This Google exec became a boss 'overnight' 20 years ago—the most important lesson he's learned as a manager

Brian Glaser became a first-time manager about 20 years ago when he says he was promoted “overnight” into a leadership position at JetBlue.

He had a lot to learn as a boss and now, two decades later, is the chief learning officer at Google, where he oversees teams in charge of onboarding and training for some 150,000 employees worldwide.

One of the biggest lessons he learned while moving from an individual contributor to overseeing others’ work was “trusting others to get the work done,” Glaser tells CNBC Make It.

“I remember so much of what gave me fulfillment was getting the job done right, really tackling the project, meeting the deadline, and knowing that I was single-handedly able to contribute to the goal,” he says.

Becoming a manager, though, he had to realize it wasn’t about doing the work and getting credit for it. Rather, “it’s about getting work done effectively through others, which means you have to really understand their styles or motivations and work to bring out the best so that they can really deliver excellent outcomes.”

He heard it put once that as an individual contributor, you’re trying to make lightning strike; as a manager, you have to create the conditions for lightning to strike.

He’s learned from his past mistakes: “I think where I’ve messed up over the years [is] I’ve indexed more on the vision and the future” rather than being concrete in the smaller steps and benchmarks to get there. Without that path, “It’s very easy for the team to burn out.”

Glaser says bosses should keep three pillars in mind as they lead their teams:

1. Set a direction rather than a destination. The time of spending years on building a long-term strategy is “over,” Glaser says. He advises pointing teams in a direction and encouraging them to be agile and pivot when challenges arise, even if that means landing in a slightly different place than originally planned, rather than focusing solely on one potential outcome.
2. Be willing to be wrong. Glaser says this mindset is crucial to be innovative and try things for the first time; it’s also important to be able to course-correct when things aren’t working out as planned. As leaders, “we have to move from being a know-it-all to being more of a learn-it-all, which means we have to ask better questions,” Glaser says. “We have to be willing to take multiple perspectives and admit to people when we don’t know the answer.”
3. Pay attention to the human side of change. AI is impacting businesses faster than ever, and Glaser says a good leader will pay attention to how those changes influence their teams socially, emotionally and cognitively. It comes down to leading with empathy, he says: “How do we really help meet them where they are, so that we can come through whatever it is that we’re going through as a team together?”

For anyone else leading a team for the first time, Glaser says “the most important thing” is to focus on building connections with your reports to understand “the experiences, the interests, the aspirations of your people.”

Doing so builds trust, he says, which is a foundational part of what makes a high-performing team and helps them move through challenges and ultimately succeed.

“If nothing else,” Glaser says, “really invest time in getting to know your people, building those relationships, and all else will follow.”

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