Wrong but useful. Working @Twitter, tweeting about data science and people management.
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The advice that you need to simply stay out of people’s way assumes those people always have the skills, maturity and organizational context to make the right choice for themselves and the company. This is a BIG assumption.
It is your job as a manager to help them get there, but that sometimes means telling them no—that a project they’re excited about is a deadend, that their ideas need more work before they’re ready for primetime, that they actually don’t know better than some coworker they resent
There are times when you need DO need to get in your direct’s way. It may not come naturally to you, but telling people what to do is part of being a manager. It may even be in the IC's best interest, even if it means siding with the company or a stakeholder over them.
Teams and companies are more than the sum of their parts, and managers need to learn to think about how the people they manage fit together and into the company as a whole. This sometimes requires prioritizing the group over the individual, and this can be uncomfortable.
It is especially uncomfortable as a new manager, because the experience of being an IC is still fresh in your mind, visceral. You don't know how to assess your own managerial ability, so you fall back to easiest measurement proxy--how do much do my ICs like me?
Part of what makes people management such a difficult and emotionally draining experience is that you have to stop caring about this. It'd be a lot more fun if all you had to do was cheer on great people, but even great people will lose their way on occasion
When that happens, it's your job to get them back on track. The empathetic mindset of servant leadership helps you build the trust you need to tell them things they might be resistant to, but it doesn't change the fact that you still need to be honest with them.
If you manage people long enough, you WILL find yourself in this situation. You'll go through it many times, in fact, and you will get better at it the more you deal with it.
So yes, listen to your people and be their advocates. But also be prepared to act like an authority figure sometimes, because you are one.
I'd like to add, if telling them no is a rarity, that "No" will be a lot more emotionally impacting for both sides. If you let things slide to avoid telling them No, you just make the next No that much harder. Don't say No all the time, but don't never say No either.
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