Becoming a New Manager, What Should I Do?

Becoming a new manager who has to lead team is not easy. You have to adapt with new role (e.g: new job, more responsibility, managing people) and higher expectation from le bosses. You have to deliver but now it will depend from other people. You want to prove to your team (and everyone) you deserve this promotion, and even though you are new — you are capable.

First issue that you may find is pace and knowledge gap between you and team. You want to run, but your team still walk. You want to complete everything tomorrow, but your team even has no idea how to start it. It is your 1st task to solve as new manager 💪 How to work as a team!

Here are some tips that you can check!. I didn’t do all of them when I was promoted as (new) Manager on 2013. But, if someone asks me what I will do differently, then here they are:

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• You need to learn about your team. Get to know about their job, their motivation to work, characteristic, strength, and area of improvement. Building a bonding with them will help you to understand each other. Ask them about their expectation, and then share them also about your expectation. Ensure that you and team are actually on the same page.
• Do a regular and constant one-on-one. Now, I run it weekly for work related and monthly for mentoring/coaching session. We will talk about project, risk, and help they need from me in weekly update. While in monthly, we will talk about anything they want to discuss.
• Decide what will be you leadership style. Will you do telling/directing, coaching, supporting, or delegating? I always did directing. Somehow, it was the fastest way to solve everything. You tell the team what they need to do and how to do it. It might be effective in the beginning when your team members are fresh graduate (or new with their job), but actually it prevents them to grow. They will become dependent on you and won’t dare to take decision by themselves. My suggestion is do directing if the task is related to time-sensitive, else coaching them. Since you already get to know with your team, you can decide what will be the best approach. If you have newbie in team, you might do directing in the beginning, but remember they deserve to grow faster — and directing method won’t work for this. Based on book ‘The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever (Michael Bungay Stanier), there are 7 essential questions that you can ask to the team when they come to you ask advice:
  1) What’s on your mind?
  2) And what’s else?
  3) What’s the real challenge here for you?
  4) What do you want?
  5) How can I help?
  6) If you’re saying yes to this, what are you saying no to?
  7) What was most useful for you?
• Put yourself in their shoes! And you can do different approach to your team to deliver the goals. Spend time more to listening than talking — I am still trying until now, it’s tough 👀. Keep trying to understand your team feeling. By showing your empathy, everyone will feel like a team and increase their bounding, trust, and happiness

Nobody cares how much you know until they know how much you care — Theodore Roosevelt

• Find ‘your why’ as a leader. This purpose will help you to pass all the journey. When I promoted as new manager, I got a session from HR ‘how to become a good manager’. The facilitator asked me (and all the participants) what is your purpose as a leader . I shared mine and I still keep it till now. And I believe the way to make it happened is by building a ‘delivered’ team and ensure they are working happily.

“I want to create another leader!” — my leadership purpose

• Giving & Asking Feedback! Everyone wants to improve themself. And it’s one of your job to improve your team. To give them an ‘aha’ moment, giving your feedback directly after the occasion. If you delay them, the impact will be less. Be specific — to the point and share them the why you think you need to give this kind of feedback to them. If it is ‘negative’ feedback, ensure to do it 1o1. Don’t forget also, to ask feedback to your team, let them know, that you are open for any feedback, not only when we do it in performance review.

Enjoy the journey (as Manager & Leader)! It will be superb and fun! 🤘

Leadership is something you earn, something you’re chosen for. You can’t come in yelling, ‘I’m your leader!’ If it happens, it’s because the other guys respect you.” — Ben Roethlisberger, Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback