Moving into Management - What You Need To Know

Moving into Management

Moving into a management position for the first time should be a positive and exciting time, whether it’s the result of performance recognition leading to internal promotion or because of a bold step to progress up the career ladder by moving companies.?However, it can also prove to be daunting with the prospect of additional responsibilities and a sudden expectation that as a manager you should know more/ perform better than everyone else to justify your place.

And that’s at best – at worst, if someone isn’t prepared for the transition, it can lead to major problems for both the new manager and their team.

But if you’ve just stepped up or you’re about to promote someone to a management position for the first time and are worried if it’s the right move, remember – management is just a skill that needs to be learnt and developed in the same way you would any other personal or professional skill.?You wouldn’t send someone out on sales call without adequate sales training, and so you shouldn’t expect someone to know how to ‘manage’ others without management training.?If you take that approach, then a move into management can be that positive constructive step for both individual and organisation.

So how can you ensure you, or someone you are promoting/ employing, are ready for the additional responsibilities of management??

Investing in an in-depth management training courses is a great long-term option which shows your commitment to developing your employees however these usually requires weeks of learning and can be costly.?As a more practical alternative in the short term, we advise getting practical people management skills training in place, to get the managerial journey off to the best start.

In this piece we’ll introduced some of the things someone in a supervisory or managerial role needs to know and understand.?We cover these and more in our one day ‘Moving into Management one day course’.

Expectations of the company:

Whilst all employees are expected to adhere to company policies, as a manager you’re entrusted with additional layers of authority to represent the business and to behave accordingly.?For example:

If you’re likely to have access to more personal information than before - are you aware of rules of data handling and GDPR (for more on this see our Data Protection & GDPR training course).

Are you ready to lead by example when it comes to the company rules and policies – you may need to manage team members who struggle to follow the rules and it’s a lot harder to do, if you don’t maintain certain standards yourself.

The scope of the role:

As a manager, you take on additional responsibilities beyond the ‘technical’ aspects of your role and you become responsible for other people.?Consideration should be given to training in the following people management skills (Our Moving into Management course offers an introduction to these topics, but we also offer focused one day courses in each area):

• Managing performance – and underperformance, including delivering performance appraisals
• Dealing with capability issues
• Selection and recruitment
• Delegation
• Communication
• Coaching

In addition to our Moving into Management course, new managers may benefit from our HR for Non-HR Managers course, which introduces the legal framework and obligations side of managing people (such as Disciplinary and Grievance procedures) and in an easy-to-understand way.

Understanding management style

Everyone is different.?Everyone will have a different style of management, and everyone requires managing in a slightly different way.?Being aware of your own natural management style can help you understand how and why people respond to you they way they do – particularly if you’re not getting the response you want or expect.?Understanding how people prefer, or need, to be managed is also important in achieving the desired results.?Some people, for example, prefer a more direct approach whilst other need to feel empowered to make their own decisions.

Communication

Communication is not just verbal – your tone of voice and body language say just as much, if not more than the actual words you use so consider how you actually come across when communicating with your team.

Also, it’s important to remember that communication is also not just one-way.?Effective listening is a skill that can, amongst other things, help you identify and resolve issues before they become a problem.

Taking the approach that management is a skill that needs to be learnt will give individuals the confidence to take that step and increase the likelihood of it being a successful move.

It will also allow organisations to confidently promote from within which brings multiple benefits including improved staff motivation and engagement, enhanced succession planning capability and reduced costs of external recruitment.

Our Moving into Management course covers all of the above in more details and provide practical skills to take into the workplace.

For more details on our Moving into Management course, HR for Non-HR Managers course or any of our people management courses, contact us via our online form or give us a call on 01794 329470.