| In no particular order: 1. Listen before you speak. The people you manage are prone to giving your opinion more weight than it deserves. 2. Give your subordinates problems, not solutions. People like to own a task, not to be told what to do; treating them like adults and professionals empowers them and brings out their potential. Besides, if one person only ever makes all the decisions, no decision can be better than that one person's knowledge. If you're afraid of delegation, institute a tight review loop to ensure that people don't go off-track. 3. You're a facilitator, not a doer. People will come to you with their problems, and you must be available at all times to help them through it. As someone else has pointed out, your productivity is secondary to that of the team. It's your job, among other things, to ensure that your team has a good working environment, including good tools, practices, and access to uninterrupted “flow” time. 4. Be aware of politics. The moment you manage a team, politics become a part of your daily job. This is not a bad thing—“politics” just means managing interpersonal relations; it becomes a bad thing when you ignore it. 5. Never be in a position to take. Success belongs to your teammates; failure is all yours. 6. Face problems head-on. People don't like confrontation, and let problems fester until it's too late to fix them. Instead, provide frequent one-on-one time with all your teammates, exhort them to confide in you, and show them that you're trustworthy. Also see #1. 7. Offer clarity. Explain what you expect others to do in a measurable way to make it possible for both you and your team to understand how well everyone is doing. You can use a method like OKR[0] to track your goals internally. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OKR |