Mastering the Art of Managing

You’re a CEO now, but we all have to start somewhere. At some point in your career, you were a first-time manager. What were some of the biggest challenges you faced then? Do you remember? And how did you overcome them?

I think one of the most challenging parts of being an early manager is, at least for me, I was always managing people who could be my peers. You know, it’s just the nature of I started out as a lawyer, and the nature of lawyers managing lawyers, is people are experts in their own areas, and I was an expert in my area.
And sort of everyone’s deep in the tea and going very horizontal. It’s the insecurity of, how do you add value to someone who’s an expert and realizing, oh, my job isn’t actually to do their job better than them. My job is to bring them the information from my sort of horizontal view of the organization so they can do a better job. Oh, got it.
But that’s a learning journey to get to the realization that like, I don’t actually have to try to master these areas, and everything they need unblocked, that’s actually my job. So, if they can’t execute on something, I’m responsible for that. So, I think starting to understand that shift. For me, it happened organically. No one sort of explained to me, now, your job has changed from an individual contributor to a manager, but it became clear quickly that that’s how I could add value.