The Modern Manager

Latest Episodes:

70: Why + How to Gather with Lindsey Caplan Sep 25, 2019

Show notes

Meetings are one of the essential tools that managers use to get work done. While meetings are prolific, they’re only a tool to accomplish some larger purpose. How we design, structure, and engage people in these gatherings is critical.

Lindsey Caplan has been gathering people for over 15 years - first to entertain, as a comedy writer in Hollywood, then to educate for companies like DreamWorks Animation and McKinsey, and now to transform as an organizational psychologist as the Head of Talent Development for successful Silicon Valley companies like Zendesk, Credit Karma, and Flexport. Lindsey helps companies drive organizational change by applying lessons in gathering from entertainment, education, and business and she is currently writing a book on “Gathering”.

Lindsey and I talk about the unique role of the manager, how to design gatherings to accomplish some purpose, how to engage people in the gathering process which generates better thinking, deeper buy in, and more.

Read the related blog article: Gatherings Should be Personal, Productive and Powerful

Join the Modern Manager community (www.mamieks.com/join) to get a chance to win a free coaching session with Lindsey. Become a member by Friday October 18, 2019 to be eligible.

If you work for a nonprofit or government agency, email me at mamie@mamieks.com for 20% off any membership level.

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KEY TAKEAWAYS:

A manager’s job is to move people from A to B: from under-performer to high-performer, from one level to another.
The unique aspect of a manager’s role is that we’re responsible for people more than products or services.
It’s not enough to gather people in a room and talk at them. We need to engage people if we want them to act, buy-in, share ideas, etc.
Gatherings can take many forms: meeting, workshop or learning session, town hall, etc.
There are four reasons to gather: (1) Compliance: ensure specific actions are taken, (2) Engagement: generate new thinking, buy-in, ongoing ownership, (3) Informing: ensure information is internalized, (4) Entertainment: bring about a sense of delight
We need to create safe spaces if we want people to engage. Managers should role model by sharing why they want to hear from each person, be explicit that they don’t have all the answers, connecting as humans by sharing auto-biographical information, and connecting the content to what matters to each participant.
It’s important to focus on creating the right conditions and worry less about creating good content. Let the group create the content.
Treat participants like adults. Invite them to engage, give them choices, and explain why you're asking these questions.

Resources:

ELI5: Explain Like I’m 5 podcast

KEEP UP WITH LINDSEY

website: www.lindseycaplan.com

twitter: https://twitter.com/lindsey_caplan

linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/lindseycaplan

mamie@mamieks.com

69: Center Yourself So You Can Lead Others with Dolores Hirschmann Sep 18, 2019

Show notes

We all have days when little things seem to bother us more than they should or when our emotions take over and we over-react. It’s hard to lead others when you’re feeling unsettled yourself. It’s even harder when you discover your life isn’t aligned with true purpose.

Dolores Hirschmann is an internationally recognized strategist, Clarity Coach, TEDx Organizer, speaker, and author. She has over 20 years experience helping entrepreneurs and business owners realize their potential by guiding them to CLARITY so they can reach their next level of growth.

Dolores and I talk about how you need to take care of yourself in order to lead others, and how to deal with your own and other’s emotions when things are feeling out of whack. We also talk about finding your life’s purpose and how that informs your leadership.

Read the related blog article: Living and Leading from the Inside Out.

Join the Modern Manager community (www.mamieks.com/join) to get the ebook version of Stand Out The TED Way: Be Seen & Grow Your Business for free. This book will help you understand what is behind the work you do in order to communicate your message from a place of higher vision, purpose, and passion and thus engage with your ideal client and grow your business.

If you work for a nonprofit or government agency, email me at mamie@mamieks.com for 20% off any membership level.

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KEY TAKEAWAYS:

When you’re feeling chaotic on the inside, everything on the outside is amplified. That’s when one drop overflows the glass.
It’s critical to have healthy self-care and self-management to avoid overloading our own capacity to deal with the world around us.
When you find yourself overwhelmed or overreacting, start with self awareness. Notice your own behavior and feelings. From that awareness, you can then decide how to act.
It’s hard to recognize it on our own so it’s helpful to have a trusted ally who can help you recognize when you’re not functioning at your best.
If you notice this in others, be diplomatic and careful not to aggravate the situation or them by pointing out their emotions. Instead, try distracting or redirect them by offering to take a break or go for a walk and talk.
Who we are is composed of layers of values, dreams, passions, habits and more. Figuring out your own essence, what matters to you, can help you design a life that fills you rather than drains you.
Focusing on the tiny actions we do every day can have a transformative effect because life is really a series of moments and behaviors strung together.
Your life’s purpose is bigger than any job. It’s what fills you up, gives you meaning, and when you’re taking action aligned with your purpose, it feels like time stops.
You can’t find your flow or your purpose by changing the world around you. If you’re not settled on the inside, no amount of outside change can fix that. It starts by clarifying your purpose on the inside and then designing the outside accordingly.

KEEP UP WITH DOLORES

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dolores-hirschmann-28620b28/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Doloreshirschmann/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/DglarH
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbc8sZ8Qs-IdmgH1CbHmXWA
Website: http://mastersinclarity.com

mamie@mamieks.com

68: Quickly Integrate a New Team Member Sep 11, 2019

Show notes

It’s hard to get into a collaboration groove when a team’s composition is in flux. Establishing solid relationships is critical to generating trust and a sense of good will. Any time there is a change to the team’s membership, there are emotions at play - hopes and fears about what this new person will bring.

In this episode, I walk through the approach I use with teams to help a new colleague–whether a team member or team leader–and the existing team quickly integrate and orient to one another.

The full episode guide includes sample agendas, ice breaker and story-telling activities, and leadership assimilation questions to help your team integrate a new colleague. Get it when you join the Modern Manager community or purchase the full guide atwww.mamieks.com/store.

Get the free mini-guide at www.mamieks.com/miniguides.

Subscribe to my newsletter to get episodes, articles and free mini-guides delivered to your inbox.

Read the related blog article: Building Cohesion When Team Composition Changes

Key Takeaways:

Anytime a new person joins a team, the team experiences a moment of change which comes with fears and hopes.
According to Bruce Tuckman, teams go through stages of evolution: (1) Forming, (2) Storming, (3) Norming, (4) Performing, (5) Mourning -- it’s cyclical.
To integrate a new team leader, hold a Leadership Assimilation meeting in which the the leader and the team answer questions and discuss the responses with the goal of getting clarity and alignment on a variety of topics of importance. This sets a solid foundation for additional conversations.
The Leadership Assimilation questions focus on what’s important to the team and what’s important to the leader such as: What makes this team unique or special? What’s working well that this team doesn’t want to change? What are the new leader’s hot buttons?
When a new team member joins, the goal is to establish bonds amongst the team members and help the new person understand the team’s culture. In this meeting, the team can engage in a fun and educational ice breaker such as Two Truths and a Lie, and tell it’s team story: Who are we as a team? What are we proud of? What’s important to us?
By intentionally addressing these types of questions, a team can move more quickly from feelings of uncertainty to a position of confidence.

Additional Resources:

The Productivityist Podcast - episode 167: Meetings and Momentum with Mamie Kanfer Stewart
The Productivityist Podcast - episode 227: Why You Need Atomic Habits with James Clear
Forming-Storming-Norming-Performing-Mourning model

mamie@mamieks.com

67: Managing with Moral Leadership with Emily Miner Sep 04, 2019

Show notes

Are you living your values every day? It’s not always easy to do what’s right, to recognize your own biases and mistakes, to put people before profits. But these are things that moral leaders do. And the more you do them, the easier they become for yourself and for others who follow you. That’s moral leadership.

Emily Miner leads LRN’s Ethics & Compliance Advisory practice. She helps organizations understand their company culture to inspire ethical behavior using an approach that is co-creative, bottom-up, and data-driven. In addition to leading engagements with organizations in the healthcare, technology, and manufacturing industries, Emily contributes to major research studies and thought leadership.

Emily and I talk about moral leadership, what it is, why it’s so important right now, and what the characteristics of moral leaders are and how they show up in managers.

Read the related blog article: Use your Moral Compass to be a Better Leader

Join the Modern Manager community (www.mamieks.com/join) to get LRN’s The State of Moral Leadership in Business 2019 Report. Note this is available for free to the public because LRN believes in access to knowledge. If you’re a member of the Modern Manager community, it’s available for download on the guest bonus page.

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KEY TAKEAWAYS:

In every group setting, we have formal leaders with a specific title or expertise, and those with moral authority who are animated by values and inspire others.
Formal authority is important but no longer adequate. The world is changing so that profits and shareholders cannot be the primary criteria for business decisions. Globally, employees and consumers are beginning to demand business leaders make choices aligned with their values, not only finances.
Moral leadership is needed at all levels of an organization. It starts with role modeling. When employees see their managers demonstrate characteristics of moral leadership, they are more likely to demonstrate those characteristics too.
For managers, moral leadership means thinking “what’s the right thing to do here,” putting my organization’s purpose above my own individual interests, thinking beyond my team and connecting dots across the organization.
There are seven main capacities of moral leadership. The two with the most outsized impact are (1) the ability to see people as people, not as a resource to get the job done, (2) the ability to hold really high ethical standards and pursue what is right, not what is needed right now.
The remaining capacities are: (1) Starting with a pause and reflecting, (2) fostering freedom to do the work in new/creative ways, (3) demonstrating humility, (4) acting with courage, (5) seeking the truth.
Try exercising your moral muscles by asking yourself the tough questions of what’s right and wrong, what’s fair, where are my blind spots and biases, am I living my values?

KEEP UP WITH EMILY

Website: https://lrn.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/emily-miner-6951b414/

RESOURCES

LRN report: The State of Moral Leadership in Business 2019

66: Putting People First with Shannon Adkins Aug 28, 2019

Show notes

People and businesses are complex. In order for one to thrive, so must the other. Easier said than done.

This is Shannon Adkins world. She lives it and helps others figure out ways to run a business that works for its employees and wins in the market.

Shannon is a thought leader and CEO at Future State, a woman-owned, employee-owned consulting company with a triple bottom line where people get to be themselves. After years of working for startups, tech companies, and in corporate America, getting her MBA, and starting a family, Shannon decided she wanted to work somewhere where she could be fully expressed as a mom, a volunteer, and a badass business woman. So she went back to Future State, where they bring value to their clients by understanding the journey they are on throughout their transformation.

Shannon and I talk about how she’s built Future State to embrace people’s full lives and selves, how you can apply some of those ideas to your team, what feminine leadership is, and what happens when you create a personal mission statement to guide your life.

Join the Modern Manager community (www.mamieks.com/join) to get Future State’s 21st Century Leadership eBook which includes a set of common attributes that when combined make people especially adept at leading teams through this time of change. The eBook provides a self-assessment tool and recommendations to further evolve your skills, and ready your organization for inevitable change. AND I’ve also included the template I use with teams to create the professional profile to help you learn about your team members strengths, desires, and interests.

Subscribe to my newsletter to get episodes, articles and mini-guides delivered to your inbox.

KEY TAKEAWAYS:

Just because someone hasn’t done something before, doesn’t mean they’re not interested in or capable of doing it. It’s a manager’s job to understand how their people want to grow and find opportunities to stretch them.
Business is in a constant state of change. In order to compete effectively in the marketplace and for talent, organizations must put people at the center. There is an inextricable link between employee flourishing and business success.
Employees want meaning - to see how the business is making a contribution to the world beyond stakeholder value.
Employees want to be their whole selves - to have the option to leave work early to attend a child’s performance, to share their unique perspective.
Viewing your employees as whole people starts during the hiring process and continue throughout their time with you. Share what you learn about the person with others in your organization to help the new team member integrate quickly.
Use what you learn about your team member’s aspirations and interests to give them new assignments and growth opportunities.
Feminine leadership styles are becoming more accepted in the workplace - putting humans at the center, emphasizing empathy. We see it in the shift to encouraging listening rather than telling, flat structures rather than hierarchy, experimentation rather than perfection.
As a manager or leader, you need your own life’s mission to help guide you personally. When you know who you are, what matters to you, and how you want to show up every day, you are better equipped to lead others.

KEEP UP WITH SHANNON

Website: http://www.futurestate.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shannonadkins/

FaceBook: https://www.facebook.com/futurestateinc/

RESOURCES

Landmark Education

Read to Lead Podcast - Episode 184: Alan Alda on the Art and Science of Relating and Communicating

65: The 32-Hour Work Week with Natalie Nagele Aug 21, 2019

Show notes

Working 60, 70, 80+ hours in America has become the norm for too many teams. Yet it seems impossible to get everything done in only 40 hours.

Not for the employees of Wildbit. This week’s guest shifted her organization to a 32-hour, 4-day work week. Over a year into it, they’re seeing more positive results than they could have imagined.

Natalie Nagele is the co-founder and CEO of Wildbit, the company behind Postmark, Beanstalk and Conveyor. With 29 team members across 5 countries working on multi-million dollar products for developers, she’s proving that you can grow an extremely profitable business while focusing on shorter work days, an enjoyable work-from-anywhere environment, and staying small.

Natalie and I talk about why her company moved to a 4 day, 32 hour work week. She shares how she introduced it and managed the transition, the surprising impact it had on the people and the company, and how you might translate this practice if you work in a larger organization.

Read the related blog article: Make a 32-hour Work Week Work For Your Team

Join the Modern Manager community (www.mamieks.com/join) to get Natalie’s overview of the 4-day work week which includes a description of their paid time off plan.

Subscribe to my newsletter to get episodes, articles and mini-guides delivered to your inbox.

KEY TAKEAWAYS:

We started with only working 40 hours per week and truly limiting our hours on weekends and evenings before moving to a 32 hour work week.
Agree on a hypothesis about the impact or why you’re making the shift to a shorter work week e.g. We believe we can accomplish the same amount of work with greater focus and increase the quality of work by having more time to rejuvinate outside of work.
To make this work, you need to be extremely intentional about what work to do and how to do it. You need to change the mindset, processes, and priorities, not simply cut hours.
Experiment with changing your communication methods. Cancel all standing meetings to see which ones you really need. Turn off Slack for 1 week or have everyone turn off all notifications to see how it enables people to focus better.
Position the shift as an experiment which you can measure. Check in on it weekly - how people are feeling, what might need to shift, etc.
After 1 year of the 32 hour work week, Natalie’s team had increased the quality and quantity of their work!
4 days isn’t the answer for every team or every person. It could be 6 days of 5 hours of work per day.
For knowledge workers, especially, it’s a managers job to help identify what a reasonable amount of high value work looks like so that we can move away from “hours in the office” as a sign of productivity.
For larger corporations where you can’t change the workweek structure, look for opportunities to create flexibility in the work week by having each person deliver a specific set of tasks or value - if I get XYZ done, it’s been a solid week and you can go home early.

KEEP UP WITH NATALIE

Website: https://wildbit.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/natalie-nagele-b9aa42/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/natalienagele

64: Establishing Team Email Practices Aug 13, 2019

Show notes

For many teams, email is the primary form of staying connected, making it critically important but also a major point of stress.

Logistically, the most obvious way to make email more manageable is to just have fewer emails coming in. But in reality, this might actually be the hardest thing to make happen because we’re not totally in control of how many emails we receive every day.

But, there are a number of things you can do with regards to how email is used amongst your team members and therefore strongly influence how many emails you get and send every day. In this episode, I discuss four principles and related tactics for more effective team email along with how to introduce them to your team.

This is part two of a two part series on email management. This episode tackles team email practices. Part one, episode 60, covered individual email management practices.

The full episode guide includes sample agendas and activities to help your team redesign its email practices. Get it when you join the Modern Manager community or purchase the full guide at www.mamieks.com/store.

Get the free mini-guide at www.mamieks.com/miniguides.

Subscribe to my newsletter to get episodes, articles and free mini-guides delivered to your inbox.

Read the related blog article: How to Establish Effective Team Email Practices.

Key Takeaways:

Aligning your team’s email practices is one way to reduce the quantity of emails you receive while enhancing the flow of communication.
Email is just one tool in your team’s communication toolbox. Clarify how to use email vs chat, meetings, your team collaboration software (e.g. Asana, Basecamp), a document, text message, etc.
Email is generally well suited for a limited number of activities such as one-way information sharing, communicating with external stakeholders, multiple choice questions, gauging whether a meeting is needed.
Crafting thoughtful emails may take a few extra minutes but will reduce the back-and-forth, saving time and energy in the long run.
Consider how your team uses email subject lines. Standardizing subject lines to include a bracketed term followed by a headline makes it easier for the recipient e.g. [ACTION] Your input needed on Monday’s client meeting agenda
If assigning tasks or making a request, be as precise as possible for the 3 Ws: who is responsible, what do they need to do, when does it need to be done by.
Explore how your team might structure email content or use formatting consistently to draw attention to important information.
Establish explicit norms for email such as how and when to use niceties such as the “thank you” response, what a reasonable response time is for regular and urgent emails, whether email should be read/responded to outside of work hours, etc.
There are not right or wrong ways to design team email practices. Engage your team in this process to decide what make the most sense for your team’s situation.

Additional Resources:

mamie@mamieks.com

63: Creating a Team Playbook with Millie Blackwell Aug 07, 2019

Show notes

Employee handbooks are typically filled with procedural information, legal requirements and company policies. They provide an important function, but aren’t typically fun to read. Nor do they incorporate concepts for how the team will work together to build a positive environment in which people thrive and great work gets done.

Building off the idea of an employee handbook, this week’s guest created a Team Playbook which clarifies how the team will collaborate in a playful yet articulate manner.

Millie Blackwell is the CEO and Co-Founder of Showcase Workshop, a digital toolkit for sales representatives that contains presentation slides, videos, price lists and brochures, replacing old fashioned ring binders and printed collateral.

Millie and I talk about this brilliant Team Playbook she developed for her company which provides guidance for how the team communicates, collaborates, and much more.

Read the related blog article: Enhancing Collaboration with a Team Playbook

Join the Modern Manager community (www.mamieks.com/join) to get a copy of the Team Playbook which you can use as a reference for your Team Playbook! Plus, join before August 12th and you get entered to win one of 5 copies of The Boomerang Principle from guest Lee Caraher of episode 61.

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KEY TAKEAWAYS:

The Team Playbook is part of a series of documents that provide guidance for how people engage. It focuses on the “heart” of the business and the team.
It includes the company mission and vision, the brand story, the team members, roles and responsibilities, communication methods and practices, and more.
The Team Playbook should reflect the tone and culture of your organization. It can be playful, humorous, elegant, etc.
Meetings are a strategic tool for communication, not a default. Before scheduling a meeting, consider what other ways the information can be shared/gathered.
Develop or articulate your norms for each mode of communication. For example, should task request be made in Slack? By email? Via your collaborative task system?
After three rounds of back-and-forth on email, if an issue still isn’t resolved, pick up the phone.
Different personalities have different preferences for communication modes. Some people prefer to talk things through over the phone while others prefer to read an email and have time to compose a response.
Consider an org chart that visualizes the roles or responsibilities (rather than the people) as the structural framework. Then the people’s names are added into the boxes which they manage.
This type of org chart enables everyone to quickly grasp who is responsible for what. It helps illuminate who might be spread too thin, who has overlapping responsibilities, and where the team may want to invest in adding capacity.

KEEP UP WITH MILLIE

Website: http://www.showcaseworkshop.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/millieblackwell/

RESOURCES

Awesome at Your Job Podcast

62: How Weekly Check-ins Transformed a Team with Chris Zaugg Jul 30, 2019

Show notes

Very few people are eager to add more meetings to their calendar, but what would happen if you scheduled a weekly check in with each of your team members? That’s what this week’s guest did.

Chris Zaugg has been leading people for over 40 years, and according to his own reflection, had made LOTS of mistakes and had a few victories. He has trained people in leadership principles and communication all over the world, and loves to share what he's learned from other leaders. He currently serves as the President of OPIN Systems, a software company based in Bloomington, MN.

Chris and I talk about how he incorporated weekly check-ins with his team and the transformative effect they had. We get into his process and why weekly can be so much more effective than monthly touch-bases.

Read the related blog article: Strengthen Your Team With Weekly Check-Ins

Join the Modern Manager community (www.mamieks.com/join) to get three months of free access to Uptick, a software to help you with your weekly check-ins. This is doubly special because you get to skip the waitlist and to start using Uptick right now.

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KEY TAKEAWAYS:

It’s not easy for employees to translate big company goals, vision and strategies into daily activities.
Organizations need systems that allow staff to honestly share with managers and managers to really listen to their staff in order to truly know what’s going on.
If you want your team members to feel like they’ve won every day, they need to end the day knowing they accomplished their most important priority.
Have a regular 15 minute check in with each team member. As prework, they write down what they see as the priorities for the week. Work together to prioritize them so they are clear on what matters most and why.
In those 15 minutes, (1) prioritize the work for this week - use their individual, team and organizational goals as a reference point, (2) Ask reflection questions like "Did anything keep you from being productive last week? When did you feel like you most productive?” (3) Celebrate by learning what they were most proud of last week or milestones accomplished.
Keep basic notes which you can then use to for upcoming performance reviews, simplifying that process and removing recency bias.
Employees don’t want to feel like they’re doing work just to check the box. If you ask them to write something down for you, read it and use the information.
In every workplace, people want three things: to know and be known, to serve and be served, to love and be loved, or perhaps to give and receive respect.
Aim to hold weekly check-ins at the optimal time for each person given their work flow. For example, first thing Monday morning, Monday afternoon, or early Friday afternoon.
The challenge with monthly check-ins is that you need much more time and that time is often spent recapping what happened and catching up to where things are now.

KEEP UP WITH CHRIS

Website: https://blog.uptickapp.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chriszaugg/

61: Managing Millennials in the Workplace with Lee Caraher Jul 24, 2019

Show notes

Ah, Millennials. This generation may be the most broadly stereotyped, yet often misunderstood. As managers, we may be Millennials ourselves trying to figure out how to manage and build relationships with older peers, or we may be struggling with how to manage this unusual cohort which seems to “know everything,” and “demand autonomy.” What is really going on with Millennials and what does it mean for managing every generation in the workplace?

This week’s guest is Lee Caraher is the CEO of Double Forte PR & Digital Marketing; she’s known for her practical solutions to big problems. Lee’s the author of Millennials & Management based on her experience with failing and then succeeding at retaining Millennials. Her second book, The Boomerang Principle: Inspire lifetime loyalty from your employees, was published in April 2017.

Lee and I talk about various cohorts of Millenials, the experiences of Gen-Xers and Boomers in the workplace, how to manage new graduates who are just entering the workforce, and management practices that work for everyone, whether you’re a young manager with older team members or an older team member with a younger manager.

Join the Modern Manager community (www.mamieks.com/join) by August 12th to win one of five copies of Lee’s book The Boomerang Principle: Inspire Lifetime Loyalty from Your Employees.

Subscribe to my newsletter to get episodes, articles and mini-guides delivered to your inbox.

KEY TAKEAWAYS:

The term Millennial technically only tells you what age cohort they belong to. Pew Research says that a millennial was born between 1980 and 1997.
There are three cohorts of Millennials that are grouped based on what was happening in the world when they were young. (1) The oldest group which joined the workforce shortly after 9/11 and grew up with minimal technology; (2) The middle group which entered the workforce in the late 2000s which was the same time that work was becoming digital; and (3) The youngest group which learned with iPads in the classrooms and grew up as digital natives.
One challenge recent graduates face in the workplace is the experience, often for the first time, of being told their work isn’t “A+” and that they have to do it again. In a schooling environment, the directions are typically very clear on how to get an A+ and rarely do you re-do work once it’s done, even if it’s only B+ work.
Set expectations for a new hire right from the start. Be clear that you want them to spend the first 30-60 days getting to know the job and doing the work “your way” and then you want to hear their ideas for how to improve it.
Be clear about deadlines - the day, date, time and timezone. This eliminates ambiguity and decreases frustration within a team.
Each generation has its own expectations of work, behavior, access and opportunity.
It can be emotionally hard for Boomers and Gen-Xers to have fought for greater rights in the workplace for decades to now see Millennials and Gen-Zers “waltz in” and express a sense of deserving of these rights.
Millennials want the same things as other generations, they’re simply willing to be vocal about it from a younger age. When you address the needs of Millennials, you can address everyone’s needs.
Be clear about your company purpose and values, clarify and engage people in defining projects and what success looks like, be explicit about roles and expectations.
Gather input from those around you who are closer to the work. Synthesize and make decision, and share the decisions with context for why this was decided. Without context, the team will never stay aligned.
A boss that is younger than you is no different from any other boss. They’re not a child, they could be great or terrible regardless of their age. If it makes you uncomfortable to have a younger boss, talk to them about it. Let them know you have a lot to offer based on your years of experience and that you hope to learn from them too.
As a manager of any age, you will be measured on the contribution of those around you, not necessarily your own performance on the owned tasks that you have.
Your job as a manager is to understand the people on your team: what motivates them, what they hope to get out of a project, what their career goals are, and then outline how you can help them do that through the work, and then also to guide the team on the rules of engagement and behaviors you're going to tolerate and not tolerate.

KEEP UP WITH LEE

Website: http://leecaraher.com/blog/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/leecaraher/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LeeCaraher1/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/leecaraher

Instagram: @leecaraher

Books: http://leecaraher.com/books/