The Promotion Problem

Congratulations!  You’ve been promoted!

You applied, got through the selection process, aced it at the interviews and now…here you are…your first managerial position, life’s great…

…until it isn’t quite so!

There are a few things that people don’t tell you about becoming a manager, some changes and challenges that you will face.

Wouldn’t it be great if someone had given you the heads up and warned you - not to put you off - but so that you could be better prepared?

Well, here’s a list of things you need to be aware of (if you’re not already).

#1 - You don’t exist any more!

OK, so that’s a bit harsh, and literally not true, but hopefully it’s got your attention.

Perhaps the biggest change and challenge to becoming a manager is that you are no longer responsible only for your own behaviour and performance, but also that of your team.

If performance is ok, and deadlines are being met then it’s sunshine and flowers, but as soon as things slip it’s not the individual team members those higher up the organisation will look to for explanations - it’s you.

It’s a bit like in sports, where if the team performs poorly it’s the manager that gets the blame, and in extreme cases the sack.  You’ve just moved from being a player to being a coach.

Don’t panic!

Just being aware is a great step in the right direction.  There are other things you can do too.  Think about your team, make notes about what their strengths are, and any skills that they could do with some support to develop.

Take some time to get to know them (you may already know them if you’ve been promoted from within the team to manage them).  Find out what they think are their strengths, what they enjoy doing, and if they want to develop any skills - compare them with your initial thoughts.  Not only this, find out more about their lives, family, hobbies, ambitions etc.  

If you embrace the role of manager and accept this wider responsibility from the get go - you are well on the way to being a great manager.

#2 - Relationship Reset

This can be the most difficult part of becoming a manager, especially if you’ve been promoted within an organisation. Some may see it as poacher turned gamekeeper.

Colleagues who were your peers are now your subordinates, those that were your superiors are now your peers.  You may be involved in more strategic activities, liaising with more senior colleagues, and those from other departments.

You may have gotten on well with certain members of the team, and others not so well.  Now you are a manager you can’t have favourites, you must treat everyone fairly.  If you previously socialised with some of your colleagues, you might have to re-think whether it’s still appropriate. You will need to build stronger links with colleagues from other departments.

The change from peer to manager is probably the toughest relationship to change.  It’s possible that you were in competition with colleagues for the managerial post, you succeeded and they didn’t.  They may just resent the fact that now you get to ‘tell them what to do’.  Either way it’s a difficult position to be in, and can lead to tension, or potentially in very extreme cases attempted sabotage of your career!

As with challenge #1 - get to know your team, have 1-2-1 sessions.  Pay particular attention to anyone you think will be more affected by your appointment (for example an unsuccessful colleague).  Give them a chance to speak about how they feel about the situation.  A good tactic is to ask them how they think things should be managed going forward, what reasonable action can you take? Make sure you discuss their strengths and what they bring to the team - and if you think it’s the case that they have the skills to be a manager in future - ask how you could help them achieve that aim. 

It’s going to be tricky, but it’s important to let everyone know from the start that you will treat them all fairly.

As far as relations outside of your team, you’re probably going to have to start networking a bit, at least within your organisation, but maybe outside of it too.  Make connections in departments that support the whole organisation e.g. HR, Finance, Legal etc.  Get to know your immediate peers.

#3 - Respect isn’t automatic

Some people still think that respect is attached to a job title.  

Not the case, you may have a degree of authority, and people will have to do what you say (within reason) but that does not confer respect.

Respect has to be earned.  You have to be clear about your values and then behave accordingly.  You must be genuinely supportive of your team.  You must build good relationships with them, and be as open as possible.

However, whilst you must earn their respect, and that of the wider organisation, you must give respect without waiting for others to earn it.  

It is for you to demonstrate that you deserve their respect, whilst it is for them to demonstrate if they don’t deserve yours.

#4 - It’s not quick and easy

Managing others takes time and effort, it’s not something you can do for a couple of hours on a Friday afternoon when you’ve finished all the other work you needed to do that week.

It is an integral part of your job, and people depend on you treating it as such.  Especially if promoted from within a team to managing it, it can be difficult to leave some of their old job behind and try to continue doing everything they did before - whilst tacking management responsibilities on top.

Not good for you and not good for the team.

You will need to be organised, and if you aren’t already maximising time management techniques you should, take a course if you haven’t done one before.  Make sure that you’re not working at too detailed a level, schedule regular meetings with staff, group and 1-2-1 meetings.  These are opportunities for you to communicate what’s going on in the organisation, department and team, or to discuss specific issues, development and performance.  If these are left until ‘there’s a convenient time’ they will often not happen. It’s also an opportunity for the team to feed back to you - successful communication is a two way thing.

Make time for your team.  Let them know times you are free so they can reach you.

If your organisation expects you to do the same job you did, but now manage people as well then you need to be discussing this with your line manager, as it’s not acceptable (unless you’ve increased your hours in order to be able to take on the additional responsibilities).  Ask them what elements of your role you can hand to someone else.

#5 - Decision Making

Previously you may have had to make decisions about your own work, perhaps how you tackled a specific task, when you worked on certain jobs, or possibly how well you did it depending on resources available.  Generally you were only accountable to your line manager.

Now however you could well be making decisions relating to the work of others, what their performance targets are, who does what, when.

Whatever, don’t think that because you’re the manager you have to do this in isolation - making decisions without discussing with others.  If you can collaborate, especially with your team, to come to an agreed decision the outcome is much more likely to be positive than if you dictate.  In those situations where you can’t involve others, be open about how the decision was reached, and why they couldn’t take part in the process.

#6 - Attitude change

Previously you may have felt ok complaining about how your organisation was run, whether openly or just to some select colleagues.  You may not have felt obliged to agree with the mission, vision or values (although hopefully you do agree with most of these otherwise why are you working there?).

Now it’s different.  Regardless of how you actually feel you represent the organisation to your team.  You must promote the vision, mission and values of the organisation.  Complaining and criticising are no longer options - don’t get me wrong, you can challenge and question but this has to be in a constructive way.

You have to link the organisation's aims to the work the team is doing, and demonstrate that the overall aims are valid.  

Now your responsibility is to find solutions to problems, not be the cause of them!!

#7 -  Skills development

You’re technically brilliant at your job (you’ve taken several years to develop and practise those skills) and you get on with people.  Great, you’re ideal management material, now get on with it!

For some reason, it’s still a common assumption that although someone needs several years to acquire the technical skills needed for a job, the management of people is not considered technical so no additional skills are needed.  Some people still think managers are born and not made, so they’ll just have to get by with the skills they have.

This really isn’t the case.  Managers can be (and are) trained.  In the vast majority of cases the skills are there and just need developing further.  Organisations fail to understand that developing their managers is an invest to save activity, which will result in increased efficiency, effectiveness and productivity.

If you don’t have an effective manager, you don’t have an effective team. 

Management training improves communication skills, which increases the ability to influence multiple audiences, from team members to key decision makers and clients.

By prioritising management development, managers are then in turn more able to develop and motivate their own teams more effectively, increasing engagement and productivity.

Managers who seek opportunities to enhance their skills, and fully understand their role increases people’s job satisfaction by creating an environment in which all team members are valued and committed to a common goal, collaborate effectively, and consistently achieve or exceed expectations.

Lack of training is a barrier to an individual achieving their full potential, they are therefore less efficient, effective, or productive as they could be.  Each day that goes by is full of wasted opportunities and resources. The cost of this is hidden – you’ll never know how much better things would have been if you never invest in the first place.

Currently staff retention is a huge issue.  In many surveys employees cited the main reason for leaving was their direct line manager.  Did you know replacing a member of staff can cost up to three times their annual salary once you factor in advertising, recruitment, on-boarding, reduced productivity whilst the new employee finds their feet, and backfill/overtime/agency costs to cover the inevitable gap between a staff member leaving and the new one starting?

Also 70% of staff say that job related training and development directly influences their decision as to whether they stay with an organisation or leave it. Investing in yourself or existing employees is key to staff retention and the avoidance of the potentially excessive costs of replacement.

So, the answer is…get some support. Analyse your current skill set, work out where you could do with some development support - and go get some training, or coaching, or even do some reading. There are plenty of resources out there, not least of which are the training courses Aventina offer.

Once you start developing your skills the sky’s the limit!