Managers: Coping with your larger blast radius
The higher you go up in management, the greater your sphere of influence and responsibility. That also comes with a larger blast radius when things go wrong. As they say, the bigger they come, the harder they fall. You’re responsible for more people and that means the sine wave of management has a higher amplitude; the highs are higher and the lows are lower. It can help to prepare yourself (and your team) for those lows.
Maybe a project flops, a launch is delayed, or a decision from outside of your control knocks your team sideways and now they’re struggling to deliver. How do you get back up as a manager when a whole team is looking to you for leadership and guidance?
It’s important to remember that as a manager, you’re not on your own. You have a management team, too; peer managers and stakeholder managers can all help here. You have a leadership chain that’s supposed to look out for you, coach you, and help you course-correct. At the same time, a big part of your job is to also take risks, make calls on trade-offs, and find ways to innovate. That means sometimes you’re going to take the wrong risk, make the wrong call, or find a new way that doesn’t work. Even in the healthier environments, you might find blame coming your way.
Those times can sting. It’s easier to look back and see where things went wrong rather than in the moment. Your reports might not or cannot know all the information you were factoring in. I’ve been on both sides of it: angry at people above me and knowing I’ve let reports down below me. So how do you help them (and yourself) cope?
