Welcome to Management
Dave Parkin
Transformational Leader - Management Consultant, specialising in Consultancy, C-Level Advisory, Transformation, Behavioural Change, and Managed IT Services
Many recently appointed managers don’t understand their new jobs.
Many new managers don’t know much about their new jobs or responsibilities. As a freshly minted boss, do you know what you’re supposed to do? Do you know what your bosses and the employees you supervise expect? Almost certainly, they expect considerably more than you can imagine or offer at this stage.
“If…you’ve just been promoted and are in a new management position, congratulations. You are now the subject of the dinner table conversations of every person who reports to you.”
The shift from acting as a member of your team to leading it is a major – and often unsettling – transition.
As a new manager, don’t become the latest example of the “Peter Principle.”
The Peter Principle, outlined by best-selling management author Laurence J. Peter, holds that, in hierarchal systems, people achieve promotion up to their individual “level of incompetence.” Put another way: Individuals rise up through their organization’s hierarchy until such time as the company moves them into a higher-status job for which they lack the necessary skills. At that point, those previously successful employees begin to perform poorly.
“If you want to remain working for your current company (and…boss), then you should be focused on two things: 1) serving the people you lead, and 2) helping your boss be successful.”
However, if you’re willing to do the hard work necessary to become a leader, you can excel. The first step is to make the transition from “team member to team leader.” Next, you need a sound plan for achieving your primary management duties. Consider three important priorities for any manager, old or new:
- Supporting your employees and customers – These are your two most important audiences. Also, take good care of your immediate supervisor.
- Maintaining a high level of talent among your employees – Talented employees make all the difference. As management author and retired US Army four-star general Stanley McChrystal explains, “It’s not tactics, not strategy; it’s always about the people.”
- “Managing the metrics that matter” – Start with accurate performance statistics for the employees you lead.
Before you can lead others, you must be able to lead yourself.
Learning to lead yourself means becoming aware of “how you learn, what you learn [and] who you learn from.” For professionals of all types, learning requires study and extensive practice. For example, professional athletes train constantly, so they can perform like superstars during games. Author Ryan Hawk’s brother, A.J. Hawk, was an award-winning American college football player and a first round draft pick for the National Football League’s Green Bay Packers. Nevertheless, he spent hours reviewing the smallest nuances of the technical aspects of his on-field role, trying as hard as any rookie to perfect his game.
“It’s about the tiny details consistently worked on every day, so they become instincts. In the moment, you don’t have to think; you can just rely on the instincts you created.” (A.J. Hawk)
Focus on leading and improving yourself before you turn your attention to the people you manage. Concentrate on two areas:
- “Building skills” – The skills that enabled you to move into management are usually not the skills – or not all the skills – you need to become a quality manager. You’ll need new skills to lead your employees to become top performers. To develop these skills, become a “self-driven learner.”
- “Earning credibility” – Being named the boss doesn’t mean your team will automatically grant you respect and trust; you have to earn it. To establish credibility with your team, demonstrate the behaviors you want them to emulate.
Managers need self-awareness.
Learning and growth begin with self-awareness. Who are you? Are things good or bad for you, or somewhere in between? Are you emotionally and mentally ready to lead? Writing in the Harvard Business Review, Tasha Eurich, the author of Insight, describes two categories of self-awareness you must develop:
- “Internal self-awareness” – You must understand your personal values, ambitions, alignment with your company, emotions and effect on those around you.
- “External self-awareness” – You should recognize how the team members you lead perceive you.
Eurich states that 95% of people believe they have excellent self-awareness, but only 10% to 15% are genuinely self-aware. And so, she writes, “80% of us are lying to ourselves about whether we’re lying to ourselves.”
“The best performers observe themselves closely. They…monitor what is happening in their own minds, and ask how it’s going. Researchers call this metacognition – knowledge about your own knowledge, thinking about your own thinking. Top performers do this …systematically” (author Geoff Colvin)
Self-assessment tests can help you gain the self-awareness you need as a manager. Such tests include the Hogan Personality Inventory, the Hexaco Personality Inventory and Strengths Finder 2.0 from Gallup.
Become a “learning machine.”
Great leaders are thoughtful, deliberate learning machines. They grow by thinking about what they learn and analyzing it purposefully. They value fresh information.
“In my whole life, I have known no wise people who didn’t read all the time. None, zero.” (Charlie Munger, vice chairman, Berkshire Hathaway)
College professor Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain exemplifies a dedicated learning machine. He joined the US Army during the American Civil War with no military experience. He believed he could teach himself what he did not know and trusted the depth of his own curiosity and will.
By the time of the Battle of Gettysburg, the Civil War’s most brutal engagement, Chamberlain was a colonel, commanding the 20th Maine Volunteer Infantry Regiment. Many historians contend that a brilliant, totally unexpected tactical move Chamberlain made with his Maine troops saved the Army of the Potomac and made the Union victorious in this tide-turning battle. Gettysburg put the Union Army on a path to eventual victory over the Confederate Army.
Chamberlain and his Maine soldiers commanded Little Round Top, a small hill on the battlefield. They ran out of ammunition. Everyone in Chamberlain’s regiment knew that the Confederate troops below them would soon attack. Most commanders in this dire situation would order a quick retreat, but such a move would have left the Union Army’s left flank exposed to attack.
Instead, Chamberlain ordered his troops to attack the enemy soldiers at the bottom of Little Round Top. This turned out to be one of the most famous counterattacks in military history. Even without bullets, the Mainers could still fight. Chamberlain ordered them to “affix bayonets” to their empty rifles and race down the hill to confront the 15th Alabama Regiment.
Chamberlain’s bold gambit worked: He and his men took many of the Alabama soldiers as prisoners. Those they didn’t capture fled the battlefield. How did Chamberlain, a man with no military experience or training, pull off one of the most amazing tactical victories in the history of warfare?
His snap decision in the heat of battle was the culmination of this former professor’s life as a “self-driven learner.” Before he became a Union officer, Chamberlain set out to read all the military-strategy books he could locate. When he joined the army, he asked to share a tent with West Point graduate Adelbert Ames, so he could learn about military strategy and command from someone who had received the nation’s best military education. Chamberlain recalled that he questioned Ames nightly, so he might benefit from Ames’s knowledge.
New managers require self-discipline and tough-mindedness.
Learning is only the beginning. New managers need self-discipline to translate what they learn into “tangible change” and to make tough decisions.
“It is through self-discipline that one ‘is a master of, rather than a slave to, his thoughts and emotions.’” (baseball mental skills coach Harvey Dorfman)
Develop self-discipline by instituting a personal regimen. Set an early time to get up every morning. Don’t sleep through the alarm. As soon as you are up, exercise. Plan your diet so you eat only nutritious foods. Always do the tough things, not the easy ones.
To help your team excel, create a positive environment and help sustain a nourishing corporate culture.
A great team requires a great corporate culture that features mutual reliance, openness and a shared sense of shaping that culture. As anthropologist Clifford Geertz explains, people create culture via their interactions and the tapestry of connections, trust, esteem and decency that emerges.
“Excellent leaders get results. If the coach loses too many games, he gets fired. Regardless of the sport, this is a certainty. Likewise, in business: A leader who fails to produce results will soon find herself no longer leading her team.”
As a young officer, McChrystal drew assignment to an Army Ranger unit. Soon after his arrival, a corporal – an enlisted man several ranks below him – approached McChrystal and said, “Sir, we don’t do that here.” McChrystal had his hand in his pocket or was unknowingly violating a similar unspoken rule. He explains that in other units a corporal would have felt intimidated about speaking to an officer, but in Ranger culture, no one is above the unit’s measures of behavior; everyone must live up to them.
As a new manager, be aware that everything you do helps build team culture and spirit. To succeed:
- Promote a psychologically safe environment.
- Hire intelligently. This is your most important managerial activity.
- Smart hiring requires smart interviewing. Ask follow-up questions to go beyond the pat responses many job applicants offer. “Why?” is a great question, or “then what happened?” or “what did you learn from that?”
- Develop positive habits.
- To be a great communicator, become a great listener.
- Work on your public speaking skills. The ability to speak well, especially spontaneously, opens a broader career path – perhaps more effectively than any other skill.
- Confront bad news right away.
- Preparation, which builds momentum, is the best way to deal with fear.
- The way you speak to your team can be as important as what you say.
- Don’t micromanage. Delegate.
- Make meetings purposeful.
- Coach your people. Your best employees welcome coaching and training.
- Always seek feedback.
- Learn to manage resources, even limited resources, and to get your job done in the face of challenges or lack of support from your organizational system.
- If you must fire someone, be ready, open and direct.
- Develop agility; great managers handle change well.
- Hanging onto your role today shouldn’t be your goal for tomorrow. Strive for more.
- As a manager, your employees’ results are your results.
Great managers are problem-solvers who want their people to succeed.
Effective managers are honest about the world around them, their organization’s issues, and their own challenges, strengths and weaknesses. To improve yourself and your team, you need an expansive mind-set, humility, a sense of curiosity and a willingness to empower your employees.
“Great leadership is about solving problems. Run toward the problems, and work to solve them.” (Carly Fiorina, former CEO of Hewlett-Packard)
As you become a more seasoned manager, work on incremental self-improvement. Expand your capacity; seize the opportunity to learn at work and at home. Consider mastering another language, traveling somewhere new or learning to play a musical instrument. Keep growing.
Bentley Moore Executive
We hope that you found this summary both insightful and of use.
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About the Author
Ryan Hawk, the head of Brixey & Meyer’s leadership advisory practice, hosts The Learning Leader Show, a podcast that is popular in 150 countries.