What advice do you have for new managers?

1. Establish connections with your team - a mutual shared understanding of individual values and drivers is important to building a cohesive team. The first step towards that comes from building connections by getting to know more about your team members.
2. Be empathetic but also efficient in delivering outcomes - don't shy away from giving feedback. I made this mistake early on. Timely, example driven and action focussed feedback can drive huge value for you and your team.
3. This might be trivial but do not discuss one of your direct's performance or potential with other directs even if they work more closely with you - a mistake surprisingly high numbers of new managers make.

Over time, learn to delegate and share the work and information as you see fit.

Managing a team can be , simultaneously, the most rewarding and most frustrating aspect of your career, hence choose wisely

For most, managing people becomes a forced transition in search for personal growth-> this is very dangerous, coz if you can't manage people (and people are idiosynchratic) than you and your reportees end up having a bad experience

The biggest trap new managers consistently fall into is relying on what got them where they are. As a new manager, you probably got promoted because you were a rockstar PM. One of my favorite parts of the (American) “The Office” is the 2-3 times they show Michael Scott go out on a sales call. Until you see that, your image of Michael is that of a completely incompetent, offensive and completely unqualified manager. But as a salesperson in the field he’s incredible. Clearly he got promoted due to his success as a salesperson into a job he’s not qualified for.

Managing people requires a completely different skillset than managing products. You will feel uncomfortable, and will be tempted to go back to what you know you’re good at – managing products. Resist that temptation at all costs. It’s disempowering to your team and you are robbing them of valuable experience to grow and learn. It’s going to be really frustrating seeing a report struggle to do something you know you could do perfectly with very little effort. But you need to help them grow and learn.

There’s a fine line between coaching and doing. Coach whenever possible.

Four areas are important to focus on for new managers:

1. Understand the Team: Just as you feel anxious about your role as a new manager, realize that your new team also feels anxious about reporting to you. They will want to ensure that you have context about their role and their work at the company, as well as their overall experience. It is worthwhile to invest the time to get to know them. Learn about their individual goals and objectives.

2. Understand Impact: As you interact with your manager and skip-level manager, learn about strategy and impactful outcomes that have been defined for the business in terms of customer and market success. This will allow you to put some context around business goals and your team's individual goals. If these are not aligned, it is important to know this sooner than later.

3. Understand Execution: Learn how does your team, and the broader cross-functional team, make forward progress on the strategy and goals. What is the roadmap and units of work that constitute execution on the strategy? How is this defined? Which stakeholders need to be bought in? How do we know we are making progress? How is this progress reported to senior leadership? Look for past material on this.

4. Understand Optics: What do other leaders in the company/business unit perceive your team's role to be? A lot of times the role of product management is not very well understood by other leaders. Don't assume this. What do other leaders and teams expect from your team? Is that consistent with your understanding? These conversations will give you insight on where you need to invest time in ensuring alignment for your team overall.