one and rule number two, that takes care of itself.

So remember, you're the boss.

Your job is always to be out ahead of your people, asking yourselves, "How do I make you amazing at your job? Where am I taking you?"