Managers: Build Community To Learn

Your best teachers are the ones who sit next to you.

The manager learning curve is steeper and your blast radius for messing up is larger. Mistakes are going to cause larger ripple effects, not just in your career, but others’, too. You get a limited number of direct reports at any one time, and most of your management training is usually the experience of having a manager yourself. If you’re lucky, your company has some formal training. To maximize your ability to learn how to manage better faster, you need to borrow experience from other managers. Tenured managers will tell you that learning from others’ is even more important now. Management can be lonely; you likely can’t talk to your reports like they’re still your teammates anymore. Your own support network needs to adapt.