Mistakes as a new manager
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Mistakes as a new manager
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Re: Mistakes as a new manager
#2List is toi short. I’d add: Posture.
Everyone wants to be the benevolent manager, especially if there is enough money for everyone, and especially in these times where collaboration and positive management are touted. But you have to keep a carrot and a leash on the employees.
My first employees got a 33% raise the first year things were good. Long story short: None of them are here anymore and we’re still scrambling to recover from the mess they’ve created by being lazy.
Now people struggle to get a few percent salary increase. It eats me to my core, but I want them to get my product out.
Re: Mistakes as a new manager
#3> "Where’s my dopamine?"
I'm not in management, but couldn't OP become a working manager? Might depend on the size of their team and demands of the new role, but I've worked with managers who wear their IC hat on occasion and thought it was a positive value-add for the group as a whole.
Re: Mistakes as a new manager
#4[deleted]
Re: Mistakes as a new manager
#5Delegation was one I struggled with a lot in the early days. Even as the CEO, I was reluctant to give up my customer service responsibilities of manning the inboxes. Eventually, I understand that even if someone handled it only 80-90% as well, that would be much better for the company than having me do it.
Re: Mistakes as a new manager
#6"Mistakes I made as a new manager which you won't necessarily make because all humans are different"
Re: Mistakes as a new manager
#7Delegation was one I struggled with a lot in the early days. Even as the CEO, I was reluctant to give up my customer service responsibilities of manning the inboxes. Eventually, I understand that even if someone handled it only 80-90% as well, that would be much better for the company than having me do it.
Delegation is so hard, i struggle constantly and I'm technically a "Sr. Manager". When the project is up against deadline pressure, it's so tempting to do something yourself that only takes you a day vs delegating to someone else and they spin on it for 3 and screw it up at the end anyway. Inevitably you become the bottleneck when a wave of escalations or other management tasks come down the pipe but there's a pile of actual work you decided to take on yourself half done too.
Re: Mistakes as a new manager
#8List is toi short. I’d add: Posture. Everyone wants to be the benevolent manager, especially if there is enough money for everyone, and especially in these times where collaboration and positive management are touted. But you have to keep a carrot and a leash on the employees. My first employees got a 33% raise the first year things were good. Long story short: None of them are here anymore and we’re still scrambling…
heh i will say being a parent helps with being a manager. You really understand the carrot/stick balance as a parent.
Re: Mistakes as a new manager
#9This misses the single biggest mistake every new manager makes: avoiding hard conversations with your reports. If you start managing folks you were recently in the trenches with this can be VERY hard. These are your comrades after all! You want them to like you. It’s all very natural. Sadly it is the single biggest cause for dissatisfaction I’ve seen on a given team. Being unwilling to give honest, direct feedback results in underperforming teams and unhappy reports. It’s counterintuitive but very important to get right as a manager. The big “AHA!!” moment for me was when I realized you need to speak to behaviors and outcomes not character. So instead of “you’re sloppy” you say something like “I’ve noticed quality issues in your code recently that’s resulted in some rollbacks. Can we talk about how we can address that?”. Involving them in the solution and explaining why it matters. It makes all the difference and folks ironically respect and like you more for it.
Re: Mistakes as a new manager
#10> "Where’s my dopamine?" I'm not in management, but couldn't OP become a working manager? Might depend on the size of their team and demands of the new role, but I've worked with managers who wear their IC hat on occasion and thought it was a positive value-add for the group as a whole.
Every manager I've ever had that couldn't let go of their IC hat also had a pile of manager hat work that wasn't ever getting done.