What makes for a good manager of a team? Below is a little framework I made to help answer this question, which I call: “a Good Manager C.A.R.E.S.”
Sometimes managers as a group get a bad reputation. Some people even wonder whether managers are needed at all since they don’t seem to do any of the “real work.” There are also plenty of bad managers who actually impede the people they manage. And there’s the pretty common phenomenon of a company having too many managers, which leads to frustration and inefficiency.
But good managers do a number of very important things, even though it isn’t always obvious what all of these things are. I think that even pretty well-established managers sometimes wonder what it would look like to do their jobs better (I know that I do).
To help you remember what it means for someone to be a good manager, just think to yourself that “a good manager C.A.R.E.S.” In short, a good manager cares about their team working effectively together as an interdependent unit (Cohesion), cares about achieving the mission of the overall organization (Aim), cares about the rules and regulations their team needs to follow (Requirements), cares about the individual efficacy of their team members (Effectiveness), and cares about the happiness of the people they manage (Satisfaction).
Below is the full framework.
(1) Cohesion – help the team to work constructively together as a cohesive unit so that all the important tasks get done.
More specifically, this may require a manager to do things such as:
• Source Staff – make sure the team has enough staff members and make sure that everyone is in an appropriate role in order to accomplish the team’s goals
• Source Skills – make sure the members of the team have the various skills needed to accomplish the team’s mission, or else call in external help from those with the requisite skills
• Enhance Efficiency – find ways to accelerate the productivity of the team as a whole
• Clarify Responsibilities – make sure team members take full responsibility for, and are clear on, their respective responsibilities that affect the team’s success, and avoid having multiple people believing they are in charge of the same thing
• Prevent Oversights – make sure that someone has taken responsibility for each important part of the work that the team needs to do so that nothing slips through the cracks
• Clarify Norms – encourage and clarify the setting of both work and communication norms to set expectations about behaviors (e.g., “What time are people expected to go home by?” or “Is it acceptable to call work colleagues on Sunday for work-related non-emergencies?”)
• Ensure Communication – ensure good communication so that those who have valuable information share it with those who can benefit from it and so that when someone needs information that someone else on the team may have, they can get it
• Avoid Duplication – prevent duplication of work, and make people aware of related work done within the team and elsewhere in the organization, so that team members know what others are doing and what has been done before that may be relevant to them
• Resolve Disagreements – identify problems between team members, and help them figure out a solution (e.g., interpersonal conflict or disagreements about what to do)
• Focus Team – make sure the team is on the same page about the team’s near-term goals so that the output of different team members is aimed in the same direction
• Set Processes – put in place team and individual processes that encourage productivity, good communication, and high-quality output
• Fill Holes – if important work suddenly can’t get done by your team (e.g., because someone got sick, or because of an emergency, or because someone quit, or because of a miscommunication, etc.), jump in and do the necessary work yourself, or find someone who can immediately step in
• Improve Processes – figure out how the existing work processes could be improved or made more efficient
• Promote Safety – help ensure that team members feel the psychological safety to be vulnerable and honest in front of each other, to put forth ideas that might turn out to be bad ideas, to ask questions that might come across as naive, to admit mistakes, etc.
• Set Deadlines – create non-arbitrary deadlines and timelines that help keep the whole team focused on efficiently achieving milestones together
(2) Aim – ensure that the team’s output moves the organization as a whole towards the organization’s overarching goals.
• Maintain Vision – make sure the team is producing work that targets the vision of the overall organization, and remind the team of the vision periodically when the team’s output drifts off course
• Set Goals – work with the team to set team level goals and milestones
• Make Plans – work with the team to form plans for how to efficiently achieve the team’s long-term goals
• Prioritize – help team members prioritize so that they are doing what is most useful for ultimately achieving the organization’s objectives
• Provide R.O.I. (return on investment) – make sure the team is producing a high “expected value” when it comes to the return on investment the team provides for the whole organization
• Promote Collaboration – make sure that the team cooperates with other teams in order to help other teams at the organization achieve their goals
• Decide – thoughtfully make critical decisions on behalf of the team about how a project should proceed, or help guide the team towards making their own well-informed decision (e.g., about which technology is best to use for a project)
(3) Requirements – make sure that the team doesn’t violate important legal, ethical, project and resource constraints.
• Follow Laws – make sure team members don’t break any laws
• Follow Rules – make sure team members don’t violate any important company policies
• Ensure Ethics – make sure team members don’t behave unethically
• Ensure Safety – make sure that work is carried out in a safe manner
• Handle Violations – intervene immediately if laws are broken, rules are broken, or unethical behavior occurs
• Get Resources – make sure that the team has the resources they need to succeed, for instance, by communicating with higher up management on behalf of the team
• Limit Resources – make sure the team doesn’t use more than its allotted resources (e.g., money or company equipment)
• Maintain Brand – Make sure the team doesn’t take actions that reflect badly on the company or organization’s image or brand; leave a positive impression on customers, journalists, and the public
• Avoid Toes – make sure the team doesn’t undermine or create conflict with other teams at the organization
• Fix Rules – if company-wide rules, organizational structure, or processes are preventing the team from working effectively, try to get that structure modified or the rules changed
(4) Effectiveness – help each individual team member be effective at carrying out their own independent work.
• Grow Skills – help team members figure out how to improve their skills
• Identify Weaknesses – make team members aware of their weaknesses in a way that doesn’t demotivate or offend them, and help them develop an effective strategy for improving
• Problem Solve – help team members problem solve any challenges that come up in their work and help them get unstuck if they aren’t sure what to do, can’t seem to get through a challenging problem, or can’t seem to make forward progress
• Track Performance – keep track of how each team member is performing, and if any team member is not performing sufficiently well, work with them to increase their performance; only fire them as a last resort
• Incentivize – incentivize good work, and disincentivize bad work
• Avoid Blocking – don’t slow down or delay the work of team members without good reason, and don’t keep team members waiting a long time for your feedback or help
• Give Feedback – give feedback on work, both as a way to help make that specific work output and as a way to help the team member improve similar work in the future
• Evaluate Quality – examine the work output of individual team members to evaluate what sort of work they are good at now (that they can do with little or no supervision), what requires supervision, what should be handed off to someone else who has stronger relevant skills, and what new work this person should be given
• Enhance Productivity – figuring out ways to help make team members more productive, whether through changes in the environment, the processes used, the equipment available, the team or communication structures, etc.
• Navigate Bureaucracy – help team members navigate the organization’s systems and bureaucracy to make sure they get the resources and information they need to do their job well
• Shield Team – protect the team from distractions and from low-value or unreasonable demands coming from above
• Encourage Risks – help team members feel comfortable in taking smart (i.e., high expected value and limited in magnitude) risks
• Establish Goals – make sure that each team member has relevant goals for their work that are specific, challenging, and attainable, and that these individual goals are moving the team as a whole towards its overarching goals
(5) Satisfaction – help ensure that the team members are happy and that they don’t want to quit.
• Motivate – help the team members stay excited about the work or feel meaning in it, remind them of the bigger picture of why their work matters (to others or to themselves), taking into account their individual motivations (e.g., learning, financial security, solving challenging problems, helping other team members succeed, improving the lives of customers, self-expression, etc.)
• Praise – Make sure to let team members know when they do a good job (e.g., giving at least 90% positive feedback and less than 10% critical feedback, since negative feedback tends to have a substantially stronger impact)
• Give Wins – Give the team regular wins, and the sense of completing goals, rather than a never-ending feeling of trudging forward
• Reduce Stress – Make sure that stress or anxiety caused by the work is not more than team members can handle
• Resolve Conflicts – Make sure to resolve conflict with and between team members as quickly as possible
• Build Trust – Help create trust with your team members (e.g., they should know that they can confide in you and that you are looking out for their interests)
• Communicate Care – make it clear to team members that part of your job is to make sure they are happy at work and that they should come to you if they are not
• Identify Burnout – identify when employees are struggling, and when it happens, show empathy, give support, and help them get back to a point where they aren’t burned out
• Improve Self – get robust (preferably anonymized) critical feedback about how you could be a better manager (e.g., by having both your team members and your boss fill out an anonymous survey with suggestions for how you can improve)
• Dissect Problems – when problems are occurring with a team member, make sure to get to a root understanding of what is actually happening so that you can develop an effective plan for resolving it (rather than developing inadequate solutions based just on what appears to be happening at a superficial level)
• Staying Professional – keep one’s own (and other people’s) appearance and actions professional, and avoid behaviors that might offend or upset others
• Contain Emotions – do not let one’s own negative emotions bleed into interactions with team members, for instance, by having one’s own anxiety stress out other team members or having one’s own irritability or bad day create a bad day for others
• Get Help – make sure that if you yourself are struggling to do your job well as a manager, or if you are burning out, you get the needed resources, rest, or help
• Get Buy-in – make sure the team is on board with the team’s overall goals and plan
• Identify Unhappiness – identify who is unhappy or thinking of quitting, and work to find ways to make them happier
• Develop – help team members grow into new roles and responsibilities, and give them opportunities and resources to improve their skills
• Avoid Micromanaging – help make sure that team members get their ideal level of autonomy, striking a balance between giving too little and too much guidance
• Give Credit – when a person or team does a great job, make sure they get credit and recognition for that
• Shield – shield team members from blame when they don’t deserve it or when it isn’t helpful for them to be blamed
• Communicate Upward – make sure higher-ups understand how the team’s work fits into helping the organization achieve its goals so that the value of the team is understood throughout the organization
• Set Norms – set positive norms for how team members treat each other (e.g., people being kind, respectful, helping each other, etc.)
• Communicate Impact – make sure the team is aware of the positive impact that their work has had on customers, other teams, and the organization as a whole
A SAILING METAPHOR
Here’s a sailing metaphor that I think helps make this C.A.R.E.S. categorization more intuitive.
Think of an organization as a squadron of sailboats. They are aiming to get to a particular place together, with each boat carrying a different essential cargo. The manager is the captain of one of these sailboats, and the manager’s team is the crew of that boat.
With this sailing metaphor in mind, here are the categories again, briefly:
Cohesion: this means making sure that the crew works together to raise the sails when the sails are needed. When rowing must be done, it means making sure the crew’s oar strokes are synchronized so that the boat goes as fast as possible. And it means making sure that every oar available in the boat is being rowed by someone.
Aim: this means the captain is making sure the boat is going in the same direction as all the other boats in the squadron. That way, the squadron as a whole can achieve its overall goal of getting to where it is going. This involves the captain communicating with their own crew, as well as with the captains of the other boats.
Requirements: this might mean, for example, making sure that the boat doesn’t go too close to protected coral reefs and making sure the boat doesn’t have more oars on it than it needs (that could be useful to use in other boats). It also might mean making sure that nobody smokes on the boat (which could be a safety hazard due to potential fire).
Effectiveness: this would mean making sure each individual team member is good at handling their particular duties on the boat, for instance, knowing how to tie strong knots and using proper form when rowing. And it means making sure that if an oar breaks, the team member it belonged to gets a new oar right away.
Satisfaction: this might involve reminding the team of the importance of the squadron’s overall mission and of their own boat’s critical role in that mission. And it means making sure that the crew is happy and that nobody wants to abandon ship.
Putting this all together: if the crew is working together cohesively, the boat is aimed in the right direction, the crew members don’t violate any important requirements, each crew member is doing their own job effectively, and everyone is satisfied enough to see the journey through, then the boat should succeed in doing its part to help the entire squadron get to where it’s going.
This essay was first written on October 22, 2019, and first appeared on this site on April 15, 2022.
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