When you want to be a manager: 6 things to consider first
Throughout my career, I have bounced between being an individual contributor to being a people manager. When I was pretty young in my career, I was offered an opportunity to manage a team. I jumped at the chance but I didn’t do so well. I don’t think I had the right mindset to support others. I was finding my own sea legs in the corporate world and didn’t have the maturity to assist others with the same task. While I appreciated the vote of confidence, I made this leap too early in my career.
When conflict arose among the team, I had no clue how to resolve it. When my team needed guidance on something I wanted done, I didn’t know how to communicate expectations and hold accountable so I did all the work myself. When competing priorities came up, I said we needed to do it all and so everyone put in lots of hours.
When I reflect, I find it so interesting that I was in training and development early in my career (a little by accident) and no one thought, including me, that perhaps I should take a manager training course before I manage people. No one mentored me or even set expectations with me about what being a good manager was all about. The focus of performance conversations centered squarely on my projects and goals as an individual contributor. Being a manager was completely ancillary and clearly not even important enough to have a performance expectation penciled in around the edges.
It wasn’t until I had success as an individual professional, had good management modeled for me and had done some training and self-reflection that I consciously decided to become a manager. Even at this point, I would say I had a lot to learn. Being a fairly young manager having to deal with insubordination of one of my team members and a subsequent performance improvement plan certainly helped me jump into the deep end of the pool.
When I look back on that situation, I realize I didn’t have enough emotional intelligence to handle the situation so I went straight to HR. While the insubordination was clearly there, I think that now I could have resolved this without going down the HR path. I just didn’t know the right questions to ask and how to appropriately respond. However, no matter what, always document your conversations if you think you have a performance issue. This can only help give you options down the road. (A tip I have to sneak in here!)
There are six things I wish I would have known or thought about early on to help me choose to be a people manager. And, by the way, this should be a discreet conversation and a conscious decision. I have seen too many times how someone gets promoted without discussing the implications nor expectations of being a manager. This should be part of a career conversation to see if someone wants to truly manage others after describing what that really means.
Balance managing and doing.
This is actually the easiest of the difficult transitions to management. There is an art and science behind balancing your work. I don’t know very many managers who only manage unless you’re high up in an organization and, even then, you are concerned with strategy, budgets, board meetings and relationships. Figuring out how to do your own projects, processes and work while managing the work of others can be challenging. I often see new managers working insane hours to get everything done. The key here is tied to the next consideration. Of the projects you have to manage, is there anything you can delegate? Is there anything you can share or co-manage with another colleague? Can you chunk the work into reasonable deliverables to meet a certain deadline? And, my favorite question, does this project have to be managed by you? Can this be a growth opportunity for someone else to lean into? Good managers have to balance managing and doing. Great managers know when something has to be done by themselves or when they can give someone else a chance to shine.
Be ready to trust and delegate.
Unlike the one above, this consideration is hard to determine if you are truly ready without trying it out in a situation, which I recommend doing. I sometimes think humans are wired to not trust easily. I wish this was different. But, how many of us have thought…this is just too hard to explain. It will be easier or quicker if I just did it myself. While this could be true, it sends the wrong message as a manager. Whether you mean it or not, it says pretty loudly that you don’t trust them to do the work well, quick or as good as you can do it. These messages will slowly erode the relationship you have with your team. Sometimes, it is worth the time to delegate, trust and give feedback. People want to grow and develop. They can’t do that if their manager takes all the work and all the praise.
Learn how to negotiate and compromise.
Yeah..I know. We aren’t talking about sales so why am I mentioning negotiation? As a manager, you are constantly negotiating so you need to be aware of this going in. You negotiate time, money, resources. You negotiate schedules, personal lives and barriers, sick time, vacation time, salaries and bonuses. As a manager, you need to learn how to ask for what you want for your team (and yourself but that’s another post for another time). You need to bargain for deadlines and scope to accomplish in reasonable timeframes. This is a mindset and skill set I oftentimes see skipped. I see some young managers wanting to help people and maybe get into the coaching element, which I will talk about below, but have no idea how much influencing, mediation of ideas, conflict and personalities and true negotiating of time, scope and metrics they need to do. This is a huge job for any manager on behalf of themselves and their team. If you are uncomfortable with this but still want to manage, this is great area for training and coaching for yourself!
Become a coach.
Coaching is not the same as doling out advice. Anyone can give advice. Advice is cheap as they say and it can be awesome or damaging. Coaching is not about sharing all of your wisdom to the young grasshoppers. Coaching is about being present in the moment (so, stop looking at email!), asking thoughtful questions, truly listening to their answers and perhaps guiding them on where to go next or who to speak to next. Coaching is about helping someone improve in a situation. This doesn’t happen through a manager telling them what to do. You might end up there but that is not a place where you start. If you are not willing and desiring to spend time coaching your people, then management is not for you. This is a skill that can be learned. This was my biggest failure as a young manager. I had no idea how to do this. So, I lost the trust of my people, which was hard to get back.
Be an excellent communicator.
This one may go without saying but I am going to say it anyway. The number one skill needing improvement I hear from people across organizations is “communication”. As a manager, communication is critical because you are oftentimes in the middle. You need to communicate to your team, your peers, your peers in other departments, and, of course, up. Sometimes, you need to communicate up and up and up. Most organizations have a few layers to communicate through. Communicating strategy, key initiatives, and implications to the team. Communicating your scope of work, resource needs, timing of things to your peers. Communicating progress, ideas and people development needs up. All of these matter and they take time. Being an excellent communicator is the crux of this role. Keeping everyone informed of what they need to know can only help them do their jobs better. Now, there may be confidential information that cannot be shared with your team or across to your peers. Keeping confidence is equally as important as sharing critical information. Know when to stay silent. That is also part of being a communicator.
Accept that you will need to put others’ needs ahead of your own at times.
Last, but certainly not least, is understanding that, as a manager, it is not all about you. What?! Yes. If you want to be the star of the show every day, then don’t be a manager. While I don’t necessarily think this is right, being a manager can be like the unsung hero sometimes. When you do your job well, no one notices. When you don’t do your job well, then everyone notices. You need to advocate for your team, support them, ask questions and listen, help them find their path, and help them be successful. This is what a truly great manager does. There really is some selflessness involved, which I don’t see talked about much. Some regard this as weak; I say it is the opposite. I wasn’t a good manager when I was young because I was selfish and wanted to hog the spotlight on everything. I needed public accolades to feel good. While I still like to be recognized for my hard or innovative work, I now take more pleasure in hearing a team member or mentee tell me I made a difference in their lives. This should be the goal for any manager.
I know you all have more than these six items to consider. The list could really be quite long but I hate to overwhelm. As you can tell, I think being a great manager is what drives companies to success because they make a difference in individuals’ lives. Organizations are made up of people. They are not entities without faces. Those faces need good managers. Before you consider whether you want to manage or not, think about what that means and what behaviors and mindsets you might need to change. If it’s more money you want, read my post last week. If you want fulfillment in helping others succeed, driving strategy and making an impact, then consider becoming a manager.