Lead Kindly by Managing Your Energy
Welcome to the 7th edition of Lead Kindly! I’ve had multiple people reach out to give me feedback, thank you so much! It is a wonderful gift to get feedback, and it is a great reminder to pay it forward.
📚 Read This Week
Hard times are coming by
The book “The Hard Thing About Hard Things” is one of my favorite books about startups. In this article Orel summarized it well, along with some great lessons and takeaways! If you have an interest in startups or entrepreneurship, I recommend the book highly. However, if you are more interested in learning (instead of being entertained), then there are more learning-density rich books out there. This one is war stories from ground zero, definitely read the article instead and focus your time on books meant to teach you.
"Is Engineering Working Hard Enough?" by
My personal feed has been full of people talking about measuring engineering, or not measuring engineering, and the contradictions make my head spin. If one of your leaders, say the CEO, asks why your team isn’t productive, it might be natural to start measuring or trying to prove how they are productive. In this very short article Michael gives a better approach (imo). Give it a read and let me know what you think.
The Tech Lead's Playbook by
If you want to understand the tech lead role, or have someone who wants to level up their tech lead skills, this is an excellent primer. The tech lead role is going to vary from company to company, but most (if not all) of the material here should be helpful.
🎧 Listen This Week
Lessons in Action, Agency, and Purpose From Buying a Ghost Town [46 minutes] from AOM
A fascinating tale of buying an abandoned mining town and attempting to revitalize it. The new owner doesn’t have the skills or a massive war chest to burn through, but they still need to figure out how to make it work. This episode does a great job championing agency, the ability to say “I don’t know how to do this, but I’ll figure it out”. When engineers ask me how they will know they are ready to become managers, I tell them they won’t. At least that wasn’t my journey. I jumped into management having a stack of books I wanted to read, a ton of podcasts to listen to, and an actual list of managers I wanted to talk to before making the decision. Ultimately a great opportunity appeared and I took it, because I have this foolish notion that I’ll either figure it out or die trying.
🧠 Productivity Tip of the Week
Manage your energy not your time.
You’re going to do your best work when you’re energy is at its highest. Even for something like exercise, you’re going to get a better workout if your mental energy is high. If you’re exhausted and your head isn’t in it, you’re unlikely to be able to push yourself in the ways you need, and may want to just take an extra rest day instead of pumping iron.
We also don’t always need to do our best work. Reread that. You don’t need to give all tasks your 110%. Some emails need a quick one word reply, putting it off until you’re in peak mental and physical energy is not required and likely a waste. If I have a particularly grueling meeting, I take a break, and if I still don’t feel completely mentally there, I’ll process my email backlog. But if I finish a meeting and I have an hour and I’m peak mental energy, I won’t touch email, I’m going to hit my most impactful piece of work that does need high energy.
As a manager I live and die by my calendar, but if my energy is not there, I’m rescheduling the meeting (if possible). Likewise when I am managing my time, I’m also thinking about my energy. “I do have a 1 hour gap at the end of my day, but I have 6 hours of meetings, so I’m not going to be able to actually make time to work on this until tomorrow”.
One final note, 1:1s with direct reports are sacred. And because of this, I do recommend rescheduling them if you don’t have the mental energy reserves left to give it your best attention. If this is a rare event, you’re doing it because you actually want the 1:1 to be good (vs something you’d drift through), go ahead and reschedule. If it’s a common pattern to cancel or reschedule then that’s a problem, and you need to make sure your report knows their time is valuable. You may need to find a new time slot, or a new approach to the 1:1, but that’s another topic. In terms of energy, if you’re honest and your intentions are good then you should be okay.
💡 Quote of the Week
The quality of your relationships determines the quality of your life.
There are a lot of great topics we can pull from this quote. Today we will focus on your work network.
I have had team members join my team to later tell me that they left their team not because of any of the stated reasons (bigger/different challenges, “change of pace”, wanting to work with X technology, etc.), but because they were not compatible with their manager, and it was making them miserable. I didn’t learn this until I had earned considerable trust and the information was offered, but it’s really stuck with me that the relationship a person has with their boss is incredibly important for their work happiness. The famous quote and variations: “People don’t leave jobs, they leave bosses”.
Relationships with colleagues are also incredibly important. You don’t have to be friends with everyone, but if you can form a few strong connections it will make your work day more enjoyable. In a pinch these strong connections can turn into support, coaching, or an advocate. Knowing you have this can make the difference between a miserable and lonely job, and one you look forward to.
Likewise, your extended work network is super underrated when it comes to work satisfaction. The more I get to know other leaders and individual contributors across Yelp, the happier I am. When I need to get things done, it’s easier to make that happen across the company. When my team breaks something, there is more empathy and understanding. People will talk to me instead of making assumptions. They know my team will step up to fix the issue, and we’ll work hard to learn from the mistake.
Learning to manage up, across and down will help. Please share any good articles in the comments, here is a new article on managing up by
I came across while editing! :D📖 What I'm reading
I’ve finished reading Predictably Irrational. I will admit I liked it a lot more by the end. I poked through the sources at the end, and it was full of Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, who are the key pieces of the book I just read, Thinking, Fast and Slow. A lot of the learning in PI is repeats from Daniel and Amos’ work. Both are excellent, PI is a lot shorter and easier to read. Thinking, Fast and Slow is a textbook, so while I am glad I read it, it was a hard earned read.
I’ve started reading The Millionaire Fastlane. I’m very skeptical so far. It was recommended to me so I’ll give it an honest shot, but I’m 60 pages in at the time of writing and it’s repeating the same message over and over again without actually saying much of anything. We’ll see if it lives up to the hype!
🏋️♀️ What I'm working on
I’ve started going to the gym! I’ve never been before, but Cass brought me and showed me the ropes and now I have no gym anxiety. The first time was very scary and triggered my social anxiety pretty hard. Walking around with lots of strange machines, not knowing the social etiquette…my worst nightmare.
We’ve gone 7 times so far! My focus, similar to the newsletter, is to build a consistent habit. I am not trying to bench any particular weight or show off. My goal is to consistently go 3 times a week with real solid effort.
My favorite machine so far is the Hack Squat (sometimes called Hack Slide). We started with 90lbs, only to later learn the proper techniques and now I do it with 0lbs. Yes, zero. It’s insanely tough, and I will be at 0lbs for awhile, and I am okay with that!
📈 State of the Newsletter
We’re at 41 subscribers as of writing. If you want to see that number grow, please share it with a friend or a local knitting circle!
Loved the article :)
My only disagreement is with the 1:1s. In my opinion, it’s too easy for managers to fall into the trap of cancelling or moving them, even if not so often.
In my opinion, those are the only meetings where we need to suck it up, and be there for our employees. A lot of the time they are really waiting for those meetings.
Super post with a lot of learning packed, thanks for sharing.
I’ve been thinking a lot about meetings and how it’s important for a leader to carefully manage them. Leaders are also humans and go through personal ups and downs.
A lot of the times we have to hide all the stress and down, because a leader’s words have downstream impact.