Taking on a management role can be exciting and challenging. Being promoted and trusted to lead employees who will depend on your leadership to help them contribute to the team’s success is important. However, the challenge is in learning and effectively applying the skills to be successful as a new manager.
The following are some suggestions of how to refine your leadership abilities and effectively lead a team.
Start Preparing Before You’re Promoted
If you’re working hard to eventually get promoted to manager, make sure you’re learning about leadership and management. Develop a learning plan and commit to it.
If you’ve already been promoted and don’t feel prepared to become a manager, use whatever time you can to learn about these important topics:
- The job and your team – Interview your predecessor if possible. If not, try to talk with the predecessor’s co-workers.
- Leadership – Check with your HR department about training resources. Talk to an experienced co-worker. Hire a coach. Read books, articles and blogs. Watch videos or take an online course.
Make a Good First Impression
If possible, before your start date, get clearance from your boss and the new team’s current manager to schedule an interview with each direct report. During introductions, express your excitement about getting the job and being their new manager. Ask them to describe their current job, history with the company and career journey.
This interaction can give you and your team members a chance to make good first impressions and get the transition off to a great start.
Recalibrate Your Comfort Zones
With management authority and responsibility for the work of others, you’ll have to adjust your behaviors and attitudes toward your co-workers. You’ll need to learn new skills, unlearn others and adjust your comfort levels to align with your new leadership role. Here are some key areas to consider.
- Establish Boundaries – Adjust to the boundaries of your new managerial role. You can still have genuinely warm and friendly relations with direct reports. You will also have to learn to be comfortable giving adverse feedback and making objective decisions regardless of who it affects. Learn to avoid situations that could create appearances of favoritism.
- Exercise Authority – You may initially experience hesitancy or discomfort asserting authority. Hesitation can produce vague expectations and frustration for you and direct reports. Balance authority to get results without lording over others.
- Address and Resolve Issues – You can’t avoid addressing problems for fear of conflict or hurting someone’s feelings. Would it be OK to neglect any other key part of your job? Effective management requires the will to have difficult conversations, make unpopular decisions and sometimes upset people.
- Let Go of Your Old Job – Remember, you’re not doing your old job, so leave the details to your team. Focus broadly on what they are achieving daily and whether they are meeting their goals, which you have a stake in. Coach them to be successful.
Take These Tips to Heart
The following tips are crucial to effective and supportive management.
- Get to Know Your Employees Well – Spend time to learn team members’ strengths, weaknesses, jobs, career goals, likes and dislikes. Also, try to learn about their personal lives such as the names of their family members, where they live and other important details about them. This will help build a solid foundation of trust.
- Learn and Practice Active Listening – If you had to pick just one skill important to your success as a manager, that would be active listening, which is considered the most important skill to master as a leader.
- Master Situational Leadership – This is another must-have talent, as managing each employee based on how much direction they need is part of supporting a team.
- Treat Each Employee Respectfully – By treating everyone with dignity and respect, you’ll reinforce your own self-respect.
- Empower Employees by Asking for Their Opinions – Ask employees “what do you think?” Seeking employees’ ideas and feedback is a display of respect and empowers them to solve their own problems.
- Stay Involved and Engaged – The more visible and available their manager is, the more motivated team members will be to do good work and feel they are part of something bigger than themselves.
Learn more about Lamar University’s Online Bachelor of Business Administration in Management program.
Sources:
Ask a Manager: Advice for First-Time Managers
The Balance Careers:
15 Tips for New Managers
First Day Success Manual for New Managers
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