Your teamâs culture is like its personality. It exists whether or not you think about it. If youâre not satisfied with how your team works togetherâmaybe the vibe feels hostile instead of helpful, maybe it takes a long time to get things done, or maybe thereâs constant dramaâitâs worth examining why this might be and what you can do about it.
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Running a team is hard because it ultimately boils down to people, and all of us are multifaceted and complex beings. Just like how there is no one way to go about being a person, there is no one way to go about managing a group of people.
And yet, working together in teams is how the world moves forward. We can create things far grander and more ambitious than anything we could have done alone. This is how battles are won, how innovation moves forward, how organizations succeed. This is how any remarkable achievement happens.
I believe this as deeply as I believe anything: Great managers are made, not born. It doesnât matter who you are. If you care enough to be reading this, then you care enough to be a great manager.
You can be the smartest, most well-liked, most hardworking manager in the world, but if your team has a long-standing reputation for mediocre outcomes, then unfortunately you canât objectively be considered a âgreatâ manager.
Time, however, always reveals the truth. The best employees donât tend to stick around for years and years under a boss who treats them poorly or whom they donât respect. And talented managers can typically turn around poor-performing teams if they are empowered to make changes.
As a manager, you are judged on your teamâs outcomes, so your job is to do whatever most helps them succeed. If your team is lacking key skills, then you need to spend your time training or hiring. If someone is creating problems for others, then you need to get him to stop. If people donât know what they should be doing, then you need to construct a plan. A lot of this work is unglamorous. But because itâs important, it must be done, and if nobody else does it, then it falls to you.
This is why adaptability is a key trait of great managers. As your team changesâwhether itâs goals shifting, people joining or leaving, or processes evolvingâwhat you do every day will also change.
There is power in rituals. Beyond slogans or speeches, they create actions around which team members can bond. And they can be as unique, quirky, and fun as your team.