No one taught me how to be a good manager

Not my company. Not a training program. Not a mentor who sat me down and said, here's what you need to know. I became a manager through a process of trial and error. That process was messy, humbling, sometimes awkward. I made mistakes. I stepped on landmines. I said things I wish I could take back, and I stayed silent when I should have spoken up. I figured most of it out the hard way.

And it's time I said that out loud. Because I suspect a lot of you are nodding right now.

My first job out of college was as an administrative assistant. I worked in the international finance department at Payless ShoeSource in Topeka, Kansas. I was a Latina immigrant woman who had no family connections in corporate America. I quickly learned that opportunity wasn't going to come looking for me. Every promotion I earned, I fought for. Nothing was handed to me on a platter, and I made my peace with that.

What drove me wasn't ambition for ambition's sake. It was my kids:Gabe and Isabel. I became a single mom at 27, with very little support system around me. I had two small humans depending on me to figure it out. At the time, my drive came from the deep desire to raise our quality of life. I wanted to build something stable and good for my kids. That was the fuel behind every late night, and every stretch assignment I raised my hand for. They were my why. And that why was relentless.

***

In 2008, I became a manager for the first time at Sears Holdings in greater Chicago. Two analysts reported to me. I knew nothing about managing people.

What I did know was how to care about someone. How to show up for them. How to make a person feel seen. Years of motherhood and years of being Brazilian had wired me to connect with people. In Brazil, simpatia (warm, genuine friendliness) is one of the top cultural values. That turned out to matter more than I expected.

But I'll also be honest: in those early years, I was a people-pleasing manager. I wanted everyone to like me. I wanted everyone to feel good. I avoided hard conversations longer than I should have. Looking back now, I understand that this wasn't just a personality quirk. It was something I was culturally conditioned to do as a Latina woman. The pressure to be agreeable, to smooth things over, to keep everyone comfortable? It runs deep. Recognizing it took years.

And I didn't have a lot of self-awareness back then. I was also a working manager. I had my own individual contributor responsibilities on top of leading a team. I was busy. I was stretched. Deep investment in team development wasn't always possible. Sometimes it was just survival mode.

But what I did instinctually was build trust. I had my team's backs, genuinely and completely. They knew it. And I cared deeply about their growth, even when I was learning on the fly how to actually support it. That care stayed with me throughout the many years that followed leading teams. Even after all the leadership training I've now had, I believe that care is still the "secret sauce".

***

One of the things that surprised me most was how differently people need to be led.

Some of my team members lit up when I painted a picture of where they could go. A vision, a possibility, a you could be this. Others needed clear structure, firm expectations, a direct hand on the wheel. I had to learn to read people, to adjust my approach and to meet them where they were. That became one of my most valuable skills as a leader.

I remember lovingly telling one of my analysts "Three bullets or less. If the email is longer than that, I'll stop reading." He is a brilliant guy, but at the time his emails were dissertations. I can still picture the look on his face: surprise and alarm. But he heard me. His emails got sharper. His thinking got crisper.

That kid is a CEO now.

I share all of this not to impress you, but to share that the path to becoming a strong leader is rarely linear. It is almost never clean. It's built by living through small lessons and making mistakes. It's built during the moments in which you had to figure it out without a roadmap.

If you're a new manager feeling like you're making it up as you go, you probably are. That's ok, so was I. So were most of us. And you can still become really, really good at this. That's what I'm here to talk about.

What was your biggest "figuring it out as I go" moment as a new manager? I'd love to hear it in the comments.