Are You a First Time Manager

When you're the star performer on your team and you always get all the accolades for a job well done, at some point, it's probably occurred to you - I'm star performer of this team. I deserve to be the manager of this team. One day, it actually happens. They promote you, and now, you have a team of your own. What is it like as first-time manager?

It feels pretty good at first. Until you go in and then you find out that being a great team player isn't quite the same thing as being manager. You have entirely new responsibilities.

Even if your job still somehow has to with the kind of tasks you used to pull off with panache, now, your main responsibility is dealing with people, above all. Your job is to do with other people who do that kind of thing. Come to think of it, yours is a totally different job.

As first-time manager, this is what you need to remember. Your job is people now - not details to do with the actual work at hand. When you deal with the people on your team, it is your job to help them do their job well. You have to use your experience working with these people to know where they are slipping up, and how you can give them to advice or whatever it is they need.

You need to focus like a laser beam on what it is that your underlings have trouble with. Their problems are your problems. That's what you need to learn first of all - you're no longer in the business of getting tasks done. You're in the business of helping people.

As first-time manager, you'll probably find yourself a little lost at first. If you were part of the team, you would work really hard on something, and that would be your contribution. You would be able to hold that up and say, see, this is what I did. When you're a manager, you're kind of behind the scenes. The people who do the actual work are the ones who get to take credit for what happens. You are the facilitator. What exactly do you take credit for?

It's a paradigm shift. And you need to get used to this. You'll need to learn to be happy about how your work shows through the work of others. That's the life of a manager.

As a first-time manager, you need to be aware of the mistake that most first-timers make in expecting to really make an impression right away. You can understand how this happens.

When you start out at the new job, you always want to really make an impression. The problem is that this is quite likely to get you into trouble. The manager needs to be assertive, of course. But that's not as important as being someone who can quietly absorb what's going on around him so that he can understand what to do before he makes a move. It's gently allowing your environment to help you develop your own style. That's what gets you places.