Many first time managers focus on getting a big win instead of taking the time to build ... [+]
Stepping into a management role for the first time can be both exciting and nerve-racking. Managing others involves knowing when to delegate, navigate unique situations, have difficult conversations, develop and coach others, and communicate effectively, to name a few.
Whether you’ve recently joined a company as a people manager or were recently promoted to one, there are many things to know in order to be successful. Your priority now is to support, lead and set your team up for success. It’s no longer solely about completing your own tasks as if you’re an independent contributor. Ramona Shaw, certified professional leadership coach, emphasizes that managers need to understand that their success now depends on their ability to lead and elevate others. While successfully completing their own tasks is what got them promoted, it’s not what will make them a successful manager.
A Harvard Business Review study found that managers spend:
- 54% of their time doing administrative work
- 30% on solving problems and collaborating
- 10% on strategy and innovation
- only 7% developing people and engaging with stakeholders
It raises the question, if managers are only spending 7% of their time developing their people, how are they driving high performance and setting their employees up for success? Neglecting your team is one of the worst things you can do as a manager. When employees feel neglected and unsupported, they’re less likely to go above and beyond for the company. Furthermore, it can lead to tension, decreased productivity, morale, and engagement which creates a dysfunctional and low performing team.
Here are four tips to help you succeed as a first time manager.
Develop A Positive Relationship With Employees
The first plan of action for any new manager should be to take the time to get to know your team. Start by hosting a team meeting where everyone introduces themselves. One way I’ve seen this done was having each person share a 2-3 page powerpoint with pictures and things about them. One slide can be their job title, what they do, what they’re interested in learning career-wise, their background before they came to the company, and why they chose the company. The next slide can be facts about them as a person where they share pictures of their family, hobbies, and more. When a boss of mine had us go through this exercise, the team learned a lot about one another. It helped us find common ground and connect on things outside of work as well as better understand what our peers do at work. This helped to build a sense of camaraderie on the team.
From there, you’ll then set up weekly one-on-one meetings. The first few meetings will be learning how they prefer feedback to be given to them, what motivates them, what their professional interests are, working style, and figuring out how you can best work together. Taking the time upfront to learn about an employee’s working and communication style will help to prevent challenges in the future. Additionally, it builds trust and increases buy-in when changes need to be made.
Your role as a manager is to be a people partner. Partnering with employees means working closely with them to identify their strengths and areas of opportunity, helping them to be more productive and learn new skills, and building strong relationship with a mutual level of respect - all of which drives employee engagement and retention. Moreover, if an employee’s skills aren’t where they need to be, manager’s should understand why that is. Oftentimes, new managers take over a team and are quick to pass judgment on people without first taking the time to understand whether or not they’ve had the proper guidance and support prior to them joining the team.
Don’t Dodge Difficult Conversations
Learning how to have difficult conversations is an invaluable skill for any individual. All managers, regardless of industry, will need to have difficult conversations around an employee’s performance or unique situations at least once in their career. While it may be uncomfortable, when done with empathy, there are benefits such as
- Clearing up any misunderstandings
- Working together to find a solution that works for both you and the employee
- Gaining a better perspective of the person’s concerns, experience or opinion
- Showing it’s okay to disagree
- Building trust and respect with the employee
Shaw asserted, “the biggest mistake I see new managers make is that they avoid or sugarcoat feedback because they don’t want to hurt someone’s feelings or they believe they’re too busy and don't have time for lengthy feedback discussions. As a result, employees aren't clear where they stand, aren't growing as much as they could and it often leads to frustrations on both ends.” She explained, “in addition, the top-performers on the team may be picking up other people's slack and they lose trust in their manager to address the problem.”
Get To Know Processes
Rather than bulldoze the processes that are already in place, first time managers should take the time to figure out what’s working and what’s not. This doesn’t happen overnight. It takes months of observing, learning from employees, and understanding what’s been tried already. From there, managers can identify gaps and design processes and systems to increase productivity and efficiency.
Mark Pierce, CEO of Cloud Peak Law Group advised first time people managers, “don’t try to change things immediately. As a new manager, it can be tempting to come in and create a new system or way of doing things right away. However, before you do this, take some time to get to know your team and really observe how things are working. Once you’ve figured out what truly does and doesn’t work, then you can start to make changes.” Otherwise, you risk losing the trust and respect of your team from the start can be difficult to win back.
Seek Out A Mentor And Understand Your Blind Spots
As a people manager, you’re going to encounter a variety of issues that will be difficult to handle on your own. Thus, having a mentor at work is integral to growing your career. As a new manager, it’s important to have someone you can go to with concerns, questions, guidance, advice, or a fresh perspective on how to handle a situation. Ideally, that mentor would be one’s boss, but the reality is that’s not always the case. This person could be another manager who is peer level, a former boss or senior level person within the company, or someone external to the company. Shaw explained, “when new managers go through this transition without a support system and adequate training, they run the risk of developing ineffective leadership habits which will be difficult to reverse down the road.”
