Winter Break Resources: Reflecting on Your Leadership Style

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  Dana OshiroGeneral Partner
  Heavybit

We’re about to go into a period of downtime, or at the very least, a period of reduced meetings. Founders, managers, and aspiring managers have a chance to reflect on their team productivity, their relationships with individual colleagues, and their own management styles. This is a great time to dig deep and look into how you might better manage your team in 2019. Here are a few resources to help get you started.

Personal User Manual: The Personal User Manual has existed for 3-4 years now and while there are numerous videos and posts to help you build one, it’s beginning to gain more and more traction in companies like Slack, Etsy, and Netflix in the form of a Readme. The jist is this — if employees and colleagues expose their known weaknesses, strengths, and work-styles, they’ve got a better shot at clearly communicating with each other.

High Output Management: Intel’s former Chairman, the late Andy Grove, first published this book in 1983 and it’s still every bit as valuable as a management tool. In some ways I see this as the Prometheus Rising of business books. Grove peppers his writing with clever mind hacks forcing the reader to undertake specific calendaring exercises and question whether they’re focusing on intelligent and high-leverage activities. If you’re the type of founder that insists on doing everything yourself, read this book and recognize the folly of hustle porn.

Radical Candor: I would be remiss not to mention Kim Scott’s book and podcast. This is a must-read book those in executive and leadership positions simply for the fact that every growth stage CEO has listened to it on 4x during their [insert workout routine here]. Take this with a grain of salt as the reality is that while many believe they are “radically candid”, they definitely veer into some of the other leadership quadrants – ruinous empathy, obnoxious aggression, or, manipulative insincerity. In effect, first “know thyself” and then, read the book.

I’m just skimming the surface here, but these were some of the most talked-about management books and techniques I encountered in 2018. If you’ve got more suggestions, ping us @heavybit, and have a great holiday break.