First-time Manager Need to know this!
My Story
My career grew because of my grit in developing my skill in data analysis and presentation. And as a junior, I didn’t have a team, I work individually. I just need to open the laptop, create scripts, and put them on the well-crafted PowerPoint. I did some brainstorming a little bit, though. It was a long hour stint every day because I started with zero knowledge. I created a query, found an error, re-type it again, or my query succeeded, keep doing it on and on. However, the data don’t always support the argument I wanted to make. When it happened, somehow I’m still trying to find a way, pulling more and more data, hoping that I’ll find supportive facts. Most of the time, I didn’t find one.
The most ego-consuming part is when I need to accept that my solution was not the best. Let it go, stop exploring it, and just try to find a better problem to solve. I repeated this cycle so many times. The more I did the analysis, the more I realized that I started it with the wrong spirit.
An analysis should be a discovery that leads to the conclusion, not the other way around. And, as I master the analysis technique, the more fun it becomes. In the beginning, analysis for me is like sailing through the storm with a small wooden boat — no fun at all; but at a certain level of mastery, it becomes like smooth sailing with a yacht. A very enjoyable trip. Oh, I can talk about this for hours. Let me create another article for this, later. Anyway, it’s not the key point of this article. Actually, this exercise gave me three main benefits:
- My expertise in scripting SQL and presentation increased.
- My way of thinking became more mature and structured.
- I became more confident that I can do heavy work, alone, and deliver great results.
I wanted to zoom in to point 3. While as an individual contributor, confidence really gives me more productivity, as I climbed the corporate ladder and became a manager, this confidence also produces an issue: trust issue. To a certain degree, this is normal. My team doesn’t have experience as much as I have in the field that I’m very good at. In this condition, the easiest shortcut is to take a large portion of work alone and give staff the easy work to do. While this can ensure the standard of output or delivery, this can hurt both the manager and the staff in the long run.
You need to remember how you can become who you are. It is because you are deliberately doing the specific thing that you’re so interested in, putting in a lot of hours doing the same thing all over again, facing a lot of mistakes, and getting mature in the process. The first-time senior manager often forgets that their staff needs to also experience this!
Now I know not all of you, the first-time manager, have arrived at the position with previous relevant experience. This usually happens in the small start-ups putting a bet on hiring people with good company or career backgrounds, hoping they can be agile enough to catch up with the company’s needs. In this case, the challenge has doubled — to personally catch up with the competence necessary for the position and train the team members too.
As I recall, at my first job, I saw that happen in the organization. The Head of Business Development with previous management consultant experience. The Head of Marketing with previous experience as a Business Development Executive in Microsoft. The Head of Operations with previous experience as a Wireline Engineer in Schlumberger, and many other cases. There’s a small or even no relevance between their previous job and the current one, but they can survive and even have a shining career like a diamond. This condition doesn’t change the rule.
Set The Goal
From my observation, in any case, the first thing that is very important and should be very clear is the goal. In the end, the goal is the savior. People will not ask whether your past experience is relevant if you and your team achieved the goal. For example, BD has a target of new 5 clients per month with a minimum 100Mio contract package. Marketing has a target of a 10% increase in monthly transactions with no increase in budget. The operation has a target of 5000 supply acquisitions per month with lower acquisition costs.
The goal has to prove that you’re doing a difficult thing — that requires mastery — and it’s very beneficial for the company, mostly related to economics.
So, you need to think very carefully about the goal and set it accurately.
Think about,
- What are the significant things that your team can give to the company, a challenging one, and it also will make the business so great in the future?
- Why does that goal matters? Insert your supporting facts about the business or customers.
- Given the circumstance of the company, will the key stakeholders be convinced?
This goal needs to become a tool for the team to grow. As I mentioned before, your team member has to deliberately practice their skills.
And a clear goal will give meaning to their efforts.
Seek Mutual Commitment
Most people come to the professional world without knowing what skills they need to master.
Your role as a coach is to help them define it so they can decide whether they want to be all-in or all-out. There’s nothing in the middle.
Some people will not have satisfying answers to questions like,
“what’s your goal for the next 5 years?” or
“what role do you want to have in the next two years?.”
In this case, there should be a point where as a leader and coach, you need to clarify, something along this line:
“If you still can’t figure out what you want, that’s OK. I have options available for you. You can choose to follow this, or else you need to figure it out in another place. If you choose to follow, I can help you become (…fill the role…), and here are the skills that you need to develop (...fill in the skills…), but I need your commitment and trust because this would not be smooth. There will be a lot of discomfort feedback, changes, and struggle. I’ll always push you to the limit, but the payback for you, in the long run, will be worth it.”
When they decided to be all-in and committed, then you can start to drill them, comfortably, because both parties already agreed upon the goal. Otherwise, you don’t want to have a team member who becomes disoriented or just hangs there without adding more advantages to the company or team strategically.
First Milestone: Mastering the basics.
In deliberate practice, you need to design the coaching program carefully.
The goal of the first stage is to build confidence and fundamental concept. Give a task that is basic, not very hard to achieve, and it’s measurable.
Make him/her responsible for the goal individually so you can appreciate and celebrate it when s/he achieves it.
Imagine if you train them in sports, like tennis. When I learned to play tennis, the coach gives lessons about how to punch the ball. The coach will stand next to me and give the ball to me, hence the punch. What the coach will see is how I hold the racket and move my hands and hip instead of where the ball ended up falling. The focus is to ensure I move correctly. He will repeatedly give this exercise until I get the sense. If after repeated exercise, I still can’t correct my movement, he will yell, telling me to remember what he said,
“Move the hips, not only your hand!”,
“Don’t hold the racket too high!”,
“Don’t use your power yet! Focus on having the right move!”,
“Feel the move!.”
Just after he realized I’m about to master this exercise, those critics started to disappear and he started to praise me.
“That’s a great move! Amazing!”
“Cool, you learned fast!”
“Whoa, you’re talented!”
And what usually happened is, when I got praise, I became less focused and did a mistake again. The coach will see it and he will yell again, “Keep focus!”
Second Stage: Increase the Challenge.
As the ball crossed the net and the rate of failures started to statistically drop, I got confident and started to feel like a pro. At this point then the coach started the next challenge, the more difficult one. Instead of throwing the ball next to me, he will stand at a distance in the opponent’s area and give me the ball by serving it to me.
At the first trial, it was a mess. I’m losing all sense. Previously, I can focus on the movement, but now I need to focus on the movement and also get a sense of the fast-moving ball against me. I need to measure how fast the ball is, the direction and how high the ball will bounce. I missed a lot of passing and misfired it with an over-power punch. My confidence started to drop. I failed multiple times instead of scoring great like before. But instead of being demotivated, I crave another score. I had defeated the challenge before, I wanted to defeat this challenge too.
This is the importance of designing a staggering challenge for the staff.
If you give them too much at the beginning, you can risk them not having confidence at all, and stop in the middle. And if you give it too easy, they can become overconfident.
Make sure the intensity is enough.
You also need to set the pace. Set the task so that they will have enough exercise to master certain skills, and also enough points for you to give them necessary feedback at the time you favorably need.
Intensity is what makes great talent grow.
If you set low intensity, don’t expect them to grow rapidly. Michael Jordan, the famous NBA player, had daily training every day from 7 AM to 7 PM, he had it for years. That is what makes him a special NBA player. Not only repeated exercises, but Michael Jordan also thinks every day about how to improve his technique. Some stories said that he was watching a National Geography Channel about cheetahs that run so fast and stable. He was inspired to use the same technique in his running style. This is where the word deliberate in deliberate practice comes from. It involved mental energy to also think deeply about the improvements.
Guiding is key.
To ensure the pace and stability, you need to set a monitoring cycle, so you can adjust the challenge immediately when you see the symptoms of overconfidence or demotivation. It can be daily, bi-daily, or weekly evaluations. The more presence and attention you give, the more you can see them grow. I found this often overlooked by a manager, even though it’s very meaningful. Many managers expect their staff to grow by themself, with very minimal attention. While this can happen, the majority of people will break. Also, without your presence, even though they cracked the challenge, you will not be respected as much because they will feel that they earned it by themself, without your help. In the end, you as a manager will bear the cost and reward.
There’s no other way to develop people with long-term relationships than to invest your energy and time with them. I learned it the hard way.
For those who are in a managerial position for the first time. I wish you good luck! you can do it!
