Three simple recommedations for new (and not so new) managers to succeed.

If the new year brought you a promotion, you have been recently promoted or you have in your plans to become a manager, this might help you.

These are things I have developed myself during several years of managing small and large teams, learning from my own mistakes and from the feedback given by the teams.

The first and more important thing is to realize that there will be nothing you can achieve without your team. In the past you could achieve results base on your own effort and the energy you put to the task at hand, from now on, you are going to achieve results through others and you are as good as your team is. So, picture yourself in a position to work for your team and not otherwise.

Second thing is to be close to your team, in all regards, you need to be there to unblock them in case they find issues while performing their job, support them on the personal side if they need help or protect them from external forces that threaten to distract them from their priorities.

Third is cadence, you need to establish a predictable cadence with your team on governance, administrative tasks and alignment, having a weekly team meeting is from my experience the minimum cadence you need, in that way you can align the different activities that are going on, you can give them the big picture and make sure they understand how their work is aligned to the overall strategy. If the amount of things happening can't be covered in there, you can create other specific forums to cover it (e.g. a meeting focused on quality improvements or Projects review meeting).

There are many other things that you have to take in consideration, like continuous communication, proper governance, time management, adequate processes to support the work and ensure you are always accessible to your teams.

Here you have some actions you can use that might be useful:

• Have a weekly team meeting to discuss metrics, progress on projects or cascade messages
• Have periodic one to one sessions with each of your direct reports, ensure you focus on career discussions, development plans, how they are feeling at work (or at home if they want to share) and how you can support, leave the business as usual things to other kind of sessions.
• Host an informative event on results, challenges and priorities at least on a quarterly basis (with all your team members)
• Work with each of your direct reports on a career plan, so you know what they really want and you can connect them with relevant opportunities, the most productive people is the one working on a job they really like and it connects them with their purpose.
• Give them feedback realtime, ensure you give them feedback almost immediately, otherwise the feedback is not connected with specific behaviors or situations and it is difficult for them to take action later.

Managing a team is an art rather than a science, so you need to be always ready to learn and unlearn, listen a lot and grow along with your them.