On Keeping Your Hands Dirty
TL;DR - If you aren’t contributing in the right ways as a manager, your employees are saying this about you. You gotta bring the meatloaf.
Moving up to the management level provides a fork in the road, and there are two general paths I’ve seen people take when given the opportunity:
You now see your team as being responsible to you
You now see yourself as being responsible to your team
Certainly there is some crossover in the approaches along both paths, and I’m not here to say the first path is entirely bad, but - for me - the second path is the one worth walking.
A funny thing happened to me when I chose that route, though. Despite the perks of the elevated title, the transition from doing what was “tangible” every day to what can be considered more “intangible” led me to some genuine separation anxiety, and even a minor identity crisis.
However, that experience became a foundation for shaping my approach to leadership, and reassured me that I’d chosen the right path. I’ll explain.
When I began with Chicago Fire FC as a Digital Media Coordinator in 2015, I was initially brought on to contribute strictly to the team’s social media copywriting and written content efforts. However, the club was in a time in its evolution where investment on the business side was relatively limited, so - as a result - the staff size was small and we all had to carry more weight than we likely should have.
As I got into a groove on the written content and social side, I quickly noticed some additional areas that might take our content to another level if given some extra attention:
Our best photographer was also our primary graphic designer. With his ever-changing priorities week-to-week, there was certainly some room for extra photo coverage of the team. I taught myself how to work a DSLR camera and got out to training a few days a week to snap and edit photos to post to our channels.
We had two videographers who often had to run entire shoots solo due to frequently competing demands. I jumped in to help facilitate interviews so they could focus more on things like lighting, composition, and the actual camerawork.
My boss was the only person doing day-to-day maintenance and new designs for our web site. He coached me up so I could take a share of that load as well.
I was getting my hands dirty by either directly creating or contributing to the creation of so many “tangible” things - social posts, photos, blogs, videos, landing pages, etc. - and getting that instant feedback hit when things performed well - or didn’t! - on our channels. It was always a legitimate rush.
As our department began to grow, I was given the opportunity to move up to the manager level, then eventually on to senior manager and director of the department. As more hires came in, we were able to divvy up the collective workload, and over time I handed off more of my day-to-day production responsibilities to new and junior hires.
I was no longer taking photos, was barely posting on social, and I wasn’t really needed to conduct interviews anymore. It was really tough!
I missed seeing my work appreciated publicly on social media. I missed being behind the camera at training sessions. I missed being the voice of interviews with our players. I wasn’t sure who I’d be without those things.
I decided I could stay close to the work, even if I wasn’t doing it directly, by choosing path number two. I’d keep my hands dirty no matter how high I rose, and I’d be the type of teammate that I expected my direct reports to be as well.
In lieu of “tangible” production, I would shoulder the more “intangible” things that might allow my group the freedom to focus on doing their best creative work with limited distractions.
I would try to protect our bandwidth by setting boundaries and vetting all the asks of our team.
I would advocate for our collective and individual needs at the executive level.
I would be the one to push back on or say “no” to project requests when needed.
I would find creative compromises for other departments when we couldn’t give them exactly what they asked.
I would negotiate with our corporate partners on their sometimes absurd content ideas.
I would work with legal on all the tedious elements that can’t be overlooked in the content planning process.
I would organize the times/locations/talent for production days.
I would deflect credit and eat blame.
I would make sure the lines of communication in our department were open from top-to-bottom.
These types of things would make me responsible to my team, and I met with them weekly as a group and bi-weekly as individuals to make sure I was being held accountable. Although our day-to-days were different, my reports always knew that I was “doing stuff” and that we were sharing an equally important workload.
This approach fosters trust, cohesion, and a team-first culture.
When you see someone above you on the food chain pulling their weight and committing to the team’s success, it’s contagious.
On my way up, I had managers on both ends of that spectrum. The ones who worked alongside me and went above and beyond to support me got the best work out of me. They made me want to get better at my job. They made a team of brilliant creators somehow even greater than the sum of its individual parts. They made me want to pass on that feeling when I got to their level, so path two was a no-brainer.
I’ve also worked with managers who went down path one. Generally, they tend to be more passive, quick to delegate, poor communicators, and put their own ego before the wider group. In my experience, that breeds contempt, insecurity, and disconnection, it erases motivation, it kills culture, and ultimately it decreases quality output.
Employees are left to wonder what you’re doing, and why you’re even there at all.
It’s an active choice every manager has to make to ensure his or her team never asks those questions.
What I left behind in tangible production as I moved into management, I picked up in committing myself to the team’s best interests and working to create open, honest lines of communication. I kept my hands plenty dirty along the way, and it gave me more satisfaction than any banger of an instagram post ever could.
Talk soon,
