I know a lot of people who are great strategists or great team leads but who cannot actually focus on the needs of the team. I’ve seen so many situations where a little intra-team conflict turned into six figures of lost revenue and jobs lost because the manager couldn’t bring himself to get involved before money was being lost. You can’t NOT fire someone who crosses too many lines, but you can absolutely be at fault for them crossing those lines when they gave months’ notice and you could’ve talked situations down or improved policies.

I was lucky. My first managing role was under someone whose philosophy was "the manager’s job is to focus on their team. If you can get 33% more productivity out of each team member, you do more good for the company than you could ever do by “just being better” or “just designing better” than them. And I thought 33% was crazy, until I actually started learning you can. By