You have just been promoted to a management slot and suddenly you are responsible for the welfare and productivity of a whole unit. Your success is suddenly dependent on variables outside of your own personal domain and a new set of eyes is turning to you for guidance and support.
Successful management requires skills entirely separate from the job skills that got you promoted. In all likelihood, you have demonstrated these skills during the course of your career in order to secure the promotion in the first place. However, it helps to pinpoint exactly what it is that will be required of you in this new role and to armour yourself with all the skills you will need in order to succeed as a manager.
The career experts at Bayt.com have identified some key tips to help you with this transition into a management slot and guide you through the first few months as you assume your new responsibilities.
This is best done well before you assume your new role. Arriving on the first day game-plan intact allows you to firmly and solidly start making your mark without appearing hesitant and indecisive to the team.
Take time off in between roles to brainstorm and plan ahead with a clear mind. Start by researching the new role in detail. If the promotion involves a move to a new company, get all the information you can on the company, the industry and the people you will work with. Learn about the company's reputation in its industry and its competitive positioning. Has the company/ unit been losing ground to its competitors? If so, why? Are others in the industry diminishing your market share through innovations, cost advantages or pricing strategies? How effective does the company's marketing strategy appear to be? You will also want to know how your own unit is faring both within the organization and in relation to competitors outside of the organization.
Once you have a good feel for the terrain, you can start formulating a rough gameplan for the first few months. Does your research indicate that your unit needs change? What changes do you anticipate making and in what time frame? Your gameplan should incorporate goals defined for you by your own manager as discussed during the interview stage as well as enhancements you yourself anticipate making. Plan for the now as well as for the intermediate and long term. This plan will be revised a multitude of times as you assume your role and learn more about the company and unit, but it helps tremendously to have a rough framework to build on. The more you can learn about the product/service, company, industry and team at this stage, the more you can anticipate your role and plan ahead.
Start as you mean to carry on. It is ideal if your game plan can include guidelines for a successful project that your team can start implementing immediately. An early success will boost the team's morale and establish you as a successful leader early on. Choose this first project carefully and plan for it to involve the whole team. Make sure the project is one that carries a very low risk of failure while having high visibility and a clear value-added to the rest of the company. It can be a new mandate or client you are quite confident of winning, improved customer service, increased sales or the implementation of a new system you are already familiar with. Whatever you choose make sure the success milestone is quite achievable. Also ensure that you yourself will play a role and exhibit effective leadership skills throughout the course of the project. Upon completion however, give the whole team credit and play down your own involvement to maximize their sense of accomplishment and their pride in their success. Emphasize the difficulty and importance of the project so that the team will feel a heightened sense of achievement and will have more confidence in your leadership.
Your first few weeks on the job should be about getting to know your team and the role of your unit within the organization. Meet your team members in one-to-one meetings and get to know what each person does, what their personal goals and ambitions are, what their skills are, how challenged they are in their role, what problems they have had in the past, what they would like to see done differently and what they expect from their manager. These meetings should give you a general grasp of each person's competence and attitude, both crucial variables in deciding who you want to keep and who needs special attention. As you assess the skills of each of your team members, ask yourself how you can build and capitalize on these strengths to help the unit and challenge the team. These meetings are also crucial in getting you in the habit of listening to your people. In any organization, the people are the most important asset and a good manager will maintain a constant unhampered dialogue with his people that wins their trust and loyalty and ensures they are inspired to work at their optimal level of productivity.
A team with a well defined set of objectives and a clear sense of the unit's value system works better than a team engaged in an endless array of daily tasks. Defining your team's 'mission' successfully should include both a set of solid, quantitative objectives as well as a less easily defined framework of shared 'values'.
The solid objectives may include goals such as increasing sales by10% per annum, creating a new product or service, or providing a low cost solution to a client/company problem. However these solid goals are not enough to sustain growth momentum in the long run. To ensure maximum resilience in the long run, successful organizations invest just as much in establishing a value structure for their organization. What are the set of beliefs or what is the 'spirit' that will appeal to your team and that will ensure their maximum loyalty, flexibility and productivity? What unified sense of purpose or 'philosophy' can you build into the overall framework to boost morale and lift the team's spirit? True long-term success will be achieved if beyond communicating clear quantitative performance targets, you can unify your team behind a common philosophy and give them a sense of true pride and accomplishment as they work towards some common purpose. Your unit's mission and value structure should be defined such that at the end of the day, everyone takes a special pride in their work and feels like a winner.
The best leaders lead by example. Confidence, integrity, fairness and a strong work ethic of your own are critical to your winning the respect and loyalty of your team. You will then need a clear vision, solid administrative skills, open communications channels, flexibility and a good understanding of all the different personalities that work for you in order to ensure that the team is challenged and working towards some common goal. Remember that the team is always looking for the precedent set by yourself and exhibit the skills, attitude and work ethic you would like to foster in them. A good manager will, by example, motivate and inspire his team to be the best that they can be and will give them the opportunity to showcase their skills and contribute to the welfare of the overall organization. Flexibility is key in bringing out the initiative of each individual team member; by allowing them to step outside the narrow confines of their daily routines you nurture their creativity and independence and increase their productivity. The best leaders are capable, through their own example, and through guidance, positive reinforcement and inspiration rather than domination, of bringing out the dormant talents and latent capabilities of their team members and thereby improving the productivity of the organization.
