What does it take to be a great manager? Host of the Supermanagers podcast, Aydin Mirzaee, is on a mission to find out. The CEO of Fellow.app speaks to managers from leading companies to discover what traits make good leaders great and how to drive success. In this episode, he shares his findings and explains what makes a “Supermanager.”

Press play to hear Aydin’s thoughts on…

 How Practice Makes Perfect

“You have to treat this just like a professional athlete would. Just like a professional athlete would do drills and practice and look back on their week and figure out what conversations they had and how they went and how much feedback did they give and how did the feedback get received. The world's best managers are also practicing, and they're very deliberate about all these things."

The Risks of Imitation

“Often, we try and look at a leader or a manager, and we'll try and emulate, right. And we'll try and be like them. And the big takeaway I had was that you really have to try and be like yourself. It's not about emulating anybody else. You just have to really understand yourself, just like you understand your team. You have to understand yourself, understand what your strengths are, and what the authentic you looks like, and then be that person, not trying to necessarily emulate others.”

The Bottom Line

“The thing that I hear most often is, it's all about the people. At the end of the day, you really have to treat everyone like real people, really understand them, and treat them like human beings.”

One of the things that we say

often is great managers are not

born, they're made. The good

news is that it's never too late.

It's something that you can keep

working on, and with enough

effort, enough repetition, you

too can be a supermanager.

That's Aydin Mirzaee, CEO of

Fellow.app, a fast-growing SaaS

company that helps teams have

better, more productive meetings.

As part of his role at Fellow,

Aydin is the host of the "

SuperManagers Podcast," a weekly

show where he interviews leaders

from across the business

spectrum to tease out the habits,

attitudes, and experiences that

helped them be amazing managers.

Aydin has been leading Fellow.

app for almost five years.

Before that, he was the co-

founder of Fluidware, a

bootstrapped company that he

helped grow from to a $12

million run rate and almost 100

employees. After six years, he

led Fluidware through an

acquisition by SurveyMonkey.

Aydin is passionate about

entrepreneurship. He is also the

co-founder of freshfounders.com,

a non-profit organization with

the vision to create a community

of young business leaders in

every city around the world. In

this episode, Aydin will delve

into some of the lessons he's

learned, both from talking to so

many successful leaders and from

being a successful entrepreneur

himself. Are great leaders born

or made? Get ready for a

thoughtful discussion on that

topic and more. This is Daniel

Saks, co-CEO of AppDirect, and

it's time to decode

supermanagers.

Welcome to "Decoding Digital," a

podcast for innovators looking

to thrive in the digital economy.

I'm your host, Daniel Saks, and

I'll sit down with other

founders, CEOs, and changemakers

to decode the trends that are

transforming the way we work.

Let's decode. Aydin, thanks so

much for joining the podcast

today. I love this because I was

recently on your podcast,

SuperManagers, and I know you've

been running it for almost a

year now and you just broke 50

episodes. Congrats on

SuperManagers and the 50-episode

mark.

Thank you. It's crazy to think

it's been a year that we've been

doing it. It's exciting. It's

the sort of thing that once you

get passionate about it, I could

see myself doing this forever.

It's awesome.

There's nothing better than

chatting with interesting people.

I find it to be great. When we

talk about supermanagers,

there's an obvious question for

you, which is what's a

supermanager? Beyond that, what

are some of the takeaways that

you've had from interviewing so

many leaders and supermanagers?

That's a good question. The term

supermanagers, it's a term that

we invented. We have to talk

about what a manager is. We

think that the purpose of a

manager is through their

involvement, you'll get a lot

more out of the team than if

they were not involved with the

team. A supermanager to us is

someone, through their

involvement, you get almost 10

times as much impact than if

they were not involved with the

team. They have a lot of

characteristics. One of our

favorite characteristics is that

they're always working on their

craft. They never take it for

granted. It's like continuously

focusing on becoming a better

manager and leader. It's

something that they think about,

they practice. They're very

deliberate. Just like an athlete

would practice their free throws

and do that on a consistent

basis, supermanagers are

constantly figuring out how they

can do what they do better.

That's the broad premise of it.

It's not everyone, but you'll

notice that the ones that have

that mentality and mindset,

they're always thinking about

how they can get better. That's

why you were a great fit for the

podcast. That's the sort of

person that we've tried to have

on.

Thanks so much. I'm curious,

what are the common threads of

things that supermanagers are

consistently trying to work on?

There are a lot of things that

we've figured out that

supermanagers do and also a lot

of lessons that we've taken from

them. One of the things is, for

example, they're always focused

on understanding their

employees on an individual level.

Part of that is there's this

great quote from Peter

Drucker. He basically says, "

Effective executives understand

and build on the strengths of

themselves or team and their

organization to make everyone

productive and to eliminate

weakness." Part of that is

they're always trying to figure

out, what are each person's

strengths? What are their

weaknesses? It's not to say

individually remove a weakness,

but it's more, "Let's figure out

how, through using a team, we

can actually eliminate weakness

in that way through the use of a

team." They're always

understanding who their team is

on an individual level. There's

a lot of great examples that I

can bring up, and I've written a

few of these. One of them was

they're always focusing on

different models that you can

employ, that there's no one-size-

fits-all for these things. One

of the things is we had John

Michel, who is the now-leaving

but CTO at Shopify and one of

the things that we talked about

with him was this concept of a

25:50:25 leadership model. What

that means is a lot of people

will come in and they'll say

that, "Oh, well, it's servant

leadership. My job is strictly

to just unblock other people."

What's interesting about the

model that, for example, he

talked about was 25 percent of

the time, I'll be your manager

and I'll instruct you and guide

you. 25 percent of the time,

you'll tell me what to do and

what you need from me. 50

percent of the time, for example,

we're peers. We're going to work

together and we're going to

brainstorm, and this is going to

be a very collaborative process.

There's a lot of individual

lessons like that. For example,

we had Vlad, the CEO of Webflow,

on. This is something that I've

heard from a bunch of other

people as well. Oftentimes, we

try and look at a leader or a

manager and we'll try and

emulate and we'll try and be

like them. The big takeaway I

had from that episode was that

you have to try and be like

yourself. It's not about

emulating anybody else. Just

like you understand your team,

you have to understand yourself,

understand what your strengths

are and what the authentic you

looks like, and then be that

person, not trying necessarily

emulate others. There's a bunch

more, and I can list these out.

There's been a lot of great

guests. One of the main things

for me is after every episode, I

always learn something. Even if

nobody else listens to the

episodes, it still works,

because I'm learning a lot.

Obviously, people will listen

and learn, too.

For sure. It's such a great

group that you've been chatting

with. I've had a lot of

takeaways from your podcast.

When it comes to a lot of these

supermanagers that you talk to,

one of the things that I've

observed is a lot of them have

had to make adjustments in their

communication style and their

motivation style, particularly

over the last year. What are

some of the strategies that

you've seen be particularly

relevant in this digital-first

environment?

One of the things that we

focused on was trying to get a

lot of guests that had a lot

more experience with remote and

had a lot of things that they

could contribute so that

everybody else could learn from

what they had been doing. One

of the guests that we had on --

it was very early in the

pandemic -- Job, who is the CEO

at remote.com. Before that, he

was VP of product at GitLab,

which used to be the world's

largest remote company. One of

the things that we talked about

right from the beginning was

that remote is harder. It's

harder to run a remote company.

You have to do a lot more. You

have to be more purposeful, you

have to think about things in

different ways, but it is worth

it. The reason that it can

become worth it is because you

get to access broader talent in

so many other places. It's not

like it's not going to be more

work. Some people might have

assumed that, "Oh, we're just

going to get into remote and

it's going to be the same amount

of work." It's a different

ballgame. That was a really

interesting thing. The other

interesting thing that we talked

about with Job was this concept

of documenting everything.

There's this culture that they

promoted at GitLab, and

certainly, something that we've

also adopted at Fellow, which is

this concept of respond with a

link. When people ask you a

question, don't give them the

answer. Go write it in the wiki,

and then respond with a link, so

now it's documented. It was

interesting when he first told

me about that. I said, "Oh, but

that's a lot more work. It's

going to be slower. It's a lot

more work." He brought up a very

good point, which is, "No.

Actually, it's faster. It's a

lot faster." The reason is you

only answer your question once.

It's not just about having a

repository of knowledge. It's

also about when you have people

in different time zones, imagine

if you want to ask a question at

5:00 PM someone else's time zone

and they're leaving. Now, you

have to wait for the next day.

The more that you can think

about documentation and

responding with a link for a

company know-how and knowledge

and processes, it speeds things

up. You just have to operate

differently once everybody is

not in the same physical

location and all the same rules

don't apply.

Can you tell us a little bit

more about the founding premise

of Fellow and how you help

managers become supermanagers?

There are a bunch of things.

When we originally started the

company, one of the things that

we started thinking about is

software enables behavior change.

One of the things with work-from-

anywhere, and work-from-remote,

and hybrid, and all these

different concepts is you have

to use technology to make these

sorts of communications possible.

Technology can help behavior

change. One of the things that

we thought about when starting

the company was we looked across

the board and we said, "

Everybody in every sector has

software for them. Salespeople

may have Salesforce. Marketing

people may have a Marketo or a

HubSpot, but nobody had built a

tool for managers of teams and

taken that lens." When we first

started the company, we wanted

to focus on building what we

like to call a manager's co-

pilot. In the same way that you

hire an account executive and

they might use Salesforce, you

would use Fellow, and Fellow

would be that manager's co-pilot.

As we started digging in, what

was interesting was we saw that

where managers spend most of

their time is in meetings. Over

50 percent of their week is

spent in meetings. When you take

that lens, it's such a massive

area to help and deliver impact.

Over the course of time, what

Fellow's become is we like to

call it a meeting productivity

and team management tool. We

lead with a meeting-centric

approach. What we like to say is, "

Turn all the chaos of meetings

into productive work sessions,"

and then we layer on team

management concepts, one-on-ones,

and feedback, and goal setting.

Those things are married in but

with a meeting-centric approach.

There's a lot of interesting

things about meetings as it

relates to digital and remote.

For example, a very common

concept, I don't know how many

of these you do, Dan, at

AppDirect, but do you have

asynchronous meetings? Is that a

practice you employ, at least in

your teams?

It's not. I would love to learn

more about it.

One of the things that people

realized is when we went all

remote, part of it was, "Let's

do the exact same thing we did

in the office, but let's run

those exact same meetings

remotely." The dynamic changes.

There's certain meetings, and

specifically, status meetings,

and stand-up meetings, and those

sorts of things are the first to

go. Any sort of status meeting

doesn't actually need for

everybody to be there at the

same time. It's a matter of

making sure that those things,

people are putting in their

updates at a certain point in

time by a certain date and time,

and then making sure that

information is available for

everyone. That's, in general,

the concept of an asynchronous

meeting. It's something where

not everybody needs to do it at

the same time. People can finish

this on their own time, but then

you can view things afterwards.

Not every meeting should be an

asynchronous meeting. For

example, one-on-ones should not

be asynchronous, because there's

a lot of purposes to it, but

relationship building, for

example, is a critical part of a

one-on-one meeting. Those are

the sorts of things, for example,

that you should do on a

synchronous basis. If there is

discussion and debate, a lot of

those things benefit from real-

time interaction. Other things

don't need to be that way, and

so they can be done on an

asynchronous basis. That

concept brings more time in

people's days, allows their

schedules to be more flexible so

that you're not in a situation

where all you're doing is back-

to-back meetings. That style of

communication is also more than

that. For example, we had Sarah

Milstein on our podcast. At the

time, she was director of

engineering at MailChimp. One of

the things that we talked about

was this concept of, if not

everybody needs to be there

synchronously...Sometimes, you

have a presentation or a meeting

that is basically like a

presentation format. If that

doesn't need to be synchronous

and you're going to get

everybody to read the deck or

watch the video of someone

presenting, how do you know that

that's effective? Part of the

culture that also needs to

change is the way that we react

to these things. If you're

using a tool like Slack or MS

Teams, it's about reacting to

messages. You read a message,

it's about putting eye emojis or

some reaction to say, "Yes, I

read this." Or, commenting on

things on purpose, or when you

distribute a presentation or

something important, checking in

with people after the fact and

literally going out and

messaging them and saying, "Hey,

what did you think?" and

proactively looking for comments

and feedback. The communication

style does change in a world

where not everybody's always in

the same physical location.

Those are some of the things

that we think about when

building the product and

building Fellow is, how can we

make all those workflows easy to

do and build all the right

habits for people who want to

use the product?

What's your vision for how

technology can help support a

manager, and how far do you

think this technology can go?

The technology can go a really,

really long way. It starts from

habit building. It can create

the framework so that you can

basically make sure that things

that you need to do, that you do

them often and in the right

workflow and in the right format.

When it comes to an organization,

it's always hard to make sure

that everybody is doing things

the same way. You don't want it

to be copy and paste across the

board, but broadly, at the same

structural way that, say, one-on-

ones are held or meetings are

held across the organization, to

have a consistent approach

across the board. Why wouldn't

you want to find workflows that

work and make sure that

everybody does them? That's one

thing. The second thing is data.

Having data at your fingertips

and looking at this stuff and

understanding, based on the data,

what decisions you should make,

that starts to go a long way.

The third layer as we get more

futuristic is now we start to

get suggestions on what we

should do. This is where the

software can aid us beyond just

showing us data. It can also

start to make recommendations on, "

Hey, you should talk about this

topic in your one-on-one," or, "

You should really meet with this

person," or, "You should really

consider using this workflow for

that meeting because this is the

type of meeting that you said it

was." Over the course of time,

first, you start with the basics

of, "OK, here's workflows." Then,

there's, "Here's data to make

better decisions." Third is now

this offer starts to make

suggestions on how you can

implement a bunch of these

things. I have some

controversial views on this, too.

I think that, for example, in

the long term, as technology

starts to get better, and this

is maybe a controversial

viewpoint. I think you fast-

forward 10 years from now,

technology will get so good that

you're going to be in a

situation where you and I might

maybe hang out socially, but the

second that we want to say, "Hey,

let's talk business and let's

actually have the meeting,"

we'll want to use technology,

and that'll be a better meeting.

A meeting done using technology

or a remote meeting might be

better than an in-person

experience. The reason is while

we're talking and we mention

something, or I mention a Peter

Drucker, I get pulled up

information about him on the

side. We talk about another

person and the action item for

that person gets recorded and

gets sent to them right away.

There's a lot that technology

can do. We look at it based on

the technology we have today and

we're like, "Well, clearly, in-

person interactions are the only

way to go." Imagine now, 10

years of everybody focusing on

this over the next decade, it's

going to be game-changing.

Super powerful. What happens

when we think about AI, as well

as contextual search, as well as

augmented reality, and voice-to-

text, and other elements? Do you

feel like we're going to be

interacting traditionally in

conversations like this, or are

we going to be interacting in

totally different ways?

I think it's going to be very

different. A couple of

interesting things that I've

been thinking about here. One of

the things about being on camera

and the way that we are and

we're conducting this

conversation is you have no idea

how tall I am. I've my whole

life, been basically the

shortest person in the room. All

of a sudden, on video, that's

democratizing. It doesn't matter.

I started my first company when

I was very young, and I know you

basically started straight out

of school. Selling enterprise

companies as a very young person,

especially in some rooms, it's

nice to have some grey hair

sometimes. I think that over the

course of time, it might be that

we have different filters when

we have conversations, or maybe

my voice has changed a little

bit. A lot of these things may

sound crazy as we're talking

about them. It's not normal for

me to have an avatar or a

slightly different persona when

I'm talking to different people.

That, over the course of time,

might become something that's

the norm as we try and

democratize the way that people

can interact with others.

That's one of the things that,

for example, I think it's going

to change. It's not going to

matter if you're young or old,

or how tall or short you are. A

lot of those things will start

to change. The other thing that

I think is going to start to

change is, again, if you get

very futuristic about this, you

can replicate a lot of these

environments. Certainly, there's

a lot of technology in the world

of AR and VR, where you can

replicate being amongst a lot of

people and interacting with them.

I know there's a company that's

doing some cool things in this

space called Spatial VR. They're

replicating in-person

interactions in the virtual

space. You mentioned AI and how

can AI help with these sorts of

things? Imagine if you and I are

talking. I am the super

interesting person, so you would

never get bored if I'm talking.

Say that you were, I could get a

flag that, "Dan's not paying

attention now," or, "This

meeting's productivity score is

low because three people are

clearly browsing or doing

something else," or, "You're

going off-topic," or, "This

person has talked too much

during this meeting." There's a

lot of things that we can do

live, even as meetings and

interactions are starting to

happen, to guide those

interactions into a good place.

I have to tell you about a cool

tool that I've been using. Do

you ski?

Yeah, of course.

Cool. Have you used a product

called Carv?

No.

This is an incredible product.

You insert these sensors into

your ski boots. It can connect

your AirPods. What happens is

it's got 250 sensors on each

foot, and it's guiding you on

how you ski, and it's scoring

you for every single run, how

you did, how is your balance?

Every measure that you can

imagine, it scores every run.

Then, when you're on the

chairlift, it tells you and can

coach you. There's even live

coaching so that you can listen

to it while you're skiing. It's

instructing you on how to do

things. That's the analogy of

sports. All we have to do is

take those things, and then

apply them to knowledge work so

that we can make ourselves

productive and performing at our

best in the knowledge work that

we do.

What's preventing that

technology from existing today?

The example of we're in a

meeting with 20 people and ten

of them are tuned out on their

computers, browsing other stuff,

is that technology out there

today?

We're focusing on it. It's just

a matter of, what should

everybody focus on? The events

of the last year or so has made

it so that it's become

acceptable that we can have more

digital so that you don't have

to fly to another city just to

have a meeting, and then go back.

Before, these were not

acceptable things. If I got on

the phone with you and you were,

say, in your kitchen, I might

maybe think that, "Oh, that

might be unprofessional." Now,

it's an accepted norm. Now that

we've run this big experiment,

you'll start to see that not

only at Fellow, but many, many

other companies, they have been

and they will continue to

basically introduce a lot of new

technology on improving our

meetings and interactions. This

is a space that you're going to

see all this attention and all

the smart minds are now focused

on this area, and you're going

to see a lot more good things

come out of it.

Got it. How, at Fellow, do you

calibrate managers? At AppDirect,

we think about a calibration,

what we call a performance grid.

We look at the what and the how,

the what being the output based

on your OKRs, or objectives and

key results, and you're KPIs,

which are your key performance

indicators. The how is values

and competencies, so values

being, how do you execute based

on our values, which include

humility and positive mental

attitude -- we coach on that --

but also competencies such as

communication skills and coding

skills or other skills that you

may need? We have tracks to

help enable our teams and

managers to progress to be able

to excel at not only being able

to maintain and execute on their

own OKRs and KPIs but if they

become a manager, how they can

do that on behalf of their team.

That's our methodology on how to

calibrate a manager. How do you

think about grooming and

calibrating managers at Fellow?

This is a very good question

because your approach makes a

lot of sense. You had all the

right elements in there. There

is a performance element,

there's a cultural element. All

those things are very important.

Some of the things that we've

come across that a lot of other

people have talked about is

factors like retention. Do

people stay when a manager is

responsible for that team?

That's an important one. You

also have to counter that with,

you don't want them to stay

forever, because you want

managers to be able to grow

leaders and for those people to

go on and do other things and be

successful. There's also this

element of people who have

worked with the manager, how

often do they end up becoming

leaders and continuing to grow

and being promoted in their

career? The things that are very

outcome-oriented and

characteristic-oriented, but

then there's also these aspects

of the team. Those are some of

the aspects that make a lot of

sense, and then there's some

other aspects. For example, one

of the factors that is very

important is trust.

What's interesting is we were

just talking about "Manager

Tools" and we just had the

founder of that podcast on the

show. He was talking about a

very large study that they ran.

They basically got all managers

to rate what they thought the

trust level between them and

their employees was, and then

they got the employees to also

rate the trust level that they

had with their managers. On

average, managers scored what

they believed their trust

between their employees to be as

a 7.1 and the employees rated it

as a 3.5. It was drastically

different. Over the course of

time, through systematic one-on-

ones, and understanding, and

level-setting, and asking for

feedback, that flipped. It would

be nice for the trust level to

be at a 10, but what's more

important is for the trust level

that the employee rates the

manager to be higher than what

the manager does for their

rating. Part of that is

managers have to understand it's

like driving, everybody thinks

they're a better-than-average

driver. It's coming to

understanding that the trust

level is maybe not what they

think it is, and it's also

consistent work to make those

things happen. Again, what you

said outlines very, very well

some elements that you have to

do. If we think about team

structure and some of those

aspects, some of these other

aspects are great ways to

understand if someone is a good

manager or not.

As the host of SuperManagers,

what's the one piece of

management advice you would give

the listeners on the podcast?

What I would say is, and the

thing that I hear most often is,

it's all about the people. At

the end of the day, you have to

treat everyone like real people,

understand them, and treat them

like human beings. Secondly,

what I would say is that you

have to treat this just like a

professional athlete would.

Just like a professional athlete

would do drills, and practice,

and look back on their week and

figure out what conversations

they had, and how they went, and

how much feedback did they give,

and how did the feedback yet

received, the world's best

managers are also practicing and

they're very deliberate about

all these things. Those are the

two things I would say is it's

all about the people and you

have to work at this. One of the

things that we say often is

great managers are not born,

they're made. The good news is

that it's never too late. It's

something that you can keep

working on, and with enough

effort, enough repetition, you

too can be a supermanager.

Amazing. Inspirational words.

Aydin, so great to chat with you

on Decoding Digital.

Thanks for having me. This was

super fun.

Amazing. Take care.

On the next episode of Decoding

Digital...

This is not like a small little

tweak to your business. It is a

fundamental transformation of

your business model. It needs to

be board and CEO-sponsored and

you need to think holistically

because it impacts every single

process. It impacts how you

develop products, how you market

them, how you sell them, how you

service them.

Once you're on this journey,

you're all in. You have to stay

patient and you have to stay

persistent on this journey. You

can't turn around in six months

and say, "These things are not

happening fast enough." To turn

around a ship, it takes time.

David Sovie, senior managing

director, and Vik Viniak, the

managing director and senior

partner at Accenture.

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