Take control
By Ann-Maree Moodie | smh.com.au | 19 September
Credit: istock photos
Despite retrenchments and cut-backs, the world of business still turns and the promotions cycle continues.
And many of those promotions are people becoming managers for the first time. Becoming a first-time manager is a critical opportunity in your career and how you conduct yourself will affect your future career opportunities.
It's no longer about "you and the boss" – now it's about "me and them". At least, that's how many new managers feel because they've been on the other side, quite recently in fact.
So it's a time when you feel everyone is watching your every move – and every mistake. How you assume responsibility, how you exercise your authority and how you convince others to take on and do tasks are only some of the skills you'll need to acquire.
"One of the big issues new managers have is managing the transition from being 'one of the boys' or 'one of the girls' to suddenly being a supervisor," says Dr Paul Nesbit of the Macquarie Graduate School of Management in Sydney, where he teaches personal development for managers.
"The challenge is balancing the differences in those new relationships." New managers often make the mistake of assuming they should know everything – or at least try to fool everyone that they don't need help.
After all, the new title means they must be ready for the job, right? Often that's not the case at all.
"New managers don't want to reveal they're floundering because they think bosses are meant to know everything," Nesbit says.
A good analogy is university lecturing. He says when you start and a student asks something you don't know, you tend to feel bad. "But when you're much more experienced, you're probably more likely to say: 'That's interesting. I didn't know. I'll find out.'
And that's because you feel confident in your own ability." Like university lecturers, managers also have an "audience" that demands leadership, knowledge and attention. For the new manager – or lecturer – this is often daunting.
"It's the emotional dimension of managing people that most people find difficult when they become managers for the first time," Nesbit says. "Generally they've already got the technical expertise, which is what got them into the role in the first place.
But it's the ability to build upon that special technical knowledge and learn to teach, mentor and direct others that will make the difference to how quickly a first-time manager succeeds."
And don't forget this new audience will include a mix of people, including those who are older.
"Younger managers often struggle with managing people who are older than them," Nesbit says. "They are aged in the mid to late-20s and they're supervising people who are in their 40s and 50s.
In addition, they sometimes have to deal with people who didn't get the promotion."
If you're in the role of managing a new manager, there are three common areas you should concentrate your advice: balancing the demands of multiple constituencies, influencing and persuading others and delegation.
"Among all the challenges facing new managers is the need to reconcile different constituencies' expectations and interests," a professor of business administration at Harvard Business School, Linda Hill, says.
Learning to manage the different perspectives of direct reports, peers, bosses and customers is challenging. The new manager's boss will probably find it best to mentor through these issues as they occur.
"The second key issue is that many new managers don't realise there are numerous sources of power besides formal authority, such as expertise, appealing personal qualities, position in key networks and visibility," Hill says.
Those who oversee first-time managers should help them identify those people or groups whose co-operation is essential. Finally, delegation is a new skill that, while essential, is often the task that causes the most angst.
"New managers make common delegation mistakes, such as delegating too much or too little and failing to follow up after a task has been delegated," Hill says. But above all these issues is work-life balance.
"First-time managers want to impress so much they work long hours and this affects other aspects of their lives," Nesbit says.
Ann-Maree Moodie is the managing director of The Boardroom Consulting Group.
Are you a new manager? How's it going? Tell us at mycareer.com.au/vote
First published by Smh.com.au on September 19 2009
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