‘Praise Colleagues, Delegate, and Know That Mistakes are Inevitable’: Tips for Managers in Investigative Journalism

Let’s be clear: Managing teams is not easy. You can master what you do, but guiding people is quite a different thing and it requires another set of skills.

I have been lucky enough to work under some great leaders. Some of them were journalists, others came from a different space, such as the civic tech field. They all taught me how to lead others strategically, but most importantly with kindness and respect. None of them were born managers or leaders, but all of them learned how to do it.

I’ve been thinking a lot about leadership recently — as something to grapple with alongside the day-to-day of producing our journalism at The Examination, where I’m in charge of the data team.

Some people might think that being a manager in the investigative journalism field should not be different from being a manager in other spaces. However, there are some specific aspects that make the role unique: working under pressure and thinking about people’s security and mental health all while working on complex stories.

Emma Prest, a media consultant and former chief technology officer at the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), says that as a manager in this field “you need to work well under pressure, remain calm, and know when to react quickly (and when not to)… Everyone thinks their story is the most important, and there’s often a sense of urgency combined with a lack of planning. So your role is to help your team think ahead, be organized, and not create undue stress on other colleagues.”

This piece — made up of 15 tips for managers — started out from conversations on the sidelines of a journalism conference. Afterwards, I reached out to some of the best newsroom leaders I know, so the article distills all the things I’ve learned so far with the tips and advice of those I have spoken to about this subject.

1. Be open and transparent. I have found it’s important to make sure you communicate decisions and changes in the organization openly to your team, and after that, to let them ask questions and listen to their thoughts. Instead of surprising my team with big announcements at staff meetings, I use our check-in calls and regular meetings to communicate what’s coming in terms of the stories, updates regarding our strategy, or pending decisions.

One of the most important lessons learned in my career as a journalist is that people value candid conversations. But for that, you also need to create safe environments where they feel comfortable sharing their thoughts, opinions, and ideas. In short, it needs to be a space where they don’t feel that what they say may later be punished or used against them.

And it’s important to remember that open conversations need humble managers: “Don’t assume that, as a manager, you have all the answers or that you know what is best for the people you manage,” advises Illiana Papangeli, managing director at the Greek investigative outlet Solomon. “You don’t, and you don’t need to. Be honest about that with yourself and with your team. Ask your colleagues about their needs, ideas, solutions, ambitions, and fears. Ask what they need from you, rather than assuming you already know,” she adds.

2. Communicate clearly how you expect the team to work, especially if you work in a remote environment. The Examination is a nonprofit newsroom investigating human-caused health crises. The data reporters work remotely, so I ask my team to put everything on their calendars: Working hours, holidays, specific times where they need to do something and they won’t be available. Since we work different hours and live in different countries, we have implemented a check-in document where we list the priorities for the week. At the bottom, we add the estimated time that we will spend in meetings based on our calendars. If anyone has too many meetings scheduled, it gets flagged so they can make space not only to work on what they have to do, but also to be creative.

Frederik Obermaier, co-founder and director of the German-based Paper Trail Media, says good communication about workflow among team members is also key for successful projects. He says it is important to “make next steps and deadlines visible and explain the reasoning behind them. A deadline that makes perfect sense to you can seem completely arbitrary to someone else,” he told me. “I’ve learned that it’s not enough to tell people what needs to happen and when. You also need to explain why. What is the next step? Why does it need to happen by Friday rather than next Tuesday? What depends on it? Giving people that context creates ownership rather than simply pressure.”

3. Define a prioritization system that works for your team. In my team, we start managing tasks on the project management platform Asana. We then move to “prioritization meetings” where we discuss what we have for the week and distinguish between important and urgent tasks. We also have catch-up meetings where we check what we have done and plan next steps.

There are a lot of frameworks that can help you to establish processes and keep things organized, but be careful: Too many steps and lack of flexibility when implementing project management frameworks or tools can have negative effects.

4. Treat all the members of your team equally and make them feel valued. See your team as a whole but respect individualities. I have worked in teams where people that were shy did excellent work, but sometimes more attention was paid to those who talked more openly about their projects and successes. This sometimes creates frustrations. One way around this dynamic is to ask people to show their work in front of others and, most importantly, don’t let yourself become the focus of your team’s success. Taking the credit for your team is not only bad practice, it’s demotivating for those working with you.

5. Praise colleagues when they do a great job. Managers sometimes take things for granted: We spend many hours at our desks reporting, working with spreadsheets, or thinking about the most impactful angles for our stories. But when a manager recognizes your dedication or part of your work that seemed “invisible” to others, it can be very rewarding. Tell your team when they do a great job, individually but also in broader settings like staff meetings.

“Tell your team when they do a great job, individually but also in broader settings like staff meetings.” Image: Shutterstock

6. Teach colleagues that mistakes are not the end of the world. One of my managers used to say, “If you make mistakes, it’s because you’re working.” I brought that motto to all the teams that I’ve worked in. As humans, we make mistakes. Some teams work many months on large investigations, becoming a kind of expert in some topics and stop seeing the “obvious” elements. Your team needs to feel they can come to you because you are open and you will help them to manage the situation. It is also important to encourage them to bring possible solutions to the table.

7. Not everyone in everything. We all know that time and energy are limited. There are meetings where your entire team needs to be present, and others where just one person is enough. Be efficient and strategic with your team’s time, but also be careful about creating information silos. “Don’t become the bottleneck, or the keeper of information,” advises Obermaier, who collaborates with teams internationally. “Too much one-to-one communication can unintentionally make the leader the newsroom’s information hub: everyone has to come to you to find out what someone else knows. That wastes time and can create unnecessary hierarchies,” he says. Instead he suggests: “Share information openly, encourage reporters to communicate with the whole group when appropriate, and create an environment where people can challenge assumptions and ask even the most basic questions.”

8. Encourage every member of your team to make decisions. Good managers delegate and trust the expertise of the people they hired — and this is especially important if you manage a small team, though it can be something hard to learn for some people. By encouraging members of your team to make decisions and to lead, you are also preparing them for more senior roles or simply helping them in their professional development. For Asraa Mustufa, editorial director at The Examination, managers should see delegation as part of their job: “You likely got your role as a manager because of your good judgment, but that doesn’t mean you should monopolize the thinking,” she says. “Coach your team to think for themselves and you’ll multiply your impact as a leader.”

9. Disconnection matters. Set rules for disconnection. At The Examination, I have asked my team not to have Slack or email on their personal phones. I don’t message or reach out over the weekend or after their working hours unless we have an emergency. Schedule emails if you need to communicate something to your team out of hours.

Often, the best ideas always come to mind when you’re not thinking about them, and to excel, your team needs spare time. Ignacia Velasco, data and research consultant at The Pulitzer Center, says “making time for yourself” is key for the work she does: “You will actually be better at your job if you prioritize your work-life balance and learn how to say ‘no’ when you can’t really handle everything.”

Similarly, it’s great to create focus time for your team by instituting a “no calls day.” Having one day per week with no meetings helps people finish all those things they are unable to do when rushing to meet different deadlines or attend different calls. I always try to avoid meetings on a Friday, for example, to work on this. I have found this as an oasis in my week, where I can take care of what I need to work on to start my weekend lighter.

10. Encourage professional development within your team. Make some room for your team to learn new things, to network, and to apply to fellowships or scholarships. Networking is key for collaborations and new skills are always added value for your newsroom. As Velasco told me: “Taking time to learn is never wasted time; it is an investment that will ultimately benefit both you and your work.” But also don’t think of your team as something static: As journalists, many of us will work in a number of different organizations throughout our careers and for different reasons, some people will leave and others will stay longer. As a manager, you can’t think that people will stay forever. As Prest says: “Don’t try to keep people who are ready to move on. Help your team think about their ambitions and career long term. If you can’t provide the right opportunities or challenges in your organization then support them to find the right role elsewhere.”

11. Managing people is not about becoming a task administrator. Your role is not to assign tasks to people. You need to create a healthy culture where journalists enjoy what they do and feel comfortable working with you and others. Prest adds: “Enthusiasm and energy matter. You are setting the tone for your team. If you love what you do, they are more likely to too. Enthusiasm is contagious.”

12. Don’t take the feedback personally: During my career, I have worked with managers who felt uncomfortable with feedback, but it’s a crucial part of improving how we work. My team knows that I’m open to feedback – good or bad. Not paying attention to something that is not functioning well can snowball long term. Ana Sofía Ruiz, a social and organizational psychologist, once explained to me the concept of fractal to illustrate what happens in some organizations: “What occurs in smallest units of analysis, replicates at a systemic level… To put it simply: Think about organizations as a broccoli. Whatever happens to one of the florets (good or bad) will affect the broccoli as a whole.”

13. Write clear job descriptions for those that you manage: I have worked in organizations where my job description was the same for many years and there were overlaps in responsibilities. There are also cases where people did not know who was responsible for what because no one thought beyond job titles. Having a clear job description for every member of your team is not only good for team dynamics, but it’s also a powerful tool for salary negotiations.

14. Saying ‘I don’t know’ or sharing doubts and difficulties with your team is OK: For Papangeli, “Being the manager doesn’t mean that you have to live on a lonely planet where you are expected to carry everything, absorb every difficulty, and suffer in silence because you are the person in charge. Share things with your team. Be honest when something is difficult, when you are worried, when you have made a mistake or when you don’t know what to do.

15. Reach out to mentors or people in leadership positions to iterate your ideas or get a different perspective: I regularly meet with women running newsrooms to ask for advice when I realize that I need to speak to someone with more experience or when I feel that it’s hard to make a decision. I do the same with Asraa Mustufa, my manager. In our conversations I usually find myself asking questions like: “What do you think? Would you also do this? What are your thoughts?”

Being a manager can sometimes feel like an unrewarding job. Your work can sometimes feel invisible. Your job is to do things that are connected to your expertise, but you are also responsible for setting up processes, boundaries, and an environment that works for everyone. Some of the most powerful investigations that I worked on were run by people who looked beyond journalism. People who cared deeply about other people, who listened carefully to their needs.

As managers, we all make mistakes. We can’t avoid that. And we will continue making them. But, for my part, I’m always thinking about what I have learned from my mistakes to try to be better for my team. The key is to understand that journalism is never about journalism itself. I’ve heard many times that you can’t be a great journalist if you are not a good human being, and while this is true, I would also say that you can’t produce sustainable journalism if you are not a good manager for your team.

Romina Colman is data editor at The Examination. She previously worked as the Latin America data editor at OCCRP, where she led data reporting and strategy for projects in the region. Prior to that, she was part of La Nación’s data team in Argentina, where she coordinated complex data initiatives between nonprofits and the newsroom.