Most first-time managers struggle with how to lead effectively. Fortunately, it can be learned. The Making of a Manager by Julie Zhuo provides practical insights for new and experienced managers looking to build strong teams and drive meaningful results—faster and with greater impact. In this free The Making of a Manager summary, we’ll outline the essentials of effective management—what it involves, common challenges, and best practices for leading a winning team.
Management is a Learnable Skill
Great managers aren’t born—they’re made. Management is a skill that anyone can learn and develop. In this book, Julie Zhuo offers practical management advice drawn from her first decade as a manager. She shares insights from her personal journey—starting with an unexpected promotion from designer to manager, all the way to leading a large team as Facebook’s Vice President of Product Design. The book outlines 10 key lessons for becoming an effective manager. In this summary, we’ll break down the insights on how to become the kind of manager your team needs.
Becoming An Effective Manager: 10 Lessons
Understand Your Role as a Manager
The crux of management is this: A manager’s ultimate role is to help team members accomplish better results together than on their own. That’s why great managers don’t try to do everything themselves—they focus on creating the right conditions to multiply the team’s current results and future collective outcome.
To maximize team success, great managers focus on 3 key levers:
- Purpose (“Why”): Align everyone around a clear, powerful vision.
- People (“Who”): Put the right people in the right roles and support their growth.
- Process (“How”): Establish the systems, values, and norms that guide decisions and actions.
If you’re still deciding whether a management role is right for you, remember that it’s not the only path forward. Most companies offer two main tracks: manager or individual contributor. Managers must wear many hats to help the team reach a goal, unlike an individual contributor who can usually focus on more specific roles or tasks (like coding or design).
Julie Zhou says that management isn’t for everyone. Choose the path that fits your strengths—and check out our full 19-page summary for 3 key questions to help you decide.
Transition Successfully Into the Role
Your first 3 months in a new managerial role are crucial. To transition smoothly, understand these 4 common routes to management:
- Apprentice: You’ve been promoted to support your manager in leading a growing team. Use your familiarity to identify what’s working, coach your direct reports, and start learning how to share feedback effectively.
- Successor: You’re taking over from a departing manager. Use this transition period to learn everything you can from your predecessor. At the same time, focus on playing to your own strengths—don’t just copy their leadership style.
- New Boss: You’re joining an existing team, either from within the company or from another organization. Spend your first 3 months understanding how the team work. Align with your own manager by clarifying expectations, sharing what’s going well, and identifying where you need support.
- Pioneer: You’re building a team to do what you used to do on your own. In this case, focus on hiring the right people based on immediate needs and what you need in a year, and set up clear processes so your team can succeed without being micromanaged.
Check out our full summary for deeper insights into each of these routes, common mistakes managers make, and strategies to help you succeed in your transition.
Manage a Small, Close-Knit Team
Most managers begin with a small team, where success depends on trust and strong, healthy relationships. As a manager, it’s your job to create a supportive environment and inspire people into action.
Get to know each team member’s career goals, interests, and challenges through regular one-on-one meetings (1-on-1s) with your direct reports. Ask thoughtful questions like, “What’s stopping you from reaching your ideal outcome?” These conversations are key to building strong relationships and driving alignment toward team goals.
Master The Art of Feedback
Giving effective, constructive feedback is one of the most powerful ways to improve performance. If a team member underperforms, ask yourself if you’ve set clear expectations and offered timely critical feedback.
There are four main types of feedback: clear expectations (before starting work), task-specific feedback, behavioral feedback and 360-degree feedback. When giving critical feedback, approach it with a sense of curiosity and a genuine desire to understand. Aim to give at least 50% positive feedback to reinforce good behaviors. It’s possible to give honest feedback that’s also genuine, specific and helpful.
In our full 19-page summary, we dive into detailed tips for handling all 4 types of feedback, including how to handle bad news and tough feedback.
Manage Yourself First
To lead others well, you must first understand and manage yourself. Focus on your strengths instead of trying to fix every weakness. Reflect by asking questions like: What 3 recurring positive feedback do I receive? What 3 recurring negative feedback do I get?
In our full summary, we provide a helpful list of questions and tips to better understand your strengths, weaknesses, triggers, and ideal work environments. You’ll learn how to manage stress and negative reactions, challenge your fears, and set boundaries so work pressure doesn’t spill into other areas of life. We also share how you can aim for continuous learning and personal growth, such as reflecting on your progress and career trajectory.
Run Effective Meetings
Poorly-run meetings are a major time-waster, while effective ones can boost collaboration and decision-making. For more effective and productive meetings, start by defining the critical outcome you want from the meeting. Structure each meeting around a primary purpose: Is it a decision-making meeting, information-sharing meeting, feedback meeting or team-bonding meeting?
Our full summary includes specific tips for each type of meeting above, how to prepare for more meaningful discussions and productive meetings, while reducing unnecessary meetings.
Hire Your Ideal Team
Even if your company has a recruiting team, it’s your job as the manager to bring in the right people for your team. We elaborate on the following elements in our full summary:
• Planning ahead (instead of hiring reactively) to get clear on the desired level of experience, key skills, qualities, etc.
• How to attract ideal candidates, assess candidates to find the perfect person for each role, run great interviews, and nurture long-term relationships with top candidates.
• Other strategies such as hiring for diversity and avoiding bad leadership hires (which have major rippling effects).
Turn Vision into Action and Results
To help the team achieve great results consistently, have a clear, concrete vision and develop effective processes to achieve your goals. Then, develop a viable game plan to achieve it.
A great strategy is useless if it isn’t executed well. Rather than get stuck in over-planning, focus on iterating your plans or strategies to improve and refine them. Debrief projects and experiences: What worked and what didn’t? What can you do differently next time? More tips in our full summary on executing strategy and balancing short-term goals and long-term vision.
Manage a Growing Team
What works for a team of 5 won’t work for a team of 50. As the team grows, shift from direct to indirect management, empowering others to take ownership, and learning when to step in vs step back.
The higher you go, the more important it is to master people management skills, like hiring, managing team dynamics, communicating and aligning people behind company objectives. Learn how to delegate, support accountability, and tell the difference between an average manager and a great one. Our full summary of The Making of a Manager addresses specific techniques to address these growing pains, and including how to shift from direct to indirect management, delegate effectively, empower others, hire at scale (with hundreds of employees), and help the entire team to play at a higher level.
Build a Strong and Positive Team Culture
Managers shape culture through the norms, decisions, and behaviors they reinforce every day. To build a positive team culture, you must get clear on your current team culture and ideal team culture, then deliberately bridge the gap.
Find out more about strategies to achieve that, e.g. how to make team values part of daily conversations, design rituals that reinforce company values, and nurture a growth mindset. For example, celebrate employees who embody team values or hold informal sessions that promote creativity and reinforce company values.
Getting the Most From The Making of a Manager
Ultimately, effective management is about building a team that’s greater than the sum of its parts. It goes beyond any single person or individual performance. And, effective management also requires effective leadership to align and inspire people toward unifying goals. The management journey never ends, since there’s always room to learn, adapt, and grow. By applying the insights in this summary, you’ll be able to become a better manager.
Whether you’re in a new management position or have prior management experience, the insights in this book can help you and your team to perform at a higher level. Check out detailed tips in our full book summary bundle that includes an infographic, 19-page text summary, and a 27-minute audio summary.
This book is clearly written, well-structured, and packed with practical advice, including real-world examples, the author’s personal experience, and even cartoons that make key lessons engaging and memorable. For more details, purchase the book here or visit www.juliezhuo.com.
Interested in honing your management and leadership skills? Check out these must-read free summaries to multiply team results and achieve desired outcomes!
- The Coaching Habit: Learn the key coaching questions to transform how you engage others, manage your relationships, and guide your employees or co-workers to solve problems and develop themselves.
- Multipliers: Understand how the best leaders amplify the capabilities of their team.
- Radical Candor: Master the art of giving direct feedback to your team while caring personally.
Who Should Read This Book
- Aspiring, first-time and experienced managers who want to develop their management skills, leadership skills, and grow their career.
- Human resource professional, leaders, and coaches who want to achieve team goals, enhance team effectiveness and performance.
- Leaders looking to build an amazing relationship with their teams while reinforcing team values and aligning with company values.
About the Author of The Making of a Manager
The Making of a Manager: What to Do When Everyone Looks to You is written by Julie Zhuo. She is a technology leader, entrepreneur, and former Vice President of Product Design at Facebook. She played a key role in scaling Facebook’s design team and shaping its user experience. Zhuo is the co-founder of Sundial, a company focused on building tools for better decision-making in organizations. She frequently writes and speaks about leadership, design, and the challenges of management, sharing insights on how to lead with clarity and impact.
The Making of a Manager Quotes
“A manager’s job is to get better outcomes from a group of people working together through influencing purpose, people, and process.”
“The best outcomes come from inspiring people to action, not telling them what to do.”
“The mark of a great coach is that others improve under your guidance.”
“An inspiring vision is bold. It doesn’t hedge. You know instantly whether you’ve hit it or not because it’s measurable.”
“Hiring is not a problem to be solved but an opportunity to build the future of your organization.”
“One of the smartest ways to multiply your team’s impact is to hire the best people and empower them to do more and more until you stretch the limits of their capabilities.”
“As your team grows in its size and abilities, so too must you grow to keep pace as its manager.”
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