What I Wish I Had Known as a First Time Manager

When I started my career, I was a decent Analyst and subsequently a pretty effective Project Manager. I knew how to direct people’s workload, negotiate to remove obstacles for my team, give team members the constraints, and tell them what to do - but all in a nice, friendly way, right? I thought that would lend me so well into being a great people manager, since I already had the experience of leading people towards specific objectives.

At some point in my mid-twenties, I was told that with my promotion to the next level, I would get to formally manage an employee.

Hurrah! The moment I’d been waiting for! I thought I would rock it.

Sheila (not her real name) was meant to be my first direct report. She was going to be my biggest success, I was going to make her a rockstar performer, a copy of me!, and the whole world would recognize my true potential and the need to have a workforce made up entirely of mini-Laurences.

To my own surprise, when she found out she would be reporting to me, Sheila promptly decided to look for another job. Sheila wanted nothing to do with me as a manager… I was deeply offended at the time, but in hindsight I don’t blame her!

Apparently managing people is not like managing projects? And the role of the people manager is not to recreate yourself in your employees? Mind blown.

This marked the beginning of a long, mostly self-directed, painful learning journey to improve myself. I’m grateful that I was given the chance to manage people again, and that I worked for a couple of organizations that recognized the importance of people leadership at varying degrees. I went on countless training programs, workshops and leadership development seminars. I also screwed up some more (and more and more) and learned the hard way from my failures but also my successes.

However, while I was very fortunate in my journey, and had a lot of support along the way, the beginning of my story is unfortunately too common:

• Companies promote their superstar individual contributors to managers on the basis of their hard skills (tech, analysis, whatever they may be) as opposed to gauging their readiness as people leaders.

• They are falling short in recognizing the major shifts in the workforce and workplace culture that are putting new demands on leaders, and not equipping them appropriately.

• Organizations encourage poor leadership practices by continuing to promote the super star performers, no matter how many bodies those people leave in the way.

• We kill our diversity efforts from the start by encouraging star performer people managers to find team members that can look and act like them, and mold their employees into ‘mini-them’.

Reflecting on all this, there's a couple of things I wish I had knows as a first time manager.

Figure out who you are and be that person.

This whole aggressive, selfish personality was not me. It was ‘work me’ or ‘public-facing me’. 'Real me', with the people I really trusted, was empathetic, caring and compassionate. I was also, and still am, assertive, impulsive and spicy (my husband’s word...) But I never really was this egotistical persona I described above.

My whole life, from my upbringing to business school to work, I operated in a mostly male-dominated, competitive, type A environment. Books like ‘Lean In’ taught me to fight fire with fire, to hide everything I really stood for, and fight for my place at the table the only way corporate culture allowed it. It is only much later that I realized the ‘if you can’t beat them, join them’ mantra is deeply flawed. Teaching everyone to be competitive, type A, super smart and aggressive personalities was a recipe for disaster. How can we expect to get the best out of ourselves and our employees if we force everyone into this mold? How can we expect to generate new, creative ideas, if we don’t allow a diverse set of backgrounds and personalities to have a voice and value their perspective?

I’m so grateful that it was the time many great leadership thinkers started publishing research on more effective types of leadership centred around vulnerability, compassion, and empathy. And the case for diversity of background, thoughts and ideas, was finally getting traction. Those were tools I had in my arsenal that I had always repressed.

Things finally started changing for me when I allowed myself to stop switching personas. In retrospect, it was exhausting!!

The manager’s role is to make someone else successful, not to make yourself successful!

This one is tough. Because while organizations are starting to pay attention to the unbelievable amount of time and effort people leadership takes when done well, how do they still evaluate employees? If you’re in a progressive organization, there might be a blend of personal results (business metrics or projects delivered) and competencies or behaviours (people leadership often gets lumped into the latter). Essentially what did you deliver, and did you deliver these outcomes by being a total jerk or not?

But what usually wins and determines your performance review? Results.

As a first time manager, if there was ever a conflict between doing the right thing for employees / team / organization, or delivering results, I felt incentivized towards the latter. I would cut corners on the ‘soft stuff’, including teaching people, and supporting them on their own journey, and start doing things myself to deliver the results.

Unlearning this whole ‘results focused’ mentality has been challenging. I’ve not always done it perfectly, including in recent times when I have felt the pressure to deliver personal results taking priority over my willingness to be a good leader.

Results are quintessential for any business. But they are a by-product of great leadership, as opposed to being the work of the leader. Great leaders who focus on making others successful will generate better business results. Period.

I have tons more where that came from, but I realize this is a blog post and not a book. Although maybe I should write a book? Maybe that will come. But in the meantime, I would love to hear words of wisdom from anyone reading this. What was your greatest failure and subsequent learning as a new people manager?