Managing a team isn't a top-down operation where instructions go down and results come up. The job is building a place where people learn: a team that pushes each other to get better instead of waiting to be told how.
At Smoke Cartel, we wrote that into our actual employee policies: all employees agree to learn and be active learners, because growing is part of the job. It's one sentence, but it tells a new hire on day one that not knowing something yet was never the disqualifying part.
Ask yourself this before you give feedback
Is my feedback more or less important than my team's ownership of the idea?
The more you add, the less the project belongs to the person who made it. Being a teacher instead of a babysitter means knowing when your input makes the work better, and when it just makes the work yours instead of theirs.
The debate exercise
My co-founder and I borrowed this from Tibetan monks, who use structured debate to train new monks. Not to win arguments, but to strip away ego and force real engagement with an opposing idea. We ran it on ourselves before we ever asked the team to try it.
Staying articulate on a high-emotion topic is a skill every manager needs. It's also the exact skill a great customer service agent uses on a hard call. Here's how to run it:
- Make a list of 5 to 10 topics people have real feelings about, but not so much that they can't discuss them calmly. The exercise doesn't work without some emotion in the room.
- Set the ground rules out loud. This is a safe space, it's meant to be fun, and it's a teaching exercise, not a debate club.
- Have each person pick a topic they care about, then argue the side they disagree with. A teammate argues the side they actually believe.
- Two minutes each to make the case, then thirty seconds each for a rebuttal. Use a timer, so a good discussion doesn't turn into a real argument.
- Debrief: What could you have done to take the emotion out of your argument? Did anyone change your mind, and what about how they said it made it land? What can we carry into de-escalating a heated customer?
None of this works without a baseline of trust. Your team has to believe you won't let it get heated and walk away.
Teach "yes, and"
I once tried to enroll my customer service team in an improv class. A few people were too shy to go, but a handful did. I'm not telling you to send your department to improv. I'm also not telling you it's a bad idea.
Customers will say wild things. An agent who gets visibly thrown loses the thread, accepts a false premise, or gets derailed from doing the job. "Yes, and" keeps the conversation moving no matter how outlandish it gets. Staying calm and persuasive without needing to win is probably the most important skill a customer service agent can have. You can't read it on a resume. You can teach it.
Make the scary thing feel small
Our customer service welcome guide didn't open with policy. It opened by telling new hires to stop thinking of the person on the other end as "a customer" and start thinking of them as a human. Every rule after that followed naturally.
Our accounting intro for new hires did the same thing for expense policy, which is the fastest way to make someone feel one honest mistake away from trouble. It opened with "RECEIPTS, RECEIPTS, RECEIPTS!" in all caps. Funny enough that people read the rest of the page. Clear enough that nobody had an excuse not to.
The topic changes. The move doesn't: find the plain-English version that makes the intimidating thing feel small, say it with enough humor that people actually read to the end, and trust that the joke doesn't cost you the seriousness underneath it.
The one-year coffee
One cheap ritual that builds a surprising amount of trust: at someone's one-year mark, take them out for coffee or lunch and ask what they've learned. Not a performance review. Not a form. A real question, asked outside the building, about their own year. People remember being asked that far longer than anything you told them.
You can't reward or punish a habit into permanence
I worked with someone who was a chronic over-apologizer for three years running. First I tried punishing it: "That's not allowed here. Say something else." That only removed the problem from my point of view. Then I tried rewards: a hat pin, a mini bottle of champagne, a coffee for every week without one. Neither worked.
What worked was living it myself. I watched my own interactions, stopped apologizing needlessly, and explained my choices to her as situations came up. The problem was never really the apology. She felt unsure of her own actions, and apologizing had always been easier than trying again.
Years later, we were working on campaign messaging together and I suggested a pre-emptive apology. "We don't apologize here," she said, fast and with real belief behind it. I had to keep my eyes on my screen so she wouldn't see me tearing up.
Carrot and stick was outdated at its own creation party. You can't punish or reward a behavior into permanence. You can only embrace it yourself and become the version of it you want to rub off on the people around you.
Try this week
- Before your next round of feedback, ask whether it makes the work better or just makes it yours.
- Rewrite the first paragraph of one intimidating doc in plain English, with one joke.
- Put a one-year coffee on the calendar for anyone coming up on their anniversary.
- Pick the habit you most want your team to have, and check honestly whether you're modeling it.
Want the book when it's ready?
This post is adapted from a chapter of The Team You Build, the book I'm writing about building a team that will outlast you. Drop your email below and I'll let you know when it's out, along with new posts on operations, e-commerce, and building teams.
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