The Art of Managing Young “Rock Stars”

One misconception among IT managers is that they should be better at everything than everyone working for them. Nonsense—it’s the manager’s job to determine the team’s strengths and weaknesses and create a strong team, not to do it all the work yourself.

Now picture this: Some 23-year-old developer fresh from Microsoft U. is telling you how the basic applications you helped architect two years ago, the one that you’ve been able to scale and maintain through the past 24 months—well, that solution is pretty stupid, according to your junior report.I’d like to say most managers understand that you can’t just snap back and tell your inexperienced team member to shut up, even with nice words. Getting defensive about your own accomplishments, goals, and motives is a natural human instinct that you’ve got to contain as you initially respond to such criticisms. But checking your ego doesn’t stop at just refusing to get into an argument with some smart-aleck kid.Because the kid may be right.

Recognizing, and even rewarding, employees who have better ideas than your own while maintaining your position as the team’s leader is absolutely one of the toughest challenges in management, especially in an industry where bright young talents are often referred to as “young guns” or “rock stars.” You want to hold on to these rising stars, and take advantage of their good ideas and passion to demonstrate how smart they are. Those are their strengths. Rock stars can drive you and other team members crazy with their rash comments, careless bravado, and resistance to constructive criticism. Those are their weaknesses. Drawing a map that makes these two routes converge at success can be a nightmare.Here are a few tricks that have helped to contain young employees’ ego without undermining leadership positions.

· Remember that you were once the kid that’s now staring across your desk at you.
Look back at past conflicts you had with your own bosses and use those experiences to build empathy with the frustrations that your junior team member is probably feeling.

· Let your young employee try out a bad idea and fail—or maybe succeed. Nothing teaches like experience, particularly in the case of headstrong young talent. Consider developing a controlled environment in which he or she they can try out the idea. The kid may be right, after all.

· Make the employee explain what went wrong, and how we can do it better next time.. Don’t be mean, but don’t be overly gentle of mistakes, either. Allowing a team member to try something new for a time is a gesture of respect on your part, and it entitles you to be candid in evaluating the results.

· Go out of your way to give credit where credit is due. If a team member’s idea pays off, make sure everybody knows that it was that team member’s idea. Nothing erodes the basic trust between a manager and an employee than the notion that the boss is taking all the credit for the employees’ contributions.

· Don’t be afraid to draw the line. Just because you are willing to entertain challenges does not mean that standards will not be enforced. Revert to “management” mode to establish a line between “practices” and “business values.” Clearly laying out the ground rules will give the employee the parameters for constructively challenging your ideas and you won’t find yourself backed into the “Because I said so” argument.

Get used to it - it never stops
No matter how long you have been a leader, dealing with criticism from your team will always be a challenge. Even as you gain more confidence in you decisions there will be an unlimited supply of up-and-coming stars that will challenge the process. But remember, as those kids learn from the mistakes you let them make, you will be able to place them in project leadership sooner than later. And one final silver lining (and sweet, sweet irony) – they may even become the managers that have to deal with the next generation of “rock stars” themselves.