Welcome back to our series, “Grown not Born”, where we interview remarkable leaders and managers, gaining insight into their journeys and personal experiences with management. In this instalment, we met with Vinay Sharma, a leader in the tech industry, and an experienced manager. Vinay is currently the head of IT at Onto and the co-founder of CreatorStock.

Sarah: Hello Vinay, Thank you so much for your time. Let’s get started with your experience going from big companies to starting your own and now working in start-ups.

Vinay: Yeah, my first major role was at Apple, that is where I started my career. I predominantly work in tech, I spent years at WPP. That’s when I transitioned from a standard engineer to a manager. It was daunting, I added someone to my team, and then I was like okay, how do I manage this person?

He was a year older than me and we had a lot in common, there was a natural bond there. It was tricky trying to navigate being a first-time manager, especially when I was balancing it with being his friend.

I learned how to manage different people when I moved to a bigger agency—knowing people’s strengths and weaknesses and playing to those is key. I also tried to do it in a way that wasn’t dictating their steps but guiding them in the right direction.

I learned how to manage different people when I moved to a bigger agency—knowing people’s strengths and weaknesses and playing to those is key.

Sarah: What is a piece of managerial advice you’ve been given?

Vinay: It was my manager who taught me about expectations versus agreements. He always said, when you expect something from someone, you'll always be disappointed. If you have an agreement in place, you're never disappointed.

I teach this to the people I manage. If we agree to do something, unless there’s a reason why it can’t be done, I will assume it's done, because there is an agreement. I won’t expect you to do something unless we agree on it. I feel like that was probably the missing piece for me in terms of managing a larger group of people.

If we agree to do something, unless there’s a reason why it can’t be done, I will assume it's done, because there is an agreement.

Sarah: Can you share a significant learning experience or a challenge you have experienced as a manager?

Vinay: There was a period when I was new to being a manager, where we had several projects delayed. I had three people under me and I wasn’t very on top of them. I was new to management, I was too lenient in the sense that I gave them free rein with their projects.

I took some advice from the book Surrounded by Idiots by Thomas Erikson. I started trying to understand who I was dealing with and who I was speaking to. Some people fail or give up very easily, I needed to grasp that to effectively manage my team.

I realized as a manager, you have to take the fall for whatever happens in your team. I started to ask “How can I coach my team to help me do my job better while helping them improve as well?”.

I started to ask “How can I coach my team to help me do my job better while helping them improve as well?”

Sarah: How do you assess performance within your team?

Vinay: It comes down from HR and it’s based on a quarterly interim performance review and then an end-of-year overall performance review.

My current performance reviews consist of:

• What are the four things that you want to achieve in this quarter?
• What projects are you working on to achieve those four things?
• What help do you need to achieve those things?

I am always looking for ways to improve. I want to base things more on customer or employee feedback.

• How was the customer or employee treated by the engineer?
• How do they come across, what type of language do they use?
• Were they technically able to fix the problem?

Sarah: How do you make sure that what your team is working on, and your goals, align with the broader goals of the company?

Vinay: That’s quite an easy one for IT, we have a certain target we want to meet. A lot of our goals come down from the top. I have to look at the entire structure and say who fits under which piece. I give my team a priority list, but also free reign to choose which project they want to work on.

Sarah: Do you have any goals that you want to achieve as a manager in the next twelve months?

Vinay: As a manager, my main goal is to help my engineers advance from junior to senior levels or even move into a management role. I haven’t set specific managerial goals, I focus on ensuring my team has good performance reviews, which we report back to HR.

Sarah: What are your personal goals, for the next twelve months?

Vinay: I have goals related to technical growth. I have also been diving into entrepreneurship. I find your mentality has to change a little bit from working in a corporate structure. In a startup, you’re doing every single job under the sun. Right now, I have a team of people that I manage, within that team there are a couple of managers that manage their teams of engineers. One of my goals is to keep the distinction between my managerial responsibilities and my ambitions.

One of my goals is to keep the distinction between my managerial responsibilities and my ambitions.

Sarah: Do you see a difference between managing engineers and managing managers?

Vinay: Learning how to manage people successfully is a job in itself. The way I speak to engineers is slightly different from the way I speak to my managers. As a manager, you have to go through your own mistakes. One thing I have learned is to listen more and talk less when I am dealing with my manager level. They are still learning how to manage. You need to listen to them instead of dictating.

Sarah: Are there tools you wish you had access to, or wish existed?

Vinay: That's a hard one. I have used Trello and Notion, but they’re very basic. Books help me develop my managerial and leadership skills. I wish we had bite-sized content to consume, where you could learn something quickly.

Sarah: Our last one is a funny one. If you had to compare your management style to an animal, which one would it be?

Vinay: I’d probably say a panda. They’re very soft-looking animals and they’re very approachable. Soft on the outside and strong on the inside.

Sarah: Thank you so much for your time, this has been very insightful!