Software companies get a lot of press for providing their employees with more freedom and autonomy than has traditionally been expected in the workplace. For example, perks like remote work and flexible hours have become standard fare. This shift in companies’ managerial stance towards employees has been driven by the recognition that tech workers are often intrinsically motivated by their work; they find their jobs compelling, creative, and intellectually engaging.

Leading teams of people like this requires a unique managerial approach, one that Julie Zhuo explains in her book The Making of a Manager. Zhuo‘a backstory is that she was hired as one of the first designers at Facebook and eventually became a senior executive overseeing a staff of hundreds. This book is based on her lessons learned on the job about how to lead a team of skilled, motivated people who are passionate about the work they do.

Zhuo believes that good work will naturally happen if you find skilled, motivated people, and put them in a supportive environment with a mission that they can get behind. The job of the manager in this context is to continually clarify desired outcomes, and give feedback to keep the team on course as they make forward progress. This philosophy is perfectly encapsulated by Zhuo’s quotation that “the best outcomes come from inspiring people to action, not telling them what to do.”

Although Zhuo doesn’t reference the theory in the book, most of her management methodology seems based on her implicit acceptance of a psychological theory called Self-Determination Theory. The gist of self-determination theory is that when people feel that they have control over their own lives, a sense of competence in what they do, and a connection to others, then they are more likely to be intrinsically motivated to work well and perform at their best. The Making of a Manager is largely about how to harness and guide that intrinsic motivation.

Creating Clarity on Desired Outcomes

Zhuo starts by defining the job of a manager as “getting better outcomes from a group of people working together.” Under that definition, the manager’s first task is to ensure that everyone on their team shares a common understanding of the outcome that they should aim for. To do this effectively, one should clearly outline the team’s objectives, the reasons why these objectives are important, the metrics to measure progress, and examples of different ways to achieve those objectives. Reasonable minds may differ on the relative importance of competing considerations, so it is up to the manager to explain which trade-offs need to be made and where the team may need to compromise on a less vital aspect of their work in order to spend more time on a more important aspect.

Zhuo emphasizes that it’s difficult to over-do it here in terms of frequency and level of detail. Desired outcomes should be explained in as much detail as possible to reduce the likelihood of misunderstanding, and they should be regularly reviewed and adjusted as work progresses in order to keep the team aligned.

Creating a Context Conducive to Giving Feedback

Zhuo’s main way to manage teams after setting outcomes is through giving feedback. For feedback to be effective, she suggests that there are a few pre-requisites that need to be in place.

The first pre-requisite is a growth mindset. This mindset is grounded in the belief that everyone is capable of self-improvement if they put in the effort. The defining characteristic of growth mindset is the tendency to frame setbacks or challenges as opportunities for learning and growth rather than indictments of our aptitude. This mindset makes it easier for people to accept feedback because they view it as a form of individualized consultation designed to help them up-level their performance, rather than as judgement from an adversary. Outwardly demonstrating growth mindset shows a receptivity to feedback which makes others feel more confident being candid with them.

The second pre-requisite is trust. Trust is needed so that the person receiving the feedback feels that the person giving the feedback is doing so to support them, and is “on their side”. To establish this culture of trust, Zhuo suggests that managers engage in self-disclosure, admit to their own mistakes and give empathy for other’s mistakes. For example, if someone on your team is making a certain kind of mistake, Zhuo suggests mentioning your own personal struggles with making that same kind of mistake. This approach triggers the social norm of reciprocity, making it more comfortable for others to open up about their shortcomings.

By demonstrating vulnerability and empathy, managers can signal to their team members that they are a coach and an ally, rather than an adversary who will judge them. If a person sees their manager as someone who is on their same team, then they will be more likely to proactively come to their manager for guidance.

Giving Feedback as the Team Progresses Towards Outcomes

According to Zhuo, the secret sauce for managing teams is giving feedback well. She says that every manager needs to master the art of giving feedback, because it’s the most direct and effective way to influence people to produce better outcomes.

Zhuo’s suggested system incorporates feedback about both an individual’s personal performance as well as a team’s collective performance. It also combines comments about performance on one-off tasks with comments about larger trends that emerge over time.

The most basic kind of feedback in the manager’s repertoire is called task-specific feedback. This is basically just making a comment about something that someone did, right after the person did it. Zhuo Recommends giving task-specific feedback very often, like small doses of constant coaching. Frequent feedback allows your team to always be aware of how you perceive them, so that they can continually fine-tune their performance. If you give positive feedback, then that helps people to learn what you appreciate and start doing more of it. If you give negative feedback, then that gives people the immediate opportunity to improve. In balancing positive and negative feedback, Zhuo suggests to air on the side of positivity because people are more motivated by praise than criticism.

Task-specific feedback should always be specific enough to guide the person’s future behavior. For example, you could comment on a sales report by saying something like: “The graph that overlaid last year’s sales volume onto this year’s made it really easy for everyone to grasp the trend that you were describing.” This would be better, more actionable feedback than saying “I love the way that you did such a great job on that report!”

After you’ve been giving task-specific feedback for a while, you can comment on patterns that have emerged. This is called “Behavioral Feedback”. The distinguishing characteristic of behavioral feedback in contrast to task-specific feedback is that it pertains to your overall perception of a person or group, not just a particular thing that they did.

For instance, you might say something like “I’ve noticed a pattern of many small errors in a lot of your deliverables, and I’m concerned that could make it seem like you are not detail-oriented.” Here, you are explaining how you’ve come to a broader conclusion about a person as a whole by referencing examples of task-specific feedback from the past. The emphasis though, is on your view of the person, not just the work that they’ve done. When giving behavioral feedback, Zhuo suggests getting opinions from the person’s co-workers, and putting those all together in order to more convincingly drive home that the perception you are going to communicate is broadly shared.

In addition to giving feedback to individuals about their personal contributions, it’s also worthwhile to give feedback to teams about their group dynamics and shared outcomes. This could be particularly useful if you want the team to change something but you aren’t ready to give prescriptive advice about exactly who should do exactly what. For example, you could bring up what seems like a gap in some part of the team’s process in order to suggest that they figure out a different way to work. Team feedback can be a useful way to get a team to independently figure out how to improve their shared outcomes so that you don’t need to micromanage intra-team dynamics.

Zhuo seems to suggest that this feedback system isn’t just a tool, but also an attitude that teams should adopt towards teamwork. Managers should try to cultivate a culture that embraces feedback, where everyone pro-actively seeks it out from their co-workers and managers, and they feel comfortable freely giving it, too. This approach promotes continuous improvement.

If reading this post made you feel more inclined to seek out feedback for yourself, Zhou’s advice on doing so is the following: “Remember that the key to getting great feedback is being specific about what you want to know and making it safe for the person to tell you her honest opinion.”

Personal Reflections

One interesting thing to note about the principles that Zhuo explains is that they really pertain more to leadership than management, which is to say that formal managerial authority isn’t really required in order to put them into action. Most of her ideas would be equally applicable in flat organizations, like a group of equal partners working together on a shared initiative. No matter what type of team we’re working on, we all need to participate in goal-setting exercises, and then periodically reflect on how we’re doing with our co-workers. I think Zhuo is correct in her idea that we can all work together more effectively if we open ourselves up to feedback rather than hiding from it.