Autonomous , not silent

This is a post from the series ‘Common mistakes of first time managers’

Becoming the boss doesn’t mean you should stop talking to yours about your project.

Let’s assume that you became a manager after a period where you lead a project team for a while. You probably think that you have to be autonomous, therefore shouldn’t bother your boss with day to day problems or status updates. After all, if you are manager, you should be fully responsible for running everything and have all the answers, right ?

Not quite.

New managers can sometimes feel like it would be a sign of weakness to still ask their boss questions about running their project. Maybe they think that their manager will think they are not good enough ?

But even if you have recently been named manager, it turns out that you don’t have many more answers today than you had yesterday ! You have to understand that it’s OK to ask your boss for advice, it doesn’t make you less competent. If you think about it, your job is to get your team to deliver what they set out to do, and if that means asking for advice on how to make things better, you should do it. And if your manager knows the domain pretty well (and there’s a good chance since they were running the team before you), then they are the right person to ask.

So don’t think that you have to know the answer to all of your questions the day you become manager. Err on the side of asking too many questions to your boss rather than too little. If you’re unsure, one thing you can do in the beginning is show them what you want to do and ask if you have missed something. At best they will show you something you didn’t know, and at worst they will tell you that you don’t need them.

Continuous feedback is the best tool for improvement, but to take advantage of it, you need to communicate.