My HubSpot Journey as a Manager

I started my journey with HubSpot in September 2015 as an implementation specialist (IS) based out of Singapore, helping marketing and sales professionals in Asia Pacific get stuff done (GSD) with Inbound and HubSpot. In July 2017, HubSpot needed someone in the business to lead the team of implementation specialists in APAC. While I'd earned it by, in essence, consistently performing in my IS role and progressively taking on a number of additional responsibilities, I was naturally anxious and intimidated by my new roles and responsibilities. Honestly, seeing zero customer in my funnel made me feel uneasy because that was my comfort zone. One year into my “new” role as a manager, I've had my up's and down's just like most other roles in any organization.

Goals and Priorities as a Manager

To me and many, the main reason why managers exist is because they play a very important role in making each member on their team succeed in their individual role. Managers do so by putting their people first, making sure they add values to every interaction that they have with their people, and unlock people's potential as much and as fast as possible. While it's often easy to be distracted by the day-to-day's and lose sight on what the important and urgent issues are, managers need to focus on the greater needs of the business.

As I lead a team of implementation specialists to give our customers in APAC the most holistic onboarding experience possible, I focus on:

1. Building a world-class mission, values, culture for my team
2. Motivating and retaining the high performers
3. Hiring the right talents to fuel growth

Three Tips to Become a Better Manager

1. Put your people first

This is easy to say than done. As a people manager, your priority should always be the people around you. While your people are primarily your direct reports, they include your peer managers and the leadership team too. I remember when I first transitioned from an implementation specialist to a manager in HubSpot, I needed to tweak my customer-first mindset to a people-first mindset. My people are now my “customers”. My role as an implementation specialist is to help customers extract values and growth from HubSpot during onboarding; as a manager of implementation specialists, I help my people succeed and grow throughout their career in HubSpot.

With that in mind, I started to think of different ways to engage with every member on my team. Gone were the days that I could deploy a well-defined, optimized playbook for my onboarding customers; there are no hard-and-fast rules to drive success with my “customers” now. No one is going to walk up to you and tell you what to do with your people; instead, you need to figure it out and do it with your own style.

Put your people first.

Say it only if you mean it. Trust me, your people can tell if you, as their manager, put them first. The magical thing is, when you put your people first, your people will start aligning with their priorities. In HubSpot, we live and breathe our customer code; that is, Customer Value > Enterprise Value > Team Value > Me. Yes, there isn’t an easy way out. Putting your people first often means more 1:1’s, more meetings, more hours, and probably more white hair. Will Kavanagh reinforced this point during my interview process. Should all things fail, put your people first.

2. Lead your people from their strengths

If someone is good at saving goals as a goalkeeper, give him or her the right training to become a world-class goalie and not, say, a striker or midfielder. If someone is not good at making public speeches, getting him or her to speak in front of a thousand people is a poor idea.

Leading an individual from strengths is what I strongly believe in. The baseline is, though, the individual needs to know what his or her strengths really are. By strengths I mean cutting edges that nobody else in a similar position can come close with. That very strength should be something that’s unmatched. For instance, an ex-member on my team is extremely good at running role plays with potential implementation specialist candidates. She’s always succinct in her communications, delivering clear and actionable feedback to the candidate toward the end of each role play. Today, she is HubSpot's first Customer Success Trainer in APAC.

Lead your people from their strengths.

The fact of the matter is, when someone is constantly given an opportunity to do what he or she is good at, it yields greater results over time. Conversely if an individual is constantly told to do what he or she isn’t good at, the results will deteriorate.

As a great leader, you need to help and work with each individual to identify their strength (I like to call it the sharpest edge of their sword as if they are going to fight a battle) and continuously sharpen it. A great football team, to me, is when you have the best player in every position. Don’t ever get your striker to be the goalie and vice versa. Lead your team from strengths. Get the individual to do what he or she is best at.

3. Open the right door for your people

Look, the fact is no one is going to be someone’s manager forever and vice versa. Your people are going to leave your team (and sometimes the business) at some point as they outgrow their role. As a manager, while you stay focused on the greater needs of the team, you need to constantly find ways to unlock your people’s potential that create a great(er) impact on the business. To me, running a team is like running a business; Always think a few steps ahead and create business opportunities for your people to work on and gain meaningful experiences from.

A good opportunity can be as “small” as encouraging a member on your team to present an idea during a team meeting; It can also be as “big” as nominating and coaching someone for a speaking gig at a large tech conference. A successful manager always ensures his team succeeds, very similar to how a successful business owner will do everything he can to make sure his business succeeds.  

Open the right door for your people.

If you know a great opportunity is coming up within the business, plan ahead and help your people connect the dots. It’s not uncommon for an individual contributor to be blindsided by their own day-to-day’s. That's where a great manager comes in and leads the way by opening the right door. A true leader is someone who has a personal stake in the well-being of his people (for however long they stay on his team), having a clear vision for the team and live toward it.

*****

As I continue to learn and become a better manager, I am extremely thankful to the continuous exposure, support, feedback and coaching HubSpot had offered to me. Without them I wouldn’t be geared up for success right from the beginning.

Special thanks to Joe Ting, Tim Cormier, Simon Wong (and many more) who have helped me become a better professional in one way or the other.

Keen to be a part of HubSpot's growth in APAC? Check out our openings here - Singapore, Sydney and Tokyo.