Doing vs. guiding

My work life the last few months have been marked by back to back Zoom calls. Weekly catch-up calls, 1:1s, strategy, planning, brainstorms… I feel like I’ve had ever type of meeting ever imagined.

I had a slowdown in my meetings the first few months of the year as I got to focus solely on launching a new product with just 1 other team member. Over the last few months though, I’ve slowly built my number of direct reports back up and now have more direct reports than ever before. With that, comes more meetings and calls.

I’m not necessarily complaining of course. Moving up the ladder and leading a team is part of progressing in most career paths and I’ve had a crash course in management over my last 4 years of time. It’s an experience you don’t get in any other place besides a startup.

The biggest change for most people that move into more of a managerial role at startup will be that transition where you are “doing” nearly everything to where you are now a manager and “guiding” people through the day.

When you move into that manager role, you need to gain leverage by using your team to accomplish much more than you would be able to. Focusing on doing everything will stunt your team’s development and lead you to a path of burnout as you look to both do and guide.

It was definitely a challenge for me as I was used to just plowing through my checklist at work as fast I could… in other words… get shit done. Taking multiple calls a day to guide my team to get shit done was a gigantic change of pace as I took a step back in almost all areas of the business.

All that said, there may be nothing more beautiful at a startup than a highly functioning team that works together to get shit done. It’s an investment that you need to make as a manager, but one that pays off many times your investment in the future.