Schedule a 27-minute call

Episode 51: So, You're a First Time Manager

podcast Dec 13, 2022

"I've recently been promoted to a new role as leader and manager of this team. I'm excited, but as someone who's always had the checklist of to-dos, how do I think differently about this role? What do I not know that I should know?"

The beginning of a thing can be hard. That’s the scary space where you’re not sure you have what it takes, and you just don’t know what you don’t know.

Rather than getting things done on a check list. All of the sudden you’re in the space of building relationships, winning people over to ideas or change, setting aside thinking time to be intentional in leadership.

Empowering vs. Doing

A huge mindset shift for you is going to be figuring out how to empower others to do the work instead of doing it yourself. You’ve got some muscle memory going on and it might be easy to fall into the trap of getting into the details and keep doing the work yourself. If you do, you’ll end up micromanaging instead of empowering. 

Managing people is time consuming and you can’t check that off a list. You might have to shift your view of productivity. Rather than getting things done, the quality of your productivity is now defined by how well you can build relationships and coordinate workflow. 

Coaching vs. Problem-Solving

Your team will come to you with problems to solve and you’re used to doing that – so it will be easy to simply tell them how to solve their problem – because it’s probably a problem you’ve seen before. 

Now that you are a leader, rather than a goal of solving problems it’s about how well can you coach others to solve their own problems.  As leaders, we need to equip our teams to solve their own problems, or we will be dragged into the trenches and our team will never grow to achieve their full potential. 

Coordination of Delegation

Affirm the strengths you see in your team. Keep delegated assignments consistent with what they have been doing without making any big changes in the early days. Don’t pull the positional authority move of – “I’m the manager”; but use relational influence as your first foot forward. 

Letting Go While Managing to Outcomes

At the end of your day the success of each individual on your team is a reflection of your success as a manager. You will be held accountable for the results of your team so you’ll have to share that accountability with the team. 

As leaders we often must learn to let go of the specifics of how a thing gets done and focus on managing to the outcomes. Certainly, you want to equip people with steps and procedures that have worked to get to the outcomes but give some freedom to make changes without compromising the outcomes.  

Links to Check Out:

Stay Connected

Get resources, motivation, and leadership support 
delivered straight to your inbox.

We hate SPAM. We will never sell your information, for any reason.