Be Transparent

This is something of an open letter to team leads and managers out there: you need to be as transparent with your team as you are legally and contractually allowed to.

This is specially important early on, when the company is small and everyone is doing multiple jobs. If we are talking about your development team, you need to realize that they have access to everything. They know how many users the company has. They know how many come back. They know how many pay you and on what plans. I expect it only takes a Google search to find out how much you’ve raised. They probably don’t know what your burn rate is, but they can guess.

The things you keep from them are not secrets, they are areas open to misinterpretation.

The only exception are concerns where they cannot help. Your job as a manager should be shielding your people from noise, not sending more their way.

Other than that, be transparent. Your team will work better when they know why they’re doing something, and will be more willing to trust you when you say there’s a particular bit you can’t discuss.

Published: 2017-02-03