Julie Zhou mentions in The Making of a Manager that a manager's job is to own the outcomes of the team, to "get better outcomes from a team of people working together"; and she continues to break it down by connecting this to Andy Grove's focus on educating team members (so they have the skills) and inspiring them and aligning the vision (so they have the motivation to work on what's crucial for the team). I think this touches on a critical aspect to team leadership: inspiration and alignment of the vision. That is, leading the 20% of projects that have 80% of value for the group, including the out-of-proportion solutions the team comes up with.

So how do we get there?

I think there are three somewhat counterintuitive principles that a good manager focuses on, from top to bottom, while staying trained on delighting customers and achieving oversized outcomes for the team:

• Be happy (or reset/find ways to be happy again so as to be willing to help)
• Have empathy (about people struggling, more than is “easy”)
• Spark excitement (about tackling technical challenges)

Be happy

The first one, being happy, is really important. Do you need to learn more about 3D modelling to pique your interest and have fun? Or solve a hard Sudoku challenge in a magazine with code? Do you need to recharge on the weekend by disconnecting? It is ironically extremely important that you maximize your personal happiness because every interaction you have from Monday through Friday touches on this level of happiness. You won't go the next mile and push yourself, managing upwards, downwards, sideways, inside, outside - whatever dimension you look at - you won’t be as effective in all interactions with other people unless you are happy. Leadership is highly correlated with maintaining a high level of personal resilience. Simply put: happiness is sustainable and allows for everything else in life to compound its value (as long as you and the team retain focus). While "hurt people hurt" people, the opposite is also true: happy people “happy” other people.

Do you have a therapist? If you're an outlier in society and you have no problems going on in your immediate family or circle of friends or how you perceive world news, then by all means talk to a therapist and continue to cultivate this amazing approach to life so that you can pass it on to others (honestly, write about it!). And if you're more normal, then a therapist and/or coach will help unblock some of the things that need more growth for you to be more effective. The question is simple: are you the happiest person in the world? Does your infectious happiness rub off on people like you’re in an up-beat musical number every time you enter the room? If not, a therapist can help you get a little better in this area. It's also super useful for outside of work too. And there will be times when outside of work gets you down. But the more techniques, outlets, and experiences you have with being resilient, the better you'll be no matter the challenge.

Finding robust ways to be happy even when life confronts you with serious challenges is how you unlock your ability to move up in an organization and take on more responsibility (how you tackle the stress of higher impact forces at play). Can you grow despite major life challenges thrown at you, three at a time in one week? You need serious resilience with happiness to be a solid leader through this and continue to compound your team’s value over time. And the higher up you manage, the stronger this needs to be.

Have empathy

It is very normal to have someone on your team who is having a challenge. And it’s normal to help them out a bit. And it’s normal at some point to maybe leave them hanging a little. Let them figure it out - oh it’s good for them. Let them try a little more.

Sometimes this approach works. But what process would work 100% of the time? How can we make it better and figure out the right rubric for effective delegation?

I’d say in general most people can dwell a little longer with the ambiguity they and their colleague are tackling. Can push themselves a little more about which skills their colleagues have, which experience and confidence they can share or pass on, and push themselves to a point where their colleague is enthusiastic about the handoff.

Another time, a colleague may seem less engaged. Having empathy involves checking your assumptions before proceeding. E.g., maybe they haven't responded to one of your messages and just posted a silly meme in one of your team's channels. Should you take this personally?

Well, there's two more principles I'd say that are most important in a corporation (a) always make those around you look good and (b) always assume positive intent. What if your report is just holding it together because a family member is going through something horrible? Or what if they themselves are facing an unexpected setback and this little meme they posted that seems like a distraction is their way of finding joy? Always assume everyone has an unrelated burden that they’re carrying that they don’t normally talk about. And remind yourself that many amazing, talented people are just barely holding it all together. Always assume people are doing their best, because the truth is being human is complicated and most people are dealing with more than your immediate context sees.

As a manager, also as Julie Zhuo mentions in her book, you have more power and influence with those who report to you - so at least proportional to this amount of power it is important to be empathetic (if you’re paid more, which is not always the case, but you may also have more resources than they do for tackling life’s challenges).

The important aspect is to push yourself past your initial prejudices about a person and “dwell with the ambiguity” while having empathy. This is, according to the poet John Keats, what makes humans great. Anyway, staying in that buffer, having that flexibility, helps with alignment and really understanding your team.

Spark excitement

“Sparking innovation,” which will lead to your team’s oversized outcomes, is easier said than done. However, since a prerequisite of "innovation" is "excitement," it's easier to start by focusing on "sparking excitement." If you can cultivate excitement via mechanisms or via habits with your team (this via experience becomes a manager’s “skill”), it will be what keeps your team going and turning the corner on innovation. The areas to spark excitement in should also work backwards from your team's goals and work forwards from your team's strengths and interests.

Sparking excitement involves finding the glint in a person’s eye. The goal is to search and search to find the moment a person becomes genuinely excited about a problem that the team is facing. The goal as manager is to become very good at being that spark. It can be by seeing connections and what really matters to your colleague, aligning their interests and the team's interests. You will know the "beat" of excitement when it happens. It's similar to that cinematic beat where a character is about to make a turn for the better (not to sound corny but a first violin starts strumming, things are about to accelerate, etc.).

The goal is to be a catalyst for that. This can involve longer-term cultivating processes like finding and educating your team on new areas. This can involve connecting them with other experts/SMEs or working groups or conferences or just random areas to explore and for them to go deep in the subject themselves. This can include leading by example and showing best practices, how you’ve learned to be more effective, how you approach analysis or trade offs, or distilled advice from relevant experiences. This can be working backwards from a serious customer problem and inspiring the team’s focus towards addressing it. This can be analyzing a technical design doc or product intake doc or team member promotion doc. This can involve pinpointing and unblocking a critical knot at the heart of it all. There’s a lot of ways to spark excitement. You’ll know it when you feel the beat.

This aspect is so critical that some fruit technology companies remain secretive for the spark among their employees, partners and customers when they debut new products or features. One spark can be one's most impactful act as a manager for the entire year.

And there is a natural order to these things. Maximizing empathy gets its wings from being truly happy. And sparking excitement gets its fire from deep empathy with the team.

EM Tip #3: start with taking time to be happy, then have empathy, and spark excitement.