Today’s topic, Transitioning from Managing Yourself to Managing Others, relies heavily on The Leadership Pipeline by Charan et al.

In this book, they go through six leadership passages, the first of which we’ll be covering in this episode.

The biggest change when you become a first-time manager is a shift to begin thinking about others. This is not to say you have been a selfish narcissist prior to becoming a manager, but rather you weren’t concerned about the productivity of others, how to lead them to better performance, or how all the members of your team fit together into a cohesive unit.

Note that, by the book’s definition, you are a First-Line Manager if at least ½ of your time is spent managing the work of others – so most likely you have more than just 2 or 3 direct reports.

As an Individual Contributor, your skills are:

-Technical and professional proficiency – doing the work you were hired to do to the best of your ability

-Being a team player

-Relationship-building for personal benefit – for the most part, you are developing friendships and collegial working relationships

-Using company tools, processes, and procedures – knowing what is available to support the work you do, as well as the rules and regulations

Your time application involves:

-Daily discipline – when you arrive and leave based on written and unstated rules

-Meeting personal due dates for projects – you manage your own time

Your work values include:

-Getting results through personal proficiency – you must do high-quality technical or professional work

As a First-Time Manager, your skills become:

-Planning – you are managing budgets, projects, and your workforce

-Selection – of team members

-Job design – understanding the strengths of your team members and the goals of your unit to optimally structure job duties and responsibilities

-Delegation of work – you can no longer do everything yourself, nor should you try. This requires seeing yourself in a new light – as someone who gets work done through others

-Performance management, evaluation

-Coaching and feedback

-Rewards and motivation

-Communication

-Culture facilitation

-Relationship building – up, down, and sideways for the unit’s benefit

-Acquisition of resources – budget, people, tools

Your time application involves:

-Annual planning of budgets and projects

-Making regular time for team members – at their request and yours

-Setting priorities for the unit and your team

-Communication time with other units, customers, suppliers, etc.

Your work values become:

-Getting results through others

-Success of direct reports

-Managerial work and disciplines – the administrative “stuff”

-Success of the unit

-Seeing yourself, and behaving, as a manager

-Visible integrity – your team and others across the organization see that you can be trusted to follow through on your commitments and promises

In a nutshell, the three significant changes are:

1.    Defining and assigning work

2.    Supporting direct reports in doing their assigned work

3.    Establishing and cultivating relationships

A sure sign of a clogged leadership pipeline at this level is high stress among the leader’s individual contributors. If they feel overwhelmed and think their boss isn’t doing much to help them, it’s likely the manager is missing a crucial first-level skill. For example:

-The manager view questions as interruptions 

-The manager fixes their mistakes rather than teaching them to do the work properly

-Refuses to take ownership of the team’s successes and distances himself/herself from their problems and failures

Here are three tactics for unclogging the pipeline at this stage; if you are a manager of first-time managers, these are the step you want to take:

1.    Preparation: Clearly communicate the skills, time applications, and work values required at this stage and provide training to help make the necessary changes. If you are the first-time manager, ask questions around these areas to determine what support you will be given. If your boss waffles or if nothing is offered in-house, make sure you can access outside training to get what you need – otherwise, you are setting yourself up for sure failure. 

2.    Monitoring: Determine whether and where someone is having difficulty with this first-level transition. If you are the first-time manager, ask how your performance will be evaluated. What are the metrics for success?

3.    Intervention: Provide regular feedback and coaching to help people make this transition; take action if they’re experiencing significant difficulty in doing so. If you are the first-time manager, ask your boss how he provides feedback – and make sure to schedule regular 1:1 meetings, especially early in your tenure as a first-time manager.

In closing, I want to state clearly that some people don’t want – and shouldn’t want – to become first-line managers. They love their role as an individual contributor and don’t want to take on the additional responsibilities of a manager. If you do, however, want to move up the corporate ladder, your success at this first-line stage is of the utmost importance. Make sure there is a structure in place to maximize your chances for success, then go for it!

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