Towards the end of 2024, I finished reading a book titled “When They Win, You Win: Being a Great Manager Is Simpler Than You Think by Russ Laraway” and its content resonated with me. It resonated with me so much that I gave a presentation about its content to my department at work.

I would highly recommend this book to anyone with an interest in leadership and management, in this blog post I’ll summarise some of its key points but the book has so much more information and is well worth a read.

Engagement

The book starts by discussing engagement and how important having engaged teams is to an organisation’s success. Engaged teams are 17% more productive and drive 21% more profit. Managers influence around 70% of team engagement. So if you lead a team or have direct reports then your role and influence are huge.

The Big 3

The book lays out a framework for being a manager which it calls “The Big 3”. These are Direction, Coaching and Career.

1. Direction

In a nutshell, Direction is about making sure your team knows exactly what’s expected of them and when. It is a framework made up of four things:

  • Mission: What’s the big-picture purpose? If your company has a clear mission, it’s easier to feel like your work matters.
  • Vision: Where are you heading in the next couple of years? Think of it as the mountain you’re climbing.
  • OKRs (Objectives and Key Results): Quarterly or annual goals that align teams and define success.
  • Prioritization: Helping teams focus on what matters most. In the book, Russ argues that “If you have more than three priorities, you have no priorities.” Managers must guide their teams to subtract non-critical tasks and double down on high-impact work.

2. Coaching

Instead of the term “Feedback”, the book argues for the term “Coaching”. Coaching is about setting standards and expectations—and then helping team members meet them.

  • Continue Coaching: Praise the behaviours and outputs you want to see repeated. Be specific. Replace “Good job” with actionable insights like, “Your presentation’s clarity helped align the team. Keep using that structure in the future.”
  • Improve Coaching: Offer constructive feedback with examples, ensuring the team member understands what needs to change and why. The book also talks about the power of the 5:1 ratio of continue coaching to improve coaching. We should praise our team five times as much as we provide constructive feedback. This balance fosters growth while maintaining morale.

3. Career

As a manager, your role needs to extend beyond the day-to-day performance of your team. Great leaders invest in their team members’ long-term success. The book talks about breaking Career down into three conversations:

  1. Life Story and Values: This conversation involves talking to and understanding your team member’s personal histories, motivations, and values.
  2. Dreams and Vision Statements: During this conversation, you would explore your team member’s career aspirations and help figure out what a successful career looks like for them.
  3. Career Action Plan: The final conversation involves you collaborating with your team member to develop actionable steps, skills and experiences needed for their dream roles—even if those roles are outside the current organization.

Measuring Managers

The book also outlines a way to measure managers. There are suggested questions that could be used in a survey to produce a Manager Effectiveness Score. Running these with your team allows you as a manager to identify areas for improvement and growth for yourself. Some example questions might include:

  • How clearly does your manager communicate what’s expected of you?
  • How often does your manager give actionable feedback?
  • How supportive is your manager of your growth and development?

When They Win You Win

If you want to find out more about this book and it’s content then I’d recommend checking out Russ’ website at https://www.whentheywinyouwin.com/.

What’s next?

I’m currently reading Scaling People: Tactics for Management and Company Building by Claire Hughes Johnson so I’ll be writing up some of my thoughts about this when I finish it.