How to manage humans

(At least, how I think about it)

The other day, someone on my team asked: “How do I become a better manager?”

There’s plenty of great stuff out there on leadership. But this isn’t a book summary or a LinkedIn checklist. It’s just what I’ve seen work — especially in fast-paced, high-context teams where ambiguity is the default and nobody has time for a TED Talk.

To me, great management boils down to three things:

Simple. But not always easy.

1. Alignment

Your #1 job is to point people in the right direction. That’s it. The rest is scaffolding.

When someone’s effort is misaligned — even slightly — it compounds fast. You get duplicate work, missed goals, and a whole lot of “Wait, weren’t we doing X?”

The mistake I see most often? Managers over-index on activity. They want status updates, check-ins, trackers.

But the real question is: Are we aiming at the same thing? I try to align people on outcomes, not tasks.

And I check alignment often — in 1-on-1s, project kickoffs, even Slack DMs.

Here are a few questions I use to push towards alignment:

• What’s on your plate right now?

  Baseline visibility. Helps you understand how they’re spending their time.

• What’s your biggest priority right now?

  Checks alignment with team or company priorities.

• Do you have any challenges or blockers right now?

  Surfaces friction early. Gives them permission to flag issues.

I do this as a daily asynchronous update in slack & a weekly 1on1.

2. Context

People can’t make good decisions if they don’t see what you see.

There’s been so many times out of frustration i just do the task myself because it takes longer to share what I know than it is to do the task. The issue is this compounds significantly over time.

If you want people to operate like owners, you have to treat them like owners. That means sharing:

• Why something matters

• What constraints we’re working within

• How we got to this point

• What trade-offs we’re accepting

A team without context is like an army with no map. They might march fast — but in the wrong direction.

Personally, I err on the side of over-sharing. I write long Slack updates. I record Looms. I narrate my thinking — even when nobody asks. It may feel like overkill in the moment. But it pays off in autonomy later.

You can’t build a high-trust team if everyone’s running on partial information.

3. Communication

This is the multiplier. Alignment and context mean nothing if your comms are a mess.

Great communication inside a team isn’t about eloquence — it’s about clarity, responsiveness, and trust. My old team had this saying which was if Ajay responses with “looks good” - it means I barely looked at it and I don’t care.

Here’s what I try to model:

• Be clear about expectations (who’s doing what, by when)

• Flag issues early (especially around deadlines or blockers)

• Give feedback fast (and make it normal, not scary)

• Avoid “vague yeses” — ambiguity compounds

And here’s the real unlock: Great managers are great receivers.

• They ask second-order questions.

• They sense confusion before it turns into delay.

• They create space — not just airtime.

Also: not every message should be a meeting. But not every message should be a message, either. There’s a concept called Media Richness Theory — basically, the more ambiguous or emotionally sensitive a topic is, the “richer” your communication channel should be. In other words: “If it’s high-stakes or confusing, don’t Slack it. Talk it out.”

Final Thought

You can’t manage someone into greatness. But you can create the conditions for them to do the best work of their career.

That means:

• Aligning them with meaningful goals

• Giving them full context to make decisions

• Keeping your communication sharp, human, and fast

The best managers I know aren’t loud. They don’t have the fanciest frameworks. They’re just really, really good at creating clarity.

And clarity is a superpower.

Until next time,

Ajay