00:02:46
Chicago Camps: You’ve been mentoring and coaching folks who are getting into design management for the first time. There are bound to be some themes. Share the top resonating things you hear from new design managers.

Joie Chung: Most of my mentees right now are new managers or people who are about to become managers. I hear a lot of the same themes across my conversations.

The first thing that I hear is that people don’t know what they’re getting into. They ended up in the role without the expectations of what the role is — ideally you’d have that in place, but not everyone has that, most companies don’t — and so they don’t know what to do, their experience with management is from being a person that is managed, so they don’t actually understand all of the other parts of the role. There’s a lot of ambiguity, a lot of question marks, that links to a lot of imposter syndrome. Like, why am I in this role? Everyone will know that I don’t know what I’m doing, that type of thing.

And you still have that even when you do know what you’re doing — that’s probably the second most common thing I hear. People don’t know how to judge their success as a manager. They feel like they don’t know if they’re doing their job, they don’t know if they’re doing it well. It’s so much easier when you’re a senior IC, you know exactly if you’re doing the job well or not. You’re shipping design work, you look at the data or AB tests. It's a mindset shift from producing things to enabling a team, a company, all of those things.

00:04:16
Chicago Camps: Following up on that, what should a design manager do when they’re put into the role for the first time? They have no experience and there’s no training to help them and very little support from their organization.

Joie Chung: I feel like a lot of people have to figure out things on their own. You could probably figure it out yourself by trial and error, but one, a couple things that helped me. The first one is peer support group. You could join one that exists or pull one together. I think I personally was fortunate enough to have a peer group at HomeAway where we were all first-time design managers officially, and so we’re able to talk about the first times we ran into a challenge, how we handled it, what do we do, get advice from each other. That was really useful.

You can also seek mentorship from other design leaders out there. Get some peer support at, in different organizations like Chicago Camps, like mentoring sites like ADPList, where you can just go in and book with somebody who’s offering their time. It's actually pretty great.

I have a great list of books that I can share, but I think the main thing is you have to be able to learn well from books. Personally, it’s hard for me to digest books. So having a book club that you join is pretty helpful. You’re all reading the same book at the same time. You can read a couple chapters and discuss together, start applying to things you’ve learned.

I would recommend to reserve time at the end of every week to reflect. A lot of people, they’re just doing trial by fire and trying to figure things out, and it helps you to remember the pros and cons, wins and challenges if you just write them down at the end of each week. Get in the habit of reflecting.

And then another thing that you should write down is what you observed in other leaders. The ones that you admire, maybe ones that you had that were really great and ones that you had that were not great. It helps to dissect how they handled different situations. For example, this person was a great manager to me because X, Y, or Z, or a bad leader handled something terrible but write down how how you would’ve preferred that they handled things.

00:06:29
Chicago Camps: New managers may not realize that managing up, down and sideways are real things they need to do. What could a new manager expect to need to do when managing up and sideways in their organization?

Joie Chung: Most ICs understand that managers manage down, as the majority of their career has been from the perspective of being managed, so that’s probably the easiest thing for new managers to understand. "I’m gonna help my team, I’m gonna figure out ways to help them get their work done and moved on." But the way managing sideways and up helps you manage down is something that is pretty opaque before you get into it.

Another easy stretch is usually being able to work with your product and engineering leadership counterparts. You’ve worked with them as an IC, you understand how to work with those functions, so working with their leaders is an easy shift. They’re leading their team, you’re leading yours, now you work together to make sure that they cross-functionally can deliver the work.

Managing sideways towards other design managers if you have them, is a bit different. You’re thinking more about the design practice, the design organization, the design function, and you’re working with them as partners in how you lead your teams of designers. You have to make sure they know what you and your team are working on, and also know what they’re working on. You're identifying ways that you guys can collaborate, identifying projects to work together on, solving problems that apply to the whole organization, that type of thing.

And then managing further sideways, product marketing or analytics or content or marketing, brand, sales, all of those. It is important and you don’t really think about those until you become a manager. Alignment usually just happens and you don’t realize that someone needed to make sure those teams were all on the same page, they all know what your team is working on, and keep open communication both ways throughout.

Now moving on to managing up, that one is hard. That one’s something that everyone should be doing at all times no matter what level you are. But there’s whole books around it because it’s not super clear how to do it. And when I say managing up, it really just means your ability to influence upper leadership, understand their goals, their priorities, know how to advocate for your team. Know how to meet the goals and priorities. Get the things that your team needs. Stay informed on what’s going on. That’s something that you should do for yourself when you’re an IC, but now you’re doing it for your team, enabling them to work on the right things.

00:09:13
Chicago Camps: What are some of the biggest changes or challenges that can happen when a person transitions from being in a peer role to now supervising the same people they used to work side by side with?

Joie Chung: This happens really often because most people’s first job as a manager is a transition within the company, so it’s a promotion. Usually you don’t get your first manager job by a hire, so this is something that most people have to deal with.

The answer will depend on the relationship you already have with your peers. Were you someone they saw and respected? Were you already leading projects? Do they see you and respect you as a leader? Do they go to you for advice? Do they trust you to have their best interests in mind? The situation might be different with different people, so they’re gonna have to think about things differently.

If the answer is no to all those questions, you’re gonna have a lot of work to do. Gaining trust is really hard, and it’s even harder when people have seen you in a different capacity and they know you in a different way. Some may like it, like some people may be excited that their friend is now a manager, they may give them more grace.

But some might not like it. Like maybe they’re like, why is this dummy now my manager? (A real example I heard by the way.) Maybe they’ve seen them in a terrible light, right? In this case, you’re gonna have to do a lot of work there.

Figure out your specific circumstance with each individual, how they feel about it, and then figure out what their approach should be. If you're lucky and their answer was yes (to the questions above)… I think that one was my problem - the answer was yes. I think I didn’t have that big of an issue in transitioning personally, except for the fact that it took me a while to realize that things are just gonna be different.

I was like, "I’m just one of you." You, as a new design manager, you haven’t changed as a person – you just have a new role. You’re still this great person they had a relationship with, but you now have control over their raises and promotions, over whether they have a job, or whether they’re even happy at work or what projects they get to do. That’s not something you might think will affect your view of the relationship, but for the other person, it’s a big deal.

So you’re probably not gonna get invited to all the group texts anymore - I don’t know why that was such a big deal to me but it was. Things became different, but not different in a bad way. You just have to keep up your good relationship at work, talk about how you can keep a good relationship outside of work (if you have that). In Julie Zhou's "Making of a Manager" book, she talked a lot about that transition since she also dealt with it, and it really helped to validate my experience.

00:11:55
Chicago Camps: What should new managers keep in mind when managing employees performance?

Joie Chung: It depends on if your employees are great performers or not-great performers. The way you approach each is going to be different. The first thing to recognize as a new manager is that every employee is an individual. They all have a their own unique set of strengths and weaknesses or opportunities. They have their own needs and preferences to help them perform their best. The ways they take feedback effectively is different.

As you’re first starting each relationship, it’s important to learn as much as you can about them so that whenever you do need to talk about performance, you’re able to approach it in the right way, enable them to do well in their role. And whenever that fails, you’re able to pinpoint where and where did that happen.

They’re each at different stages in their roles and levels too. They may need a different approach in terms of how much direction and guidance they may need or how much you need to outline, how hands-off you could be.

00:13:00
Chicago Camps: How would you suggest supporting a strong performer who has a lot of growth potential?

Joie Chung: Strong performers are awesome. They get their work done. They have the initiative to see problems and find ways to solve them. They’re proactive about their own careers and skill growth. Your goal as a manager is to help them reach those goals, help them define milestones, give them the opportunities whenever you see them, we get access to a lot more information than you did before you became a manager.

So if you hear something big is coming up and someone wants to lead a big initiative, you find a way to connect that person to that role. Make sure you give them the right type of feedback to get them to where they wanna be.

I think what people do with strong performers, generally, is they just think that they’re good to go. "You can go do whatever you need, I’ll let you handle it all by yourself." But sometimes they actually need more guidance. They need help thinking about things from a bigger or different perspective, guidance co-creating a plan together or how to tackle certain situations.

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* Lightly edited the transcript above for clarity.