Something I have come across too often is someone promoting a high-performing individual contributor to a position of leadership and just expecting that person to be inherently successful. This happens a lot within fast-paced companies, or companies with high amounts of employee turnover. “You are great at your job. Here’s a promotion, and a new team. And here are the things we want to see out of this team…” Unfortunately, this expectation comes without supplying structured guidance on how to effectively lead a team. I know I am not alone in this observation. This has become a topic of conversation at many professional gatherings, not only among managers, but among staff as well. While many understand that promotion without support is a formula for failure, there still seems to be a gap in how to address it.
Leadership Is Not Automatic
There is no doubt that there are many transferable qualities from a strong employee to a good leader. And there is great benefit to promoting an internal candidate. It creates an observable career path to others, expands someone’s skills, and shows company belief in their team members. Additionally, having someone lead a former peer group helps to shorten the learning curve on company knowledge, job skills, and specific expertise.
There are some individuals who through grace of character, or observation and mimicry of their own management team, may exhibit good leadership qualities. However, far too often, these newly promoted team members fail through a lack of experience, exposure, and training to understand the qualities and characteristics of successful team leadership.
The Pitfalls
When management training exists, it often spends time on the mechanics of management skills:
- Tools and systems for tracking metrics, updating project status, or submitting yearly reviews
- Templates to use for presentations
- Instructions on how to track work time or submit vacation requests
- Hiring procedures: creating requisitions for positions, and what kinds of interview questions to ask
- How to track a budget (usually in the form of read this report, update this spreadsheet)
But we don’t spend enough time working with people on how to lead. Have you run into any of these examples before?
- Someone is a strong performer but does not agree with the actions of prior or senior leadership. They had identified as “when I’m in charge, I’m going to be…” When promoted, they go off on a tangent that may not fit business direction. Or they implement a lot of things with little change management involved.
- A new manager wants to be liked, so becomes deferential to their direct reports. They are not willing or able to make hard choices.
- First time manager isn’t familiar with coaching tactics, and so spends too much time doing ineffective coaching sessions. There are lots of flavors this can take:
- “Because I said so…” This one is so painful; I don’t even know where to start. You’ve lost before you’ve begun.
- And the opposite, which is weak, deferential, and suggestive of action rather than coaching for success.
- Not coaching or providing feedback, just holding check-ins on “what are you doing?”
- Unable to determine whether the problem is knowledge (skill issue) or desire to perform (will issue).
- New manager isn’t familiar with legal / HR items and when to seek guidance. Rather than asking for help, they “wing it.”
- A manager that lacks confidence and so does not put forth ideas that are beneficial to the business. This lack of confident could also result in team members taking advantage of them.
- Conversely, there are new managers who are over-confident and disdainful when their ideas are not supported. They may also be dismissive of other’s ideas, or they take action without performing appropriate amounts of review and consideration.
I’ve personally run into each of these examples (sometimes not even in new managers), and I’m sure you have as well.
Actions to Help Build a Leader:
If you are a people leader who is promoting someone to their first manager role, we strongly recommend you take at least some of the following actions. All is even better! And if you are the new manager wanting to be a good leader? Well, honestly, the same list applies. You will need to put more focus on finding a mentoring and finding resources to help you learn the topics we note below. We recommend talking to your boss, HR, or browsing through the myriad of online resources. Including ours!
Help them find a mentor.
As the direct leader, you could be this mentor. However, we have found it is beneficial to have the mentor / boss be fulfilled by two different people. This helps ensure a better balance around growth and learning. Mentoring relationships provide different perspectives, outlets to deal with challenging situations, and the person being mentored can help guide what they need to learn.
Carve out extra time for teaching / coaching.
Calendars are often very full, but you must find the time if you want to have a solid leader on your team. Set aside time to cover the tactical training (i.e., how to do stuff, such as the management mechanics we noted above) as well as time for broader discussion and review. Below is a list of topics to help you get started. And by the way – we have articles on a lot of these topics, with more coming soon!
- How to Effectively Coach & Hold 1on1s. This should be one of the very early coaching sessions you hold. You will want to cover many aspects of coaching and one-on-one sessions, but a few key areas we note are:
- One-on-One Basics – How to hold them, how often to have them, documentation, what to cover, etc.
- Coaching performance issues. You’ll want to go over how to identify a “will” issue (desire to perform) vs. a “skill” issue (ability to perform). As each of these has different coaching tactics, make sure you take time on how to appropriately address each.
- How to Create and Practice Team Engagement. This will not be a quick discussion, but it’s one we feel is well worth the time. You can start with some easier aspects such as giving and soliciting feedback or encouraging employee growth and development, and then come back to add more as time goes on.
- Leading by Example. This will not only be a discussion, but something you should practice as a leader yourself! If you want your new manager to do things like properly coach, listen to their staff, hold people accountable to objectives, then you must do the same!
- How to Hold Difficult Conversations. This one is so important. As a manager, you are going to have to do things or enforce things that not everyone will like! These may be implementing something new (so change management is key), holding someone accountable, or delivering difficult news.
- How to Manage Performance & Meet Commitments. This may seem obvious, but it’s more difficult than many people realize. There is the gamut of setting expectations, following through on progress, and determining success or failure. Your new manager will need to understand how metrics work and why they are important (or how to create them if they don’t exist). And how to prioritize! It’s easy for newly promoted people (particularly those over-achiever types) to assume they can do it all. They may need help understanding how to prioritize and/or delegate.
Help find or provide other training / resources.
Why reinvent the wheel? There are many books, websites (ahem), courses, and resources available to people to help build skills. Have them check out courses on sites such as Udemy, FutureLearn, or edX. I am not affiliated with any of these sites, these are just resources I have perused in the past.
Solicit feedback from others.
You cannot be everywhere! Get feedback from their employees or others in the org. Keep it anonymous, and make sure you reinforce that this is helpful – not harmful – action. You want to help people grow and you believe in feedback. Make sure your employee knows you’re doing it. It will help them from feeling like you are targeting them, being sneaky, or otherwise trying to jeopardize their role.
- I personally find this much easier to do if you already practice “skip-level” style meetings. If you’re not familiar with this term, it’s where a leader holds meetings with indirect reports without the direct report present. The meeting literally “skips a level” in the hierarchy.
- Be aware, this can be a challenging one. You’ll have to practice those leadership skills yourself! But it can be invaluable for many reasons. It not only creates actionable feedback for your new leader, but you can get a sense for the health of the business and the team. It’s also an opportunity to solicit general feedback on areas of improvement. Not to mention it helps you connect with more people and remove any “big boss” fear. Feedback helps create engagement!
Take the Time – The Reward is Worth It
Becoming a good leader is not an overnight effort. While there are people who have some inherent skills and abilities, much of what goes into being a good leader takes practice. If you want to help your new manager become a good leader, you cannot wave a magic wand one time and expect it to take hold. But we believe it is well worth the effort. You can build a future leader, earn loyalty (and likely respect), and help to set up the framework for success.
