| Stepping up from individual contributor to manager is a tricky transition. I’ve seen many new managers make the mistake of stumbling into one of these three traps: 1. The Control Freak Trap You spend a lot of time checking that your team’s work meets your high standards. You end up doing some of their job for them anyway, it’s quicker than trying to explain it. 2. The Solo Player Trap You are mostly rewarded on your own results so spend as little time with your team as you can get away with. You have weekly 1:1s then leave them to it. Some of their performance isn’t up to scratch (these snowflakes are so lazy) but you are too busy to instigate a tedious performance management process. With a bit of luck they’ll get the message and push off, so you can hire a replacement who knows what they are doing. 3. The Mother Hen Trap You book yourself on a Mindful Management course so you can truly nurture your team. You devote yourself to taking care of everyone else’s wellbeing and have cancelled your gym membership and dating apps because you’ve no time for anything but work. Your director wants you to put pressure on under-performers, but you are hopeful that in six months or so they’ll come good. None of these styles work – for you or the people that work for you. They either become overdependent, or frustrated that you won’t let them grow. Here’s how to juggle your own priorities with managing other people: 1. You are a manager, so manage Commit to the role wholeheartedly, don’t shirk from it. The starting point is to ensure everyone in their team knows exactly what they are responsible for, with a crystal-clear job description and key performance indicators. Don’t try and coach inexperienced team members who don’t know what they are doing yet: teach them. Set clear guidelines too – when you expect them to be online, hours of work, response time to emails, meeting etiquette and so on. Lead by example. 2. Get some boundaries You won’t get your own work done if you are constantly interrupted, so put a process in place to make sure your reports don’t hijack your time. Ask them in the morning if they have all they need to get their work done. If you aren’t completely confident in their abilities yet, arrange a check-in later in the day or week (‘Let’s grab five minutes before lunch to catch up’). This should give you – and them – head space to get on with work without interruption. 3. Eliminate some of your own workload You can’t invent more hours. Negotiate what percentage of your week you need to allocate to developing others. How will you create space in your calendar? Some tasks can be delegated to your team. They might not do it as well as you, but a manager’s job is to help others improve performance, not to do everything. 4. Feedback liberally Feedback should be part of everyday conversations, not saved up for appraisals. I don’t mean unspecific ‘awesomes’, but telling people what they did well, so they can repeat it. If you regularly give positive feedback, then negative feedback is no big deal: it’s all handed out with a positive intention to improve output. 5. Trust them so they trust you Don’t feel you need all the answers yourself. Your role is to coach them to come up with the answers. Think bigger and orient yourself on problems that could derail you, not detail. Build a culture of psychological safety so people feel safe to point out potential issues. 6. Move the work along Instead of spending time on small details, focus on making the work more efficient. Can you use your knowledge of the organisation to join the dots for them? Can you speed up decision making or remove friction in the workflow? Push back to other managers when your authority is needed: ‘we can do that project for you, we’ll start it in two weeks once we have completed our current commitments’. Take a tip from sports coaches and look for marginal gains to increase efficiency and performance. |
Management Mistakes: Control Freaks, Solo Players and Mother Hens
