Home / The Playbook / Year 1 / What Kind of Manager You Want to Be
Year 1 · Move 05

Decide what kind of manager you want to be known as.

By year one you have enough evidence to know what's actually you versus what you copied from someone else in the first few months. It's worth being deliberate about which parts you keep.

Early on, most new managers borrow a style wholesale, from their own best manager, from a book, from whoever they reported to right before this. That's a reasonable way to start with nothing else to go on. A year in, some of it fits and some of it doesn't, and continuing to run on autopilot is different from making an actual choice.

Ask a few people directly what they'd say about how you manage
Not "am I good", a specific pattern they'd actually name if asked.
Notice what you do under pressure versus when things are calm
That gap is often the truest signal of what you actually value, separate from what you say you value.
Keep what fits you, drop what you're doing out of habit
Keep the parts that are working because they're genuinely yours. Let go of the parts you're still doing only because someone else did them first.
Back to
Making It Yours: Year 1
All moves →