Ready For Management? A Breakdown on Expectations
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For many professionals, the role of a manager is considered the ultimate pursuit. The ability to lead a team, build a department, or provide input on strategy are all exhilarating aspects of the role that ignite that spark of interest.
This interest is made apparent to me every day. When professionals reach out to me on LinkedIn, through these articles, or in person, the most often asked question of me, by far, is how I made the transition into a management role.
I believe there are two key components to effectively address this question. To make this as widely applicable to everyone reading this, it will be less about my specific journey and more about the best practices I gathered along the way. The first part revolves around the roadmap itself, which encompasses the skills acquired and the experience gained during the journey toward a management position. For the second part, it's about grasping a set of unwritten rules a manager is expected to fulfill. These unwritten rules are what I'm going to discuss with you all today, as getting this right is the difference between a good manager and a great one.
Like it or not, you'll have to display potential in these unwritten rules to decision makers even before you become a manager. So, while reading today, pause every now and then and gauge how you measure up in your current role.
But before we begin, I want to clarify one key detail first to ensure that expectations are managed.
It’s A Different Job Entirely
The role of manager is vastly different to what you’ve come to expect in your role as individual contributor. From the day-to-day responsibilities to the mindset needed to excel in the role, it’s best to treat the two as two separate tracks.
To provide some perspective, it's worth noting that not all managers necessarily earn more than individual contributors. In many instances, you'll encounter professions where individuals who do not manage people directly may earn as much or even more than people in managerial roles, including some department heads. This underscores the importance of approaching the managerial role for the right reasons.
Great managers are motivated by the right reasons. They possess a profound passion for and sense of responsibility in guiding and nurturing the growth of their team members, helping them evolve into leaders in their own right. For some, they deeply care about the progress of their company and understand how their department contributes to the larger organizational picture.
The role of a manager can often be a thankless one. Exceptional managers are okay with this and are comfortable with not seeking the limelight when things go well. They willingly accept accountability when things go awry and responsibility is warranted.
5 Key Expectations For Managers
If you have read the above and have fully grasped that management is an entirely different type of animal and feel you have what it takes to pursue it for your career, you're off on the right foot!
Your next step is to avoid the mistakes managers have been making for generations and enter the role with the right skills, experiences, and, most importantly, the correct mindset.
In my opinion, there are five areas you have to hit right out of the park in order to be a great manager. Let's start with one that many find the most challenging to get right.
They Know How To Delegate
New managers often struggle with the idea of letting go of their previous workload. Even after a recent promotion to a managerial position with several direct reports, they may attempt to carry their existing work alongside their new responsibilities.
When seeing this on your screen, I’m hoping you can quickly see why this would be an issue. For one, the new manager is starting their role on the wrong foot by spreading themselves too thin. This approach risks diminishing the quality of their work or, worse, quickly leads to burnout as they strive to maintain their accustomed standards.
Also, the new manager does a significant disservice to their team by restricting their opportunities for growth and the chance to take on new responsibilities. This approach also ingrains bad habits in the manager, slowly pushing them towards becoming a micromanager—a situation that's detrimental both for their team and themselves.
Exceptional managers prioritize the delegation of lower-value tasks that consume a significant portion of their time. They pass these tasks to team members who are not only willing but also capable of handling them effectively.
A good way to test if you’re ready to take on a managerial role is to assess your comfort level when it comes to delegating tasks to your colleagues. If your initial reaction to this idea is defensive or resistant, consider this as a clear signal that there might be a gap in your readiness. One of the most efficient paths to personal and professional growth involves shedding existing responsibilities and embracing newer, more challenging, and strategic ones.
They Know How To Asses Talent
Good managers make it a priority to build relationships with their direct reports, with a key focus on encouraging and motivating them to be productive and keep morale high. Managers who stop here are leaving so much on the table in creating a high-performing team.
Exceptional managers also place an emphasis on these areas but take it a step further by deep-diving into their existing talent pool and evaluating them based on factors relevant to performing at a high level. They use tools such as a skills matrix to measure not only what success looks like for them but also to provide a crystal-clear roadmap for their people.
In my opinion, every team has people who fall under various segments of performance:
A players - The high performers on the team
B Players - Average to above average performers on your team
C Players - People who are not carrying their wait on the team.
Great managers segment their talent and try to correct/weed out C players while relentlessly nurturing their A and B players.
This skill may be even more important when looking to grow your team. Managers tend to treat the hiring process as a chore and don't spend the appropriate amount of time and effort throughout application selection, the interview process, and eventual onboarding. This lack of effort results in a less-than-stellar filtering process, potentially leading to a team without the appropriate skills and a poor fit for the company culture. Great managers start and execute the hiring process as a chance to better their teams. More specifically, they continuously build a pipeline of A and B players. In fact, I would say every new hire, regardless of whether it's a new headcount or a replacement, should be the new benchmark against which all future and existing employees are measured.
They Think More Broadly
Too often, and painfully so, managers tend to focus on controlling the area strictly above and below them. Mostly, this is due to a lack of experience and generally being excited about taking on a role with greater influence and a suite of direct reports.
Why is this a problem? There are a couple of reasons:
In an effort to build stronger connections with their direct reports, managers end up assuming the role of a protector. Aggressively negotiating on their behalf to ensure they are not overloaded with work, have the best outcomes, and are continuously happy working for them. While these can be positive things, many managers go overboard, which ends up stifling team growth and, as you might expect, results in a gradually unhappy team.
By looking only at the layer of impact directly in front of them, managers end up missing opportunities that can bring forth strong growth, new challenges, and better relationships with adjacent functions. This is not great for the team, and it's not great for the company.
To avoid this from happening to you on your journey as a manager, plan to approach things broadly. Here's a common one to put things into perspective: Don't get defensive around new work or the potential for bigger and more complex assignments coming your team's way. Dissect why this work is important and truly gauge if it makes sense to live with your team. When confronted with any kind of dilemma, your objective should be to seek the larger perspective to identify solutions and challenges that can benefit not only your department but also upstream, downstream, and adjacent functions within the company.
They Think In Systems
It always surprises me to see managers in action who think with an activity-based mindset. They go about their day, working with their teams, completing one task after the next, thinking that a steady stream of completion is a sign of ultimate progress.
These same managers fail to see the bigger picture. Most of the time, this is due to a lack of systems thinking. The function these managers are building can and should be thought of as a system, one of many systems that fit into a greater whole, which is the company.
When thinking in systems as a manager, a few positive things begin to take shape and accelerate:
You begin to tackle decisions that impact more than just your team and function. This one is massive. There is nothing that creates a multiplier effect like making decisions that benefit more than one function or team.
You avoid missing things by actively looking with a wider scope. How often are requirements missed or risks not properly assessed because a team was looking through only a single perspective? This gets corrected with systems thinking.
With the risk of sounding like a broken record, it allows you to see the bigger picture and how your system fits within the whole.
Great managers understand that activity-based thinking is far inferior to systems thinking.
They Offer Unbiased & Direct Feedback
Nothing is more stress-inducing for a new manager than giving feedback to their teams, especially when that feedback is a course correction mechanism for an under performer.
Managers need to confront this fear head-on and become comfortable with providing feedback directly and proactively. Delaying or diluting feedback is not a beneficial approach. Here are the main reasons for this:
You're doing your direct report who is underperforming a disservice. Sugarcoating your feedback to them robs them of the ability to be aware of the issue, let alone correct it.
Lack of feedback, especially to under performers, will lead to more issues down the line, resulting in you having to focus more of your attention on them. This not only stops you from working on higher-value tasks but also strips you of your ability to work with the high performers on your team. You can only spread yourself so thin.
Remember, when providing any type of feedback, it’s essential to be not only transparent but also unbiased. Using the underperforming employee as an example, present facts regarding the approach the employee took, including the outcomes achieved and why these resulted in their poor performance. Then, follow this up with coaching, offering suggestions for improvement if applicable.
The best way to set the stage for this is by establishing specific performance standards for your team and adhering to them. Use these standards as the guiding principles for giving praise, implementing course corrections, and everything in between.
I discuss setting standards in more detail in this article:
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Conclusion
The role of a manager is definitely fulfilling and a worthy pursuit for those looking to make the jump. I hope this article helped provide clarity on what to expect when taking your first management position, and more importantly, what you need to do to thrive in this role.
Remember, being a manager is completely different from that of an individual contributor. If you go in with the right expectations and acquire the necessary skills, the chance you will excel in the role and sustain your passion for it will be much greater.