8 Posts found for Author: Molly Graham

The best version of your career is finding jobs that are in the Venn diagram between what you love doing and what you’re exceptional at. This may sound obvious, but oftentimes as you get more senior, the Venn diagram is often “things I’m exceptional at” overlapping with “things I hate doing.” You have to know yourself well enough to turn those jobs down, even when … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Molly Graham | Source: “First Round Review” | Subject: Career

When assessing a low performer, the most important set of exercises to run through are: What is this person’s job? What is expected of them? Do they know that? And then once they do, do they have the desire and the energy to fix it? Then you can go to them and clearly explain, “Here’s what’s expected of you. Here’s what you’re delivering. And here’s … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Molly Graham | Source: “First Round Review” | Subjects: Human Resources, Management, Organizational Behavior

Most people can be exceptional and perform way better than they are today, under the right set of circumstances. And so the question for managers is whether those circumstances can exist in the role that that person is currently in, elsewhere in the company, or if it’s just not a fit at all.

Content: Quotation | Author: Molly Graham | Source: “First Round Review” | Subjects: Human Resources, Management, Organizational Behavior

When I was managing a team I didn’t have tons of expertise in […] I first started with: Do people’s roles make sense? Do they know how they fit in? How they align to the business? Then the second piece is, do they know what’s expected of them? Do they know what success looks like? 80% of the time when I go into a team … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Molly Graham | Source: “First Round Review” | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior, Teamwork

As a manager, one of the best things you can do is to take your high-performers and make bets on them, stretching them and seeing what they’re made of. Sometimes people are capable of 10X of what you have them working on today. You just have to help them get there.

Content: Quotation | Author: Molly Graham | Source: “First Round Review” | Subjects: Human Resources, Management

I push people to focus on, “What is this person responsible for?” not, “How are they doing it?” As a manager, you can give feedback on the “how,” particularly if it’s potentially destructive to the people around them, problematic in terms of draining too many resources, or when the folks you’re managing are more junior. But goals and expectations have to be set around the … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Molly Graham | Source: “First Round Review” | Subject: Management

True management is the act of making the people around you better. Management is about investing in people, figuring out who they are, what they’re good at, what motivates them, and then aligning the work a company has to do with their role and their growth areas.

Content: Quotation | Author: Molly Graham | Source: “First Round Review” | Subject: Management

In this exclusive interview, Molly Graham shares her six rules for how to be a good manager. Some come seemingly out of left field, others are nuanced takes on common pearls of wisdom — but true to what we’ve come to expect whenever we sit down with Graham, all are useful rules of thumb for any startup leader or new manager to lean on. From … [ Read more ]

Content: Thought Leader | Author: Molly Graham | Source: “First Round Review” | Subject: Management