Author: Marcia Zidle

By Jennifer King, Guest Blogger

Congratulations! You’ve finally been promoted to “manager.” While the bump in salary and new job title are nice, you now have heaps of responsibility you didn’t have before. As a manager, part of your new job is being responsible for the growth and well-being of an entire team.

You may be crying for help at this point. I spoke with a few recently-appointed managers and an executive coach to get their tips for first-time managers:

1. Get to know your people and what they want. Take as much time as possible in the beginning of your transition to get to know your direct reports. Talk to them about their career goals, what they want out of their current position, and how you can best support them.

According to Deirdre Walsh, senior social media manager for Jive Software, “If you start by understanding the career goals and plans for each person, that will help you make better decisions that will benefit the company and the individual.”

2. Learn to see your work through others. As a manager, you’ll likely be spending most of your time in meetings, discussions with senior management, and one-on-one conversations with your team, which will leave you less time to work on your own projects. You’ll eventually begin to see your work shine through your team as you give direction and offer guidance.

“At first you may feel like you’re not getting tons of tangible things done,” explained Andria Elliott, Senior International Marketing Communications Specialist at National Instruments. “All your work now shows through a team of people instead of your individual self,” she notes.

3. Listen. The ability to listen to your team and give guidance without assuming you immediately know the right answer will be critical as you spend more one-on-one time with your employees.

That’s Mike Lee’s biggest piece of advice for first-time managers. As an assistant branch manager for Randstad, Lee says new managers should “strive to truly listen during discussions rather than prepare in your mind what you will say next.”

“If you’re not a listener or a patient person, then you’ll constantly be asserting your will on people. That approach is antiquated,” says Lee.

4. Develop your own style. While it may feel easy or natural to mimic the management tactics of your previous boss, those same tactics might not work for you. Instead, think about what they did and how you can learn from them to develop your own style.

According to Houston Neal, marketing director for Software Advice, as a new manager “you have to be true to yourself and develop your own style. Otherwise, your management will seem forced or ineffective as a result.”

5. Don’t expect to “get it” at first. One of the biggest misconceptions held by first-time managers is that they’ll be good at management from the get-go. In most cases, though, new managers need training and development just like any new hire within an organization.

Building a solid training plan with development goals and consistent performance evaluations with your supervisor is a great way to assess your progress during the first few months on the job.

What advice do you have for first-time managers? What unexpected challenges did you face and how did you overcome them?

For more resources, see the Library topic Career Management.

Jennifer King is an HR Analyst for SoftwareAdvice.com, a web site that reviews and compares HR and performance review software. She reports on trends, technology, and best practices related to HR and career development.

Let’s admit it – most of us are on cruise control! Then suddenly we realize our career may be in jeopardy. All of a sudden we’re scrambling to do something fast!

The Solution: Pay attention to these four situations that can put you in the “hot seat” and your career in a potential down spiral.

1. New Boss: Don’t Rest On Your Laurels.
Realize that the person has to size up quickly each of her direct reports and make decisions about her team. Start managing up. Be prepared when she schedules a meeting to “get to know you and what you do better”. You need to make a good first impression.

Develop a short presentation focusing on your accomplishments -the problems encountered and how you handled them. Ask about her priorities for the department. Now start making the connection between the priorities and how you can meet them.

2. A Big Mistake: What Do I Do Now?
The good news is that mistakes, even big ones, don’t have to be a career setback or leave a permanent mark on your career brand. The key is to recover quickly and put in place actions that will correct the situation. Here’s what one senior leader said during a leadership retreat:

“Who among us doesn’t make mistakes? I love employees who fess up, treat the mistake as a learning moment and move on. I don’t want them to stop experimenting or holding back because of fear of making another misstep. Therefore, I have to accept a mistake now and then so that they will keep learning and getting better.”

3. A Big Promotion: Are You Over Your Head?
Did you know that nearly half of all new leaders fail in the first 18 months? Many of them were surprised to discover that what got them there wasn’t enough to keep them there. I’ve seen many careers get derailed because the person was promoted into a position that required additional and different skill sets. You can’t rely solely on you high performing technical experience. You also need to develop your leadership skills.

4. Feeling Stuck: You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling
You start out excited with where you are and what you’re doing. Then after a couple of years you’re unchallenged, unenthusiastic and just got passed over for a promotion.

If you career stalls, don’t wait for the career fairy to appear and make everything better. It’s up to you. What career options can you start exploring for challenge, variety, or greater personal satisfaction? What internal training or external seminars will enhance your marketability? Who can mentor you to get your career moving?

Career Success Tip:

To avoid getting blindsided, every year and perhaps even twice a year, conduct a career assessment no matter how confident you are that things are going well. Too many people try to manage their careers without having a sense of how they are seen by others – particularly by those who have influence – your boss, your peers, upper management and even your customers. Also see Challenges You May Face In Your Career and My Boss is a Control Freak.

Do you want to develop Career Smarts?

Friends, colleagues and family can be great resources for career planning and career advice. But we also need relationships with a variety of individuals and groups to help us succeed.

For example, we need people who can offer information or expertise; who are influential or can provide political insights; who will give us candid feedback to help us grow; and who can provide the big picture that we need.

In How Many Networks Do you Have, I suggested developing three distinct ones – your work network, your wisdom network and your “out of the box” network. Now I’m suggesting that you examine relationships within those networks and determine which ones are the most valuable.

A Relationship Audit

Assigning your relationships into categories may seem cold and impersonal. Yet, I would say most of us do it intuitively, especially in the workplace. The hard truth is we can’t be everywhere at once. We can’t be all things to all people. Our time and energy are scarce resources so we need to allocate them wisely.

So we need to conduct a relationship audit. For example, look at your current work network. Who are the people in it and how important are they? Here are three ways to decide on how to manage these relationships to get the most benefit.

1. Invest: is your strategy for critical relationships that are especially important for getting your job done. These could be good working relationships that you want to maintain, problematic relationships that are so vital you need to give them special attention, or relationships with people on whom can be influential in getting you to the next level

2. Hold: is strategy for relationships that are fine and don’t need special attention or effort at this time. This doesn’t mean they’re unimportant, just that they’re clicking along fine and you don’t have to invest additional resources in the now.

3. Divest: is your strategy for relationships that aren’t so critical or important. You may spend less time, less energy or fewer resources. Warning: Be careful. It’s usually better to adopt the hold strategy then to burn bridges. Burning bridges can be appropriate however in cases where there may be legal, ethical or dangerous consequences.

Once you have identified critical relationships, now it’s time to identify critical gaps – ones that don’t exist but ought to or ones that you need to pay more attention to.

1. Does your list appear a little sparse for specific kind of relationships? (Internal – up down, sideways) or (external – recruiters, customers, suppliers, professional colleagues?
2. Do you have relationships with other functions, department, teams or groups important to you? For example, can provide key information, money, political support and so on?
3. Has there been a change of leadership at the top? How can you get on their radar?
4. What are you doing to nurture the critical ones you have so that they don’t die on the vine?

Career Success Tip:

In this time of change, paying attention to the quality of your interactions and engagement with both external and internal relationships will be a key factor in maintaining and growing your professional career. But remember it’s not just to focus on what you can get but what you can give to each of these strategic relationships.

Do you want to develop Career Smarts?

“There’s too much wrangling and maneuvering going on. Joe really knows how to get on his boss’s good side. I hate this politicking….I just want to do my job.”

These are things I hear in my career management and development programs. Are these the types of comments you might make as well?

Whether you hate it, admire it, practice it or avoid it, office politics is a fact of life in any organization. And, like it or not, it’s something that you need to understand and play to an extent to be successful no matter what business or organization you work for.

“Office politics” are the strategies that people use to gain advantage personally or for a cause they support. The term often has a negative connotation because some people use it to seek advantage at the expense of others. Good “office politics”, on the other hand, helps you to promote yourself and your cause in a fair and appropriate way.

Why It’s Important

If you deny the bad politics that may be going on around you and avoid dealing with them, you may needlessly suffer whilst others take unfair advantage. And if you avoid practicing good politics, you miss the opportunities to further your own interests and those of your team and your cause.

Making Politics Work FOR You

To deal effectively with office politics and use it yourself in a positive way, you must first to accept the reality of it. Second you need to be a good observer. Third you then use the information you gathered to build strong networks and to start practicing influencing which is the proper name for good politics. Here are strategies to get you started.

1. Re-Map the Organization Chart
Office politics often circumvent the formal organization chart. Sit back and watch for a while and then re-map the organization chart in terms of political power.

• Who are the real influencers?
• Who is the “go to guy” when things need to get done?
• Who champions or mentors others?
• Who is “the brains behind the organization”?

2. Understand the Informal Network
Once you know who’s who in the organization, you have a good idea of where the power and influence lay. Now you have to understand the social networks.

• Who gets along with whom?
• Who eats together? Works out together? Commutes together?
• Are there groups or cliques that have formed?
• What is the basis or commonality for the groups or cliques ?

3. Build Relationships
Now that you know how the existing relationships work, you need to build your own social network accordingly.

• Do not be afraid of politically powerful people in the organization. Get to know them.
• Ensure you have relationships in all directions (peers, bosses, executives)
• Start to build relationships with those who are “in the know.”
• Be a part of multiple networks. This way you can keep your finger on the pulse of the organization.

Office politics are a fact of life. Positive or negative politics happens. If you don’t participate in the political game, you risk not having a say in what happens to you and perhaps your team. This allows people with less experience, skill or knowledge to influence decisions being made around you and about you.

Career Success Tip:

Realize that political savvy brings personal power. And as a career building tool, personal power is a key strategy for success. Skilled influencers are not overtly political; they are seen as competent professional and leaders who play the political game fairly and effectively. Also see Power is Not a Bad Word – Influencing Your Boss – Influencing How to Be taken Seriously.

Do you want to develop Career Smarts?

Your company is restructuring and many roles and jobs are changing. The “new organization” may make sense for the “new strategy” but where will it leave YOU?

Restructuring can affect everyone. Some people may change departments, others may change responsibilities, and yet others may be asked to relocate.

So does this mean good news or bad news for you? Will you end up with a job you don’t like or lose your job altogether? Or is this the opportunity you’ve been waiting for?

Understandably, you may not like having to re-interview for what feels like your old job or the new job that will replace it. But don’t take this personally. If your boss values you and the quality of your work, this can be a great chance to gain a challenging and interesting role in the new organization. The newly defined position may be better than your old one! Remember, you have the experience and qualifications to do this job. So grasp the opportunity and make the most of the situation!

Tips for Re-interviewing

1. Take this seriously.
You are not guaranteed to keep your job, so this isn’t simply a “rubber-stamping” exercise. This process is just as serious as applying for a different job with a different company. However, your preparation is different from interviewing for an outside job. And the interviewing approach can be different. You probably won’t be given that “getting to know you” easy warm-up at the start of the conversation. These interviews are usually hard-hitting from the start. You’re expected to know the job and you have to prove that you’re up to the challenge.

2. Analyze the job and the required competencies.
List the most important skills needed for the job. You probably have the ability to do the work, otherwise you might have been laid off in the initial rounds of restructuring. What personal areas of competence are rewarded, expected and talked about within the company? What have you done that you were given positive feedback?

3. Prepare examples.
The interviewer will look for proof that you can do the job well. Have examples of your work fresh in your mind (depending on the position, you may want to tangible evidence). Be ready to discuss five to seven examples of your skills and accomplishments. It’s best to have a good balance of examples showing technical skills (perhaps demonstrating how you did something) as well as personal competency (perhaps showing how you dealt with a difficult situation or person). Use these examples when you’re asked questions. Remember to concentrate on those areas that you’ve identified as critical to job success.

4. Provide supporting evidence.
Be ready to back up your claims. You can tell people that you’re great at organizing, but your statement carries more weight if you support it with solid data. How did you or your team contribute to the timeliness of the project? How much money and time did the company save because you prepared the project properly? Consider the following: Sales/revenue you generated. Positive feedback your clients gave you. Problems you solved. Initiatives you took, etc.

5. Prove your enthusiasm.
Your attitude can be as important as your knowledge and skills. There may be many capable people out there who are interviewing for the same position. The reason for hiring often comes down to “will this person fit and do well?” Interviewers want to know if you have passion for the work. Will you bring a positive energy to the team or will you bring it down?

Career Success Tip:

If you treat this interview with the same importance and significance as a regular job interview, you’ll increase your chances of being successful. Know what your skills are, know what you’ve already contributed to the company and know how much you’re worth. Your preparation will pay off!

Do you want to develop Career Smarts?