Now You’re Promoted to Manager Role, What Should You Do Next?
You’ve been an individual contributor (IC) for years at the same company. Your head division recognizes your loyalty and good work, and now you are promoted to a manager level as they believe you are a good fit for the role.
On your first day as manager, you are asking yourself :
Now What? What should I do next?
Since your company is old-school, they believe that everyone should be a manager for their next level grade and position. They still think that being a manager means the next level to the hierarchy.
Your superior didn’t provide any clear instructions, expectations, or mentoring. Now, you feel like you are in the middle of nowhere. It feels like being dropped into the wilderness without a map or compass.
Despite the situation, you are ready to face the challenges and learn from your mistakes ahead on. Without clear directions, map or compass, you are determined to explore uncharted territory.
“Here be Dragon!”
- Medieval Explorer’s chant when exploring unknown areas in the map
This story might resemble what you are dealing with right now or soon to be. It’s a promotion that many look forward to, but one needs to note that it also comes with a new set of challenges. Some can leave even the most confident professionals feeling uncertain or lost.
If you’ve recently stepped into a managerial position, you’re not alone in feeling overwhelmed. Let’s explore some common pitfalls and how to avoid them.
1. The Superhero Syndrome: Trying to Solve Everything Yourself
Years of being an individual contributor (IC), you were probably getting used to take charge and handling tasks on your own. It might be because you lack trust in your team to handle the task as well as you do, or it may just be a habit. This not only leads to burnout but also prevents the team members from growing and developing their skills.
A good manager should create a safe space for failures, fostering an environment where team members can make mistakes while taking on responsibilities. It should be harsh enough for them to mitigate mistakes, but supportive enough to encourage taking on new responsibilities.
Delegating tasks and problems to your team doesn’t mean you are washing your hands off responsibilities. When something goes south, you are still the one to blame. Make sure to deliver the task as clearly as possible to your team and review the results. Tell them what you expect and track their progress.
By doing so, you can have room to focus on higher-level strategic thinking and planning, which are crucial for the long-term success of the team and company.
What you should do :
- Learn to use Kanban Boards to track the team’s tasks and progress. This is the simplest task management method. Ensure the board is centralized and visible to your team.
- Learn how to implement OKR (Objective and Key Results). This advanced methodology is holistic and must be aligned with the entire company hierarchy. No need to rush; explore it on a need-to-know basis.
- Pick your Note-taking apps. If you already have the habit of taking notes in apps, good for you. For those who haven’t, you need to pick one already. It seems simple but has a huge impact when you develop the habit of taking notes. Our brain is not reliable enough to recall any information correctly and robustly. Optimize your brain for problem-solving and brainstorming. Pick one (or more): Notion, Evernote, Google Note (or Google Doc), or anything digital that can be accessible from your handheld device seamlessly.
2. Old Communication Habit: Not Keeping Boss in the Loop
In your old days as an individual contributor (IC), updates were triggered reactively. In other words, you generate reports when your superior asks for them.
Now it’s different, you need to be more proactive. It is crucial to keep your superior informed on the essentials. This is the opportunity to showcase your team’s accomplishments and possibly their need.
Your superior needs to feel the team is progressing and ensure you are doing your job well. By periodically updating accomplishments and challenges, you show that you are managing your team effectively.
New managers tend to forget this habit and blame their superiors when things are not provided correctly for them. It’s like a captain blaming the ship’s owner for not providing a map when the captain himself failed to ask for one.
What you should do :
- Set up regular meetings with your superior to discuss progress, challenges, and upcoming plans. This ensures alignment between your team’s efforts with your superior’s expectations (or the company’s goal). I strongly advise to have a weekly meeting with your superior either at the end of the week or at the start of the week. Block your calendar and remind your boss the day before so they don’t overlap it with another schedule.
- Prepare your report format. By referring to your Kanban Boards or any task management tool to generate executive summary reports. This report often includes summaries in numbers or charts. For example, you can include the total of completed features, task burn-down chart, or weekly unique visitors count. Make it simple and include only the essentials.
3. No Transparency: Making Decisions Clear to Your Team
While on the journey as a manager, you will find yourself required to make decisions. Whether they come from your superior or your team, it is inevitable and will be part of your long journey as a leader.
Some new managers might fall into the trap of making decisions in isolation and not communicating them effectively. This will create confusion, assumptions, and speculations within the team, or even to another team.
It’s important to explain the reasons behind your decisions and how they align with the team’s objectives. If it’s highly confidential information, try to filter it and explain the reason why it is confidential.
Everyone will understand the situation. The point is your team sees your effort to communicate. This not only fosters trust but also ensures everyone is on the same page.
What you should do :
Hold regular team meetings. Discuss progress, challenges, and have open discussions. Let your team know if there’s any upcoming decisions will be made, the reason behind them, and the potential impact.
- Encourage questions and collect input from your team. This will create a collaborative environment and help your team feel valued and informed.
- I highly recommend weekly meetings. Make sure to start the meeting at the beginning of the day, before/after break, or an hour before the end of day to avoid interruptions and not disrupt your team’s train of thought. Because the biggest enemies of engineers are disruptions.
One-on-one meetings. I love to call this habit “speed-dating”. The term “speed” suggests it will be short, but can be long enough like a “date”.
- This is where you address any expectations set for individuals, let them know what you expect from them, and make sure they understand it clearly. Additionally, this is also where your team can communicate everything to you freely.
Keep a journal to record every meeting. It will be difficult to keep track of everything days after the meeting. You will need these notes to recall highlights from previous meetings.
- Make it simple by including: action plans, delivery targets, who’s in charge of the action, and who to deliver it to. The simpler the note structure, the easier to recall it when necessary. A kind reminder: pick your note-taking app. :)
4. Lack of Discipline
As a first-time manager, it’s tempting to want everyone to like you. You might hesitate to enforce rules or set high standards, fearing you’ll come across as the office tyrant. But let’s face it — by avoiding the tough conversations, you’re hurting your team slowly.
For instance, repeatedly allowing team members to arrive late without giving them any warnings will raise concerns among your entire team and could even affect other departments as well.
It may seem a small and simple thing to address, but sooner or later it will breed resentment to your punctual team members. Let it slide for a couple of months, they will feel undervalued for arriving on time and might start thinking it’s okay to arrive late since there are no consequences.
This will ultimately undermine the efforts and morale of your best performer, leading them to feel underappreciated and possibly adopt similar behaviors by lowering their standard.
This is just one example of a lack of discipline culture. You could substitute to any other bad culture and will get the same result.
Letting bad habits or performers slide without any consequences will eventually bring down your top performers’ standards.
Set clear expectations and consequences for when they are not met.
What you should do:
- Establish the ground rules. Let your team know the do(s) and don’t(s), define the rules, and apply them consistently. If you say tolerable lateness is 15 minutes, then anyone arriving later than that will face consequences. It should be well-defined, fair, and proportionate to the situation. Think of it like a game — everyone should know the rules before they start playing.
- Praise in public, criticize in private. While addressing poor behavior is mandatory, recognizing and rewarding the opposite is equally crucial. Celebrate small wins and give credit to your team when the opportunity arises. Remember, leaders eat last.
- Lead by example. Do not preach what you don’t practice. When you said everyone should be punctual in meetings, you should’ve done the same thing.
5. Lack of Long-Term Planning
As a new manager, you are probably juggling million tasks, delegating it, putting out daily fires, and trying to keep your team on track. It’s easy to get caught up in the day-to-day grind and lose sight of the bigger picture.
Before you know it you and your team are running in a hamster wheel. Without clear direction, your team might feel like they’re constantly running but getting nowhere. Each day becomes a series of reactive tasks without a sense of progress or purpose. This can lead to burnout and disengagement.
After all, a team is a group of people working together to achieve the same purpose. It’s not a team if everyone can’t see the vision.
Take a step back, and look at the horizon. Where do you want your team to be in a year? In five years? Start mapping the journey. What to achieve and how to achieve it together.
Involve your team in the process, don’t plan in isolation, try to engage your team in brainstorming sessions about future goals and challenges. You will be surprised that their insight can be invaluable.
Communicate the vision to your team over and again as a repeat reminder. When everyone understands the bigger picture, daily task become meaningful.
What you should do :
Allocate specific times for strategic planning sessions and update it. You can use a simple SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound) template.
- Define what the goal is, how to measure it, and set the deadline. Keep this note visible to everyone and update it periodically.
- To avoid too many meetings, you can set the session once every two weeks.
6. Forget to Take Care of Yourself
You are not a Superman, it is important to acknowledge it and recognize your own limits. Self-care is crucial for maintaining your effectiveness as a manager. Ensure you balance your workload, take breaks, and seek out mentorship or support when needed.
Conclusion
Every new manager will have their own challenges, by being aware of common pitfalls and proactively addressing them, you can steer your team and career toward the better path. Embrace the journey, learn from your experiences, and remember that growth often comes from overcoming obstacles.
Remember to avoid these common pitfalls :
- Trying to solve everything by yourself
- Not keeping the boss in the Loop
- No transparency in decision-making
- Lack of discipline
- No long-term planning or visions
- Forgetting to take care of yourself
Transitioning from an individual contributor to a manager role is a significant shift, and it’s natural to feel a bit lost at first. However, by embracing your new role, learning to delegate, communicating effectively, thinking strategically, and taking care of your mental health, eventually, you can become a respected leader.
Remember, the best leaders are those who empower their teams and create an environment where everyone can thrive.
