Help Your Team Succeed: Be a Resource Hub, Coach, and Adviser

Alibaba's management philosophy of empowerment. Alibaba follows this principle: the higher a person's position, the more their success depends on helping direct reports succeed first. The heroic pursuit of individual achievement is human nature, but the essence of management at Alibaba is achieving results through others. This requires the generosity to give up the stage, the ability to build a stage for direct reports, and, even more, restraint over the desire to monopolize the spotlight. The stronger a manager's individual abilities, the more this tests human nature. Managers should not show off their abilities and power. They should work to help direct reports feel capable themselves. 1. Become a resource hub for your direct reports. As some joke, children's futures depend on their parents' resources, while employees' futures depend on “their manager's resource hub.” At Alibaba, management is a service provided to direct reports. Whatever resources direct reports need, whether support for funding requests or introductions to useful contacts, managers must help. The ability to coordinate resources and relationships inside and outside the company, helping direct reports develop faster and achieve better results, is therefore a key measure of managerial ability. 2. Become a coach for your direct reports. Alibaba's celebrated sales leader He Xueyou once said: “Among a manager's roles, being a coach may be more important than being a mentor.” Mentors tend to discuss theory, while coaches roll up their sleeves and help. Coaches identify team members' potential and join them on the field to help realize it. A coaching manager is like a mirror, allowing direct reports to see their blind spots. Coaches also let direct reports take responsibility and find ways to solve the difficulties they encounter. 3. Be an adviser to your direct reports. A manager's daily work involves listening to reports from the team. When someone describes a particular situation, the manager must immediately identify how many variables it contains. List the most important variables, quickly rank and assess them mentally, then offer the best advice. All of this depends on intuitive judgment. Such intuition often represents experience built through insight and long accumulation. The manager's task is to provide sound scrutiny and judgment at each critical juncture. Alibaba's principle is always to make clear that direct reports retain primary responsibility. Only then will they develop accountability and gradually grow.