I’ve coached and advised and listened to more managers than I can count over the years telling me a similar story about too many meetings, too many TPS reports, and too much…everything. My most common follow up is to ask how their team is doing, and they tell me that, “they’re fine, I guess, but I don’t have a lot of time for them”.

🚩🚩🚩

The problem is, as Michael Lopp described wonderfully in The Art of Leadership, is The New Manager Death Spiral.

As a new manager, you want to prove yourself, so you sign up for everything…This is the approach that worked well for you as an individual, so of course, it’ll work when you’re leading a team. This is where the Spiral begins…

You are used to having complete visibility and total ownership of your work because that is how it worked in your former individual contributor work life. You are instinctively reluctant to delegate your work because it represents an unfamiliar loss of power and context…

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