A few things got my through me first year as a manager of a remote team. Well, a few people, really.

My manager at the time was extremely supportive, and he trusted me to make my own mistakes (shout out to Morgan Collett). If there is one thing harder than managing a team well…it’s trusting someone else to manage a team well!

Here are a few things that worked for me:

Check your ego at the door

You’re not going to be the best engineer, or designer, or planner on the team. And that’s OK. That is not the job anymore.

The new job is to build a healthy successful team. And that is no easy feat.

Lead with trust

Like it or not, the people in your team are the the people in your team. You may have inherited the team, or even helped hiring some of them, but either way, they are there now.

So trust them. And let your team members know how much you value that trust. Show them how much you trust them by:

• praising (deservedly) often
• asking and not telling
• not jumping in and fixing every problem yourself
• not getting into the firing line for them all the time (but please do it sometimes!)
• not taking all the credit when things go well
• say please and thank you

Listen more, talk less

You might feel like you’re all of the sudden expected to say many things. That’s not necessarily the case. Yes, of course one of the main jobs of a manager is to disperse information (again and again and again), but you have to listen to everyone first.

You’re going to have ample opportunity to talk, but for now, use your 1:1 meetings to gather as much information about the team members as possible. Try to find (and set) the team’s rhythm.

Apologise easily and quickly

You’re going to make mistakes. Like any skill, it will take time to get better, and then good. It’s important that your team see that you’re human too, for better or worse. Never pass on an opportunity to apologise, it builds trust.

Read a lot and ask questions

The following people were especially influential in my journey, and I hope their material helps you too:

• Michael Lopp
• Ben Horowitz
• Andy Grove
• Jocko Willink

A warning

Make sure not to conflate manager and leader. You want to aim at the latter of those 2, while being called the former.

👋 Ruan – co-founder of Prescience