Care, but not too much.

Campy thoughts about caring as a manager.

Caring as a manager matters. You have to stop after a point.

You’re working on a problem as a manager. You’ve delegated parts of it. You’re seeing what’s working well and not well. And the requests keep piling up. 

Your agency will define your success.
How fast can you act? How correctly can you respond? How long can you go in the face of interrupts, ambiguity, and dissonance?

Your caring will be a prime factor in your agency.
If you got into the game it’s because you’re accountable for an important problem. And you keep going because you care.

Your caring will be a prime factor in you burning out. 
If you’re caring too much you’ll over-ingest information. You’ll worry. You’ll be subject to the whims of whoever’s up or down at the moment.

You need to be stable to be an effective manager. 
The bigger the problem, the higher the chance that something isn’t going well. And there’s more around the corner. Do you have capacity for it? 

But you can’t practice apathy.
You not caring will make you disconnected. From the problem. From the people working on it. Your good people will lack context because you didn’t ensure they get it. They will feel disconnected. You’ll miss open opportunities because you just aren’t seeing them.  You’ll miss signs that someone’s struggling… because you just aren’t seeing them.

You can’t do it all. And you shouldn’t.
There’s a limit to how many problems you can absorb. You might have to pass those problems to your reports without modifying them. That’s right, don’t add value. That just might be their job. And there will still be things that you must do yourself.

But you need to influence as much as you can. 
Feedback will be one of your main tools to achieve necessary change. You will have to encourage and critique people and their work.

Your desire to be liked will make criticism hurt more.
Do not prioritize liking on your team. It might still happen. Prioritize trust, respect, and productive amounts of transparency. A lot of this might go against your personality. It will feel unnatural. Don’t be a manager if you don’t accept those terms. 

Care, but not too much.