10 tips for first time managers [infographic]
No longer is your success dependent on your performance. How hard and effectively you work doesn’t determine how success full you will be.
Welcome to your first management role.
Many people find this transition the most difficult of their career. Generally people are promoted to a management role because individually they are high performers. Management requires a very different skill set.
It’s no longer your individual task performance that counts, it’s the aggregate performance of your team. Their success is your success. Their missed target is your miss target. You need to realign how you think about where you will spend your time and what your most valuable work is.
The infographic from Acuity Training below gives 10 key areas to focus on. However, if there is one key change you must make it is the change of perspective.
Previously you needed to worry about your specific job and to ensure that you reported up to your manager so that he or she knew what was going on.
You now need to take a much broader view.
- Manage up as well as down
Yes you need to understand what each of your reports is doing but you also need to think about how your team fits with the rest of the organisation. You need to start managing upwards as well so that people senior to you understand what your team contributes to the organisation and also so that your can access corporate resources as effectively as possible.
- Think strategically
The odds are that before you were a manager you didn’t worry too much about your company’s strategy. While it was interesting to know, it generally didn’t particularly impact you day-to-day. That has all changed.
It is now critical that you understand how your team fits into the business’s strategy and that you start thinking longer term about how your team can contribute towards the business’s strategic goals.
Management is enormously rewarding when you get it right. The satisfaction of seeing your team happy and performing well is far greater than the satisfaction from an individual achievement. So don’t let this put you off. Just remember that management is tough so it’s going to take some time and coaching before you master it.
