Your Impact as a Manager

One of the mental changes we all have to make when we become managers is that we often lose the satisfaction and gratification of doing work that makes an immediate impact.

We don’t spend all our time shipping code, or designing features, or launching marketing campaigns, or presenting reports.  All things which tangibly delight customers and our colleagues.  Or if we still do, we’re doing it wrong. 

Instead we spend our time advising, coaching, coaxing, contextualizing, meeting, and coordinating.  

The impact of this - teams of happy, diverse employees delivering sustained high performance - is remarkable.  But that impact isn’t felt every day.  

Sometimes it can feel like you’re not having much impact at all. 

Now, you may be lucky enough to have management cheerleaders within your organisation who will remind you of the fact that your role is arguably the most important (and undervalued) at the company.  But it can be quite hard to articulate exactly why that’s the case.

It’s why we loved this framing from Joanna Miller, Lead of Organizational Effectiveness & Coaching at Asana about the significance of being a manager:

‘If you’re a people manager, your team’s friends and family have likely heard about you.’

It’s very simple but it does a wonderful job of signifying the impact that you have in the role.  Now, as Miller notes, this isn’t meant to be taken in a negative way - as if every mistake you make will be reported to your team’s loved ones.  It works both ways.  

You have the opportunity to help create a career and workplace which will dramatically impact someone’s life to the extent that they’ll tell those closest to them about what you’ve done for them.

Not many other colleagues get to say that.