A collection of some of the things I’ve found most helpful for becoming a manager.

On 1:1s

Two things that are most immediately helpful, especially in answering the questions: what does a manager do? How do I run 1:1s?

@Geek_Manager gave a talk about what it means to be a manager [video]. I found it really helpful because I think we are much more aware of what bad managers do than what good managers do.

Meri refers to some coaching stuff and a way of running 1:1s. There’s more detail on that in this talk [video] – it’s about how to help people come to their own conclusions about what they are doing.

On Being a Manager

@Skamille wrote about about taking the manager track [blog post]. I found it super helpful in terms of coming to terms with the trade offs, and why one might choose one over the other.

@marcprecipice wrote this piece called “what do you make as a manager?” [blog post]. It’s something that I think about as I reconcile myself to coding not being the most important / impactful thing that I do.

@ellenchisa wrote something about giving feedback which I think is really helpful [blog post]. The key thing I took away from it is that you build a relationship where you can give people feedback.

On Avoiding Organisational Dysfunction

Slack [my review] – this was an illuminating book explained why things that seemed wrong to me were harmful.

Leadership and Self Deception [amazon] – this book made me fundamentally reconsider how humans interact with one another.

On Decision Making and Meetings

High Output Management [amazon] – I’m reading this right now, and the stuff on decision making and meetings and how to run them effectively is gold. The other thing that I am getting out of it is he takes a very broad view of what management is, and ties the skills from things that are less obviously being a people manager to having direct reports.