Hey there 👋,

Welcome to the Empowered Leader Newsletter Article #4:

4 Things You Must Do As A First-Time Manager

October 3, 2022

I’ve been leading people for over 20 years, from teams as small as one person to teams as large as 200+ (in total). I have discovered that there are 4 basic things that you need to do when you first become a leader that will set you up for success as well as your team.

Must Do #1: Be aware of yourself and your team

Sun-Tzu’s famous quote in the Art of War goes (and I have paraphrased), “If you know [your team]  and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not [your team], for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither [your team] nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”

When you apply this quote to managing a team, it means that you need to know your team as well as yourself. But what do you need to be aware of? Below are 6 questions for yourself and your team that will help you with developing awareness of yourself and your team.

1. What are your personal values? - Your personal values are the things that are most important to you in life and will serve as your inspiration. You allow them to guide your choices and actions. Examples are: Family, job security, loyalty, intelligence, creativity, humanism, etc.
2. What gives you energy? - When you feel your energy flagging, what do you do, who do you hang out with, and where do you go? Choose from either your personal or professional life.
3. What drains your energy? - What are some examples of situations, relationships, and pursuits that drain your energy? Choose from either your personal or professional life.
4. When have you been your best at work? - Imagine a time in your career when you were at the top of your game. Describe the sensations you experienced when you were totally focused on your work. Why did you feel most like yourself when you were serving in that capacity?
5. When have you been at your worst at work? - Contemplate a time in your career when you felt like you were completely failing. Feel free to describe how you felt when you were having a hard time at work. What specifics of that job, organization, team, management, etc., led to your lowest point?
6. What motivates you at work? - Now that you have all the pieces, imagine yourself at your professional best, brimming with energy, committed to your own principles, and mindfully incorporating any relevant context. 

To get the most out of this activity, it's essential that you be completely honest with yourself about the factors (such as salary, impact, flexibility, and people you work with) that truly motivate you on a professional level. Benefits, professional advancement opportunities, location, title, salary, in-office perks, and schedule flexibility are just a few examples of how employers incentivize their employees.

Do this activity both for yourself and your team.

Must Do #2: Care for yourself and your team

It goes without saying, however caring for both yourself and your team is critical as a manager. But what does caring mean? How do you care for your team? Can you overcare for your team? Let’s break down each of these questions:

Firstly, what does it mean to care? It means:

• Matching the work to your team’s capability and capacity
• Knowing what motivates your team and what gives them energy
• Daring your team to reach higher
• Celebrating life milestones
• Remembering important dates eg. Anniversaries, birthdays etc.
• Giving praise where it is due in different ways eg. Slack messages, cards, etc.

How can you build a good understanding of how to care for your team? Here are 4 simple questions to ask:

1. How do you like to receive feedback? Eg. Positive feedback in public, Negative in private. 
2. What do you need most from your manager? Eg. High level guidance, I like to figure things out by myself. I will ask for direction when I am lost.
3. From waking to falling asleep, describe your perfect working day. 
4. How do you like to communicate? Eg. Face to face, slack, WeChat, Whatsapp, etc.

The next step as a manager would then be to not just understand your team’s preferences for each of the 4 questions above, but then to build an action plan around each one. For example, if your team member likes to receive positive feedback in public, how can you plan to make this happen? Eg. Schedule a reminder to think of something that the team member did well that week and publicly give him/her a shout out. If your team member likes to do the school drop off, how can you remind yourself not to schedule early morning meetings with this specific person.

Must Do #3: Share feedback with your team

Giving and receiving feedback is critical to being a manager. 

Before, we deep dive into feedback, it is important to talk a bit about expectations. Expectations and feedback go together like two peas in a pod. Without clear expectations, feedback doesn’t become as helpful. 

How do you set expectations? Here is a simple framework to use:

I expect you to accomplish [what? metric/milestone] result, with [who - if applicable] people, by displaying [how] skills and/or behaviors by [when] time, with check-ins on [when] dates because [why? motivation/context]. 

Unless your team have said you tell them your expectations too often, then you haven’t done it enough. 

When giving feedback, firstly avoid the “sh%& sandwich”. I was personally taught that this was the best method to give feedback, i.e., start with something positive, deliver the negative feedback, and then end with something positive. This has since been shown not to be an effective method. Some good principles when it comes to giving great feedback to your team:

• Ensure that it is linked to clearly defined expectations that are SMART (Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Reachable, Timebound)
• Timely.
• Focused.
• Objective relative to the expectations
• Clear and specific. 
• Within the person’s decision making sphere - there is nothing more disempowering than receiving feedback on something that you have little to no control over.

Receiving feedback as a manager is also important. There are several ways to receive this that have worked well for me. One is to always ask “what else can I do for you” in 1-on-1s, or “what can I do to make your job easier”? There are also anonymous surveys that you can use to get upward feedback on how you are performing. More on this in another post.

Must Do #4: Dare to take ownership

Ownership means having control. At work, there are 3 critical areas that you must have control over when you are managing teams. They are, your thoughts, your actions, and your words. 

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Passive Language

They didn’t listen to me

Traffic made me late

My calendar is too busy

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Ownership Language

Things happen because of me

I left 30 minutes earlier

I block off time to do things that I want to do in my calendar

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Ownership doesn’t mean that you have to do everything. It firstly means that you have to take control over the things that you have decision making capability for and then secondly delegating to your team where it makes sense.

That’s it. 4 things that you must do when you are first made a manager. If you haven’t done any of them yet, why not give them a go?