Anonymous: When do you know you can become a manager?

[jasoncwarner]

Asked Anonymously

When do you know you can become a manager?

[jasoncwarner]

Can become a manager? There is no timeframe on this. Right now? Tomorrow? Yesterday?

No one will be ready per se. You can never be 100% prepared without ever having done the job. It's the unfortunate nature of doing the unknown.

But that is ok!

There are people who start companies at 20 who have no business running companies and yet there they are! And some have success. It's more the traits you need to be ready.

If you want to be a manager, my suggestions are:

1. invest in learning about project management, agile (scrum, XP, kanban, lean), people management and read radical candor. Really try to understand the root of all the learnings, NOT the exact things they talk about. Example being, all the Scrum rigor and ceremony is mostly useless....but their talk of feedback loops and planning-retrospectives cycles is great. Understand why and you can prosper and, more importantly, your team will thrive.

2. First line management is really hard. You have some authority, all the accountability and you are still learning on the job. I would start figuring out how you can "lead" your team via questions that lead to good outcomes....and learn how to "be managed" by your own boss in a way that keeps you sane. This will obviously be subjective to your personality and your own situation

3. watch others that you admire. Really learn from them and be introspective. Learn from failures. Why was Ballmer a failure at MSFT? Why did Jobs get fired from Apple? Why did it work a second time? Why is Elon both amazing and terrible at the leader job?