Congrats New Manager

Congrats on your promotion! You have earned it !! Now What ? Nervous ? Don’t Understand ? Your are not alone !
Your selection provides you with career growth and also proves your loyalty to the company. Stepping up from being an individual contributor role to a people manager role comes with its own challenges. Don’t be a recipe for failure, don’t burn yourself out with all the expectations that you will put on your head. One of the biggest tests new managers face is knowing how to go from being a peer to managing their peers.
Let others bask in the glory
The new role is a lot more hands off kind of work, you are not expected to keep pegging away at the daily work. You get your paycheck for thinking, talking, strategizing and overseeing instead of the actual talking to customers. There are times you might feel that you can do a better job, but don’t let that dominate you and make you take over that work. Avoid doing that, you are expected to take on a role which gives vision and mission to your team, so you need to focus on that.

As a manager, you’ll only see that majority of the work that you do will only impact at the end of 4/6 months cycle. When you start managing, you’ll surprised to know that you don’t know how your time is going. Take note of some time keeping apps, and make sure you can log it to tell you mind — ‘ALL IS WELL’

Stop Micro — Start Macro
As a manager, one key responsibility that needs to be delivered is improvement on a month on month basis, what are the things that you initiated which started and had a larger impact. Stop doing routine work coz overall picture will never be achieved. Another major factor to understand your success is your team’s ability to work if you are not around. It means your focus is on growing and improving the team for the future — not daily micromanagement.
To start thinking about the long term, create small term goals, things you can fit into a quarter. Working with your boss, look at goals for the next 3 months, then the next quarter, then the next year. Review them and keep a tab on them with weekly checkins. Starting this early would mean you are on track and don’t get caught in daily firefighting.

Your End Clients have changed
When you’re working on the front line, you’ll do anything to make your client’s happy. When you’re a manager, your team is your clients. Shift your focus to making your team members successful, productive and happy. While your customers are obviously still important, your new job is to make sure that you put your team above you.
Catch Up regularly and ensure that there are no reasons for any undue tensions, make sure that they understand their responsibility. Don’t make any immediate changes,
just observe and learn —
Too often, new managers try to make their mark and prove they were deserving of the promotion by making adjustments they wanted as a someone on the other side. But, they weren’t aware of the backstory that may have explained why certain changes were infeasible. Big changes also create fear, which leads to a lack of trust.

Observe the operations of the team through the lens of a manager, not a peer, take notes and learn the inner workings.
If your team accomplishes their goals, you accomplish yours.
take time to fully understand goals set by management —
As a new manager, having awareness of what’s important to management is key to understanding what you and your team will be held accountable for. Think about your role and write a list of questions to ask management:
- What are the the top three priorities I should focus on?
- How am I being measured?
- How would you define success for me and the team?
Make sure that you spend some time in 1–1 with management making sure that vision and mission is clear and you get clarity on what is the expectation.

Don’t Kill Yourself

Remember your first day at work? You didn’t know much but over time you became an expert. Likewise no is expecting you to be perfect from your first day as a manager.
Don’t be afraid to ask for help. Just because you’re a manager now doesn’t mean you know everything about leading a team. Calm yourself down and make sure that the team is aware of the short term goals — overtime you understand the new role and would transition smoothly.
Retrospect weekly
It’s easy to forget what you’ve accomplished. Keep a Trello board full of projects you’re working on, and those you’ve finished. Add to it weekly, even if its the smallest thing — helps in understanding what took you time.
Read & Repeat
There are tons of material available about this — make sure your read daily. Set some time for reading as it makes your life easier , helps you to maintain stability with your thoughts.
How to Succeed as a Manager

Success won’t come from doing the same things you’ve been doing as an agent. To be a great manager, you’ll need to think bigger, adjust your focus and adapt to a new way of working. It’s a big change!
Be patient with yourself and always keep learning and asking questions. Congratulations again on the big promotion. We know you’ll rock it. 🙂