# Leading a team, from your first reports to your next reorg — Summary The Executive Coaching work group coaches managers in group chats, from leading a first team to running the business week to week. It also helps with the harder parts of the job, such as strategic thinking, a difficult coworker or a reorg that shrinks your scope. Updated: 2026-10-13 HTML page: [Leading a team, from your first reports to your next reorg]() Transcript: [Full Chat Transcript]() Work group: [Executive Coaching]() ## Questions ### [Where a first-time manager should put their attention]() Your scorecard moves from your own work to what the team produces, so the early job is setting clear outcomes, handing problems back with questions and helping your reports work with each other directly. - **Your own output stops being the measure.** Julie Zhuo judges a new manager by the team's results, through purpose, people and process. Yue Zhao tells new managers to plan for a productivity dip in month one, and Christina Wodtke sees new managers micromanage because they fear nothing will happen if they stop giving orders. - **Answer problems with questions.** Christina asks four in order: what is the reality, what are the options, what are the pros and cons, and what will you try next. Over time, reports get better at working through problems without the manager. - **Set one objective.** Christina gives a team one objective per quarter. Julie wants outcomes clear enough that everyone agrees afterward whether the work succeeded, and Elena Luneva cuts projects that fail either test before they ship. - **Ask your own manager what success looks like.** Julie suggests asking what would make your manager feel you are doing a great job. Yue Zhao has seen a VP hit every team goal and still miss promotion because he put his team's needs ahead of the company's. ### [A weekly business review that ends in decisions]() Give the review two jobs, a shared read of a few metrics and a small number of decisions, and open each meeting by checking what last week's decisions did. - **Look at the same charts every week.** Julie Zhuo opens with a 5 to 15 minute walk through time-series charts for the shared goals, with prep kept under 30 minutes. Seeing the same series each week teaches leaders what a normal fluctuation looks like. - **Start from the quarter's goal.** Christina Wodtke has each owner give their confidence in reaching the key results, what they tried last week and their priorities for this one. A result with no new information gets a quick no change. - **Split 30 minutes three ways.** Nikhyl Singhal gives 5 minutes to shared measures, 15 to the two biggest exceptions and 10 to decisions and last week's commitments. Elena Luneva picks those two by the size and timing of the risk, and by whether the room can resolve it. - **Bring customer evidence with the chart.** Cat Lee asks the owner of a surprising trend for a customer call, observed session or support pattern that tests their explanation. When a metric stays flat after a fix, Christina reexamines the explanation and Cat goes back to customers before another fix is approved. ### [Being strategic at work, one ordinary decision at a time]() It shows up in ordinary choices: which few priorities matter, what gets delayed to make room for them, and whether the people involved agree on that trade-off. - **Choose fewer priorities.** Julie Zhuo picks one to three things that matter most and cuts work that competes with them. Diana Stepner asks why three times until she can name the customer need and business outcome behind a roadmap item. - **Name what slips.** Elena Luneva and Diana both decide what the team will stop or delay to make room for new work. When a new request threatens the top priority, Nikhyl Singhal puts the trade-off back in front of the stakeholders rather than quietly expanding scope. - **Test the assumption that could break the plan.** At Braintrust, Elena's team found AI recruiter avatars unlikely to meet its needs within six months, and chose a simpler voice interface that tested better with prospects. - **Get leaders to one direction.** Yue Zhao puts competing priorities side by side with their evidence, resources and what each would delay, then holds a decision meeting with one person accountable for the call. She books that time before the week's execution fills it. ### [Handling a difficult coworker when no one else will]() Raise the specific behavior with the coworker early and directly, then take specific incidents and their impact to your manager if the pattern continues. - **Describe the behavior and its effect.** Christina Wodtke names a behavior while it is still small, such as being spoken over, and asks to finish next time. Nikhyl Singhal starts from which decision, meeting or handoff broke down and what it cost the team. - **Prepare one sentence.** Yue Zhao practices a line before the next meeting that puts an alternative on the table without turning it into a contest. Julie Zhuo would ask how the coworker expects decisions to be made, and share one habit of her own that may be part of the problem. - **Settle who owns the decision.** Cat Lee treats a recurring conflict as a broken decision process and asks the coworker to agree who makes the call, what input they need and when it is final. - **Escalate with a record.** If the pattern continues, Cat, Nikhyl and Yue bring their manager specific incidents, the impact and the decision they need. Christina asks the manager to give the coworker direct feedback first. Nikhyl and Julie send threats or harassment to formal reporting. ### [Your first quarter after a reorg cuts your scope]() Spend the first month delivering inside the new boundaries and learning what the business needs, then decide after about a quarter whether the role still helps you grow. - **Skip the hot-seat question.** Nikhyl Singhal says a manager often can't answer it honestly in the middle of a reorg. Julie Zhuo would ask what their biggest problem is and how she can help, and Nikhyl would hold any request for more scope until you have delivered something visible. - **Write down what changed, and what didn't.** Yue Zhao lists the facts because fear makes people notice only the negative signals. Diana Stepner maps who is moving in the new structure and starts with the conversations that carry the least risk. - **Tie what is left to the business.** Elena Luneva has the new boss finish the sentence "Your team wins this quarter when \_\_\_", logs two weeks of work to decide what to stop, and connects the remaining scope to revenue. - **Temporary or permanent?** Yue reads a smaller scope as usually temporary. Nikhyl counters that many big-tech reorgs in 2026 are permanent flattening, and judges whether to stay by growth rate after a quarter. Julie also asks whether the company is likely to be meaningfully bigger in two years. ## Participants - [Julie Zhuo]() — Co-founder of Sundial. Author of The Making of a Manager and former VP of Product Design at Facebook - [Cat Lee]() — Founder and executive coach at Real & Kind. Former Head of Growth at Pinterest - [Nikhyl Singhal]() — Founder of the Skip community. Former VP of Product at Meta and CPO at Credit Karma - [Yue Zhao]() — Executive coach and author of The Uncommon Executive. Former Chief Product & Technology Officer at Fuzzy - [Christina Wodtke]() — Lecturer at Stanford University and author of Radical Focus. Former General Manager at Zynga - [Elena Luneva]() — Chief Product & Technology Officer at Madison Reed. Former Chief Product Officer at Braintrust - [Diana Stepner]() — Product leadership coach. Former VP of Product at SimplePractice and Head of Product, Education at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative --- Copyright © 2026 Super Me Network, Inc. All rights reserved. | [Terms of Service](https://www.superme.ai/terms) | [Privacy Policy](https://www.superme.ai/privacy)