READING IN PROGRESS

I didn't think a huge amount of the start of the book as it starts back at the beginning of a career with some advice that perhaps might have been useful as I started. But as it goes on there is more to the book and some good management ideas to incorporate.

Tips:

• Create new hire onboarding docs. Ask new hires to follow and update these docs during their onboarding.
• Ask new hires what motivates them, do they like public or private praise, how do they like 1-1s, to get a feel for how to manage them going forward.
• Ask new hire's what their impressions were after 90 days. They'll provide a semi external perspective that'll be useful for informing making positive changes.
• Often managers neglect 1-1s, doing so prevents you knowing when someone is becoming unmotivated and might look elsewhere at a bad time for you.
• Take and keep shared notes during 1-1s so you can review during performance reviews.
• Delegation isn't the same as removing responsibility. When you delegate you should still be involved in a project, just not micro manage. The difference is that with delegation you discuss with the project lead what the project lead needs to do, check in with them, but most importantly give them autonomy. If they need you to step in and take over (some aspects), that's ok but it should be mutually agreed / initiated by the existing project manager.
• When writing up performance reviews try to think of concrete examples for any point. If you don't have a concrete example, it could just be a bias.
• Performance reviews tend to skip the strengths. Don't neglect the strengths as you want to praise and reinforce positive behaviours.