Journaling as a new manager: the job nobody debriefs you on

Becoming a manager is the first time most people have a job where they can't tell if they're doing well. The feedback loop is months long, the work is conversations, and there's rarely anything at the end of the day you can point at.

It's also unusually lonely, because most of what happens can't be discussed with your team, and often shouldn't be discussed with your peers either.

Write the conversation you're dreading

Before a hard one, write three things: what you actually need to say in one sentence, what you're afraid they'll say, and what you'll do if they say it.

Most bad management conversations go wrong because the manager softened the first sentence into something unfalsifiable. Writing it plainly, where nobody can hear it, is how you find out whether you're being kind or just avoiding discomfort.

Keep a note per person

Not a performance file. A few lines after each one-to-one about what they said, what they seemed worried about, what you promised.

This is the single highest-return habit in the job. It catches the thing someone mentioned twice in six weeks, which is usually how a resignation announces itself. And it means you keep your promises, which is most of what people mean when they say a manager is good.

Separate the decision from the outcome

Management decisions get judged by results, which is unfair in both directions. A bad call can go fine and a careful one can go badly.

Write the decision and your reasoning at the time, before you know. Reading it back after the outcome is the only real way to learn judgment. Otherwise you'll just absorb whatever happened as a lesson, including the wrong lessons.

Notice what you're avoiding

Every manager has a queue of things they haven't done: the underperformer, the conversation with a peer, the decision that will annoy someone.

Write the list weekly. Not to shame yourself, but because the avoided items are almost always the highest-value ones, and they never get louder on their own. They just quietly become other people's problems.

Start your own private journal tonight.

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Write what you're becoming

New managers change, sometimes into people they wouldn't have liked a year earlier. More guarded. Quicker to defend a decision they didn't make. Comfortable saying things they used to roll their eyes at.

Some of that is growth and some of it is drift. You can only tell the difference against a record. Write down, in month one, the manager you said you'd be. Read it every quarter.

Prompts for the first year

• What do I actually need to say to this person, in one sentence?
• What did each of my reports seem worried about this week?
• What did I decide this week, and what was my reasoning before I knew the outcome?
• What am I avoiding, and what is it costing?
• Am I still the manager I said I'd be in month one?

This does not belong on company systems

Notes about your team's morale, your read on a colleague, your doubts about a decision from above: none of that should live in a work doc, a work laptop, or anywhere it could be discovered, even at a company you trust and especially about people who didn't consent to being written about.

Innera keeps every story encrypted on your device, which is where the honest version of your first year managing people belongs.