Hitting pause on my design career made me level up and find my purpose as a manager

In 2021, I paused my design career to be a caretaker. What I didn’t anticipate was that my next job — outside of the design world — would give me management training that helped me level up as a designer, manager, and human person.

It’s no secret there’s a crisis in management — and remote work isn’t making it any easier. Managers, and the people that report to them, are stressed. Manager turnover has been identified as a big problem in organizations, as hiring is expensive and teams that lose good leaders often lose effectiveness.

For my part, I left design management to help my family. And my next role wasn’t in my plans, but it ended up being a big learning experience. In 2015, my wife and I started a business. In 2021, I took a role at our family business as operations director. What started out as helping the production studio get more organized turned into managing nearly the entire staff. My largest team to date had been seven. Our company had 20 employees during our peak holiday season. Seven to 20 is a big leap, and it wasn’t easy. A year has gone fast, and as I look back I realize just how much experience I received in a relatively short span of time.

So why was I able to learn so much in a short span of time?

• The needs of a large team forced me to learn
• A dedicated, 1:1 HR mentor helped me bring more professionalism to my practice of management
• I practiced giving hard feedback, daily
• Through trial and error, I learned more about employment law
• I created systems like quarterly reviews and goal setting
• I initiated performance improvement plans with employees
• I orchestrated exits — and learned from all of them
• I experienced ego death (kind of joking, ongoing)

I’ll break each one down — managers, if you are struggling, hopefully one, some or all of these can be helpful.

HR consultants

In past roles, I’ve worked with corporate HR teams. They always seemed to have more work than they could accomplish in their workday, bless them. I think because of that I tried to keep my requests to a minimum. With an HR consultant, I had no problem reaching out. This meant I had access to someone with 20+ years of corporate HR experience. She didn’t know it, but she was my 1:1 mentor for 2021. I would not have survived making the leap in team size without her guidance (thank you Cherylann).

Regular practice giving uncomfortable feedback

It’s too easy to avoid tough conversations. I did this avoid strategy semi-regularly for my first months. It’s not a good look. Letting issues fester makes you look weak, and the team notices. Also, the issue doesn’t get solved. With practice, I’m more able to give direct feedback.

Practice giving positive feedback on a 5:1 ratio

Part of what I learned was that you have to praise people out loud, and often. Through all the ups and downs, we had a core team that kept our business running. They cared, showed up, and put in the work. I try to let them know as much as possible. I praise specific instances when individuals went above and beyond. I do this publicly on Slack or at company all-hands meetings.

Understanding how employment law impacts your ability to manage

I learned that you have 90 days from the day an employee is hired to decide if they are working or not. The business prefers that you exit an employee within this time frame if such a thing needs to happen. I always let employees know how things are going, even if most of the answer is ‘not well’. They deserve a chance to learn and adjust. Some people turn it around. Most of those who struggle early on end up not being a good fit. And that’s OK. Another lesson I’ve learn is

Not every company fits every employee, and that’s OK

Seriously, it’s fine. If we can be adults about it, then everyone can get on with their lives.

Creating HR structure

Career matrixes, salary scales by role, quarterly reviews, quarterly goals, 360 surveys — these are the ways that you help people be happy.

We noticed a huge improvement in satisfaction after instituting the above practices. As people got more regular feedback, they had a better sense of their standing with the company. Scheduled compensation reviews helped employees build up evidence to ask for raises, and decreased politicking. With goals that were connected to the company goals, people felt like there was less ambiguity about what they were doing and why.

Nobody’s favorite: Performance improvement plans (PIP)

In a previous role, when I did my first performance improvement plan, I felt ill at ease. With no formal training, I was poorly equipped to handle everything that it entailed. My biggest mistake was showing that I was nervous. This meant the employee felt that the sanction was arbitrary, rather than based on observable reality.

For everyone that hasn’t done one, Performance improvement plans:

• Clearly identify issues and needed remedies
• Have an end-point (typically 30–45 days)
• Are designed to help struggling employees succeed
• The employee should get feedback on a near-daily basis
• So that the end result, stay or exit, isn’t a surprise
• Should allow the employee to maintain dignity
• Should be based on objective fact, not feeling

After a year of managing a large team, I am much more comfortable with the process.

The most important part is to care about the person on the other end. While it’s not easy as a manager, it’s infinitely more difficult as an employee. Keep the plan and any discussions or feedback private. Remember the employee deserves the same amount of respect as everyone else on the team. Have quiet confidence about what you are doing. Finding my purpose in managing (more on this below) helped me center myself for these kinds of discussions.

Exits

Exits are a part of doing business. Some people leave to pursue a larger vision — and some are asked to leave when they’d rather stay. I think the ‘next level’ of being a manager is having 95% of events feel mundane. Sometimes I’ve held people accountable to their job description, and they really, really did not like it. And they let me know in no uncertain terms. It sucks. But after a few exist like this (spread out over nearly two years), I’ve realized that this behavior reflects most on the person doing it. I still take it home, but I’m less surprised. I can compare the drama to other events, which makes it seem less big, somehow.

Letting go as an empath

If you’re an empath, management is a heavy adjustment. Some people don’t mind being rude to their manager. As an empath, you can take that energy home, and that’s a bad place to be. Then you’re talking about it at the dinner table, spinning on it at night, carrying that baggage into work. It might get easier. That’s the best advice I can give as an empath. It’ll happen a bunch, and the surprise and shock will wear off. Put it back where it belongs, on the person creating the behavior. That’s on them. Take it off like a coat when you get home, and hang it up. It’ll be there in the morning

Ego death

I continue to learn how to manage my ego. We all have an ego, this little voice in our head that’s a constant stream of judgments, competition, over-confidence, and more. You need your ego to help you take up space when needed. And to be an effective manager, you need to have your ego in check. Especially when it comes to being able to learn, you have to keep an open mind and be willing to admit faults. An over-active ego will make those things difficult. As a result, you won’t learn.

Learning on the job takes a long time…

I started learning about management during my design career. The problem is that it just takes time — eons in our fast-moving world. If you have one to three really good employees to manage, chances are that you won’t actually learn much about being a manager. I know looking back that I didn’t learn as much as I thought when my teams were small.

Managing a larger team was good for my management skills

When I paused my design career and started managing a large team is when I suddenly knew in my bones what it takes to be a skillful manager. Absorbing lots of emotional energy and letting it roll off (that’s my empath side speaking). Conducting a performance improvement plan that actually goes well, even if the employee ends up exiting. Giving rude employees grace, and hard boundaries if necessary. And remembering to praise the employees that show up day in and day out, do the work, and care deeply about their work and the individuals on their team.

Find your purpose: mine is to protect the core team

In the end, I realized that my highest duty as a manager was to protect the high performers on the team. They need structure, positive feedback, and stability — and they need to know that you’ll have their back even as you are put under what can feel like immense pressure. Whenever I got into the tough parts of the job — PIPs, awkward accountability conversations, and more — I remember that I am the shield that exists so the team of high-performing contributors can do their best work. I’ve come to understand the job of a manager as a higher calling.

Purpose

Ultimately, it’s the singularity of purpose that I’ve come to realize is my greatest and most lasting takeaway from this pause in my career. For me, the purpose of managing is to protect the team and to create the ideal conditions for extraordinary work. Having a purpose puts everything in a frame. Managing is less chaotic. I have a way of making decisions that’s simple and effective. Most of all, my purpose is the frame that contains the big emotions that can come up. They feel contained, safer, and therefore more …manageable.

If you haven’t managed people (and want to), I hope you get to take a journey as a manager, and I hope that your boss, or your company has the resources in place to make that transition a positive one.