From People Manager to Team Advocate, and Everything in Between

There comes a time in every person’s career where they mature. From follower to leader, from contributor to decision maker, from mentee to mentor… and for managers, from managing people to managing a team.

This happened to me recently. I began to see a shift in how my team needed me to manage, which differed from what individuals needed from me. As my team expands, I remain (as I should) one person, with limited time. How can I continue supporting each person in a meaningful way? Similar to what any growing customer service team runs into, scaling your “services” from supporting one or two people to five or more people while maintaining the personalization of 1:1 communication is a hard balance to strike. And sadly, there are no chatbots to help us manage those relationships.

Managing these changes at the team level requires a big mindset shift — and with a few tips in mind, you can easily make the transition from a successful people manager to a strong advocate for your team.

Approach your team needs holistically

It might sound obvious, but you will get to a point where you have to start prioritizing your team’s needs over their individual needs. And that doesn’t mean you should completely abandon your routine or the attention you give to each person. But get organized and prioritize where you will spend your time.

Start by writing out a list of each person’s needs or challenges. Identify trends — are there any similarities between those needs? What skills are most urgent to address, for both the individual’s growth and the well-being and productivity of your entire team? Make sense of these by grouping them by dependency or impact. As a product marketer, I can’t help but compare this process to the art and science of prioritizing feature releases. Group by the impact. Then figure out how you want to address.

Is there a workshop you can host or a meeting you can set up with your team to start to address specific skills? If it makes sense, are there outside speakers you can bring in or LinkedIn learning sessions that you can introduce at the group level? This is how you start to grow your impact.

Scale back your 1:1s

This is my least favorite tactic but bear with me. Meeting regularly with each of your direct reports has huge benefits. But determining how often you are meeting is what will make all the difference. New hires, junior employees — or even specific personality types might require regular, weekly meetings. If you need to spend more time with one person over the other, acknowledge that, and be intentional with your time together. But this doesn’t need to be the case for more experienced or seasoned employees.

As a former teacher, I am always careful not to ignore the “top performers” — but in an effort to manage your time, focus on optimizing your conversations. Less is more. During your 1:1s, keep the conversation focused only on high-level topics and encourage them to work through tactical questions with their peers.

Additionally, find other ways to connect that don’t require a meeting. Ideas include: answer questions on a living document; collaborate on a running list of “what I need from you this week” and determine if an ad hoc meeting makes sense or if you can simply discuss over Slack. This might require some trial and error, and likely a custom solution for each person, but once you figure out what works, you might finally have a manageable calendar. And hopefully, that will leave you more time to address needs as they come up.

Shared goals equals shared success

This boils down to one important question: How should I track team progress? So far, my main focus has been tracking individual progress and growth– and while that should never change, collective goals are an important evolution. Creating shared goals will require a giant step back from the day to day, and an understanding of the bigger impact of your team. As a product marketer, we don’t have quotas or specific numbers to hit, so coming up with strategic goals that are shared across the team is a challenge.

One way to start is to centralize your team’s accomplishments and then determine the appropriate channel to share them on a specific cadence. Share these updates with your team, open it up to your manager or other key stakeholders — or just keep them to yourself.

Over time, you will likely discover patterns and set realistic expectations for how to meet specific goals. For example, you might notice that every week, your team answers at least 10 questions on a public channel related to the work you do. So your shared goal becomes as simple as “answer at least 10 questions within 1 hour every week.” That’s just the beginning. From there, you can create milestones, celebrate the wins, and motivate your team otherwise.

Lastly, determine your next step. What works for my team may not apply to your team, so at the very least, invest in a new mindset; understand how your team fits into the larger organization; and define what it means to be an advocate for them.

Like most, I wrote this blog post because I needed to read it. And I definitely don’t have all the answers, so if you have any feedback or suggestions, I’m anxious to hear more ideas!