First management position, any advice?

[brett]

Don't be afraid to think out of the box or be an outiler.

Listen carefully to ees that offer up well thought out, different opinions. The very last thing you need is all the sheep nodding in agreement and telling you how smart you are.

My only regret as a first time manager, middle manager, and senior level manager is that at first I waited too long to release poor performers, those not suited to the business. Failure to do so sends the absolute wrong message to your best team members...those that work hard, work smart, and punch above their weight. Sends a message that mediocrity is rewarded.

 

[Aerides]

I was a team lead and filled in for my supervisor once when he went on vacation. I remember clearly realizing how much “stuff” he shielded me from. With him gone, the manager came directly to me and I couldn’t wait until the supervisor got back from vacation.

Hah, I remember I went on vacation to Japan for 2 weeks, and left my best person in charge. I was off the grid, timezone upside down. 12 hour response only for the most dire stuff.

Years later, his wife tells me he still says it was the worst 2 weeks of his life.

 

[Amethyst]

I found I needed to handle poor performers very carefully.

Yes, it was a government office, but you can reprimand and fire people, no matter what you may have heard. Two reasons why supervisors let goldbrickers get away with it: 1) the documentation and counseling take effort, and 2) the goldbricker will act like Ms./Mr. Persecuted.

Even though the performers may resent Wally, they have gotten used to him, whereas seeing a co-worker disciplined is new to them, and a bit scary. There's a natural tendency on their part to project.

You still have to do your job, but when disciplining poor performers, be very sure of your reasons, do your documentation, give Wally a reasonable chance to improve, and never insult the bad performer to the others.

at first I waited too long to release poor performers, those not suited to the business. Failure to do so sends the absolute wrong message to your best team members...those that work hard, work smart, and punch above their weight. Sends a message that mediocrity is rewarded.

 

[Marti]

Lots of good advice here. One of the things that has stuck with me since I first went into management: "Always remember that the people who report to you are not YOU. They will think differently and do things differently than you would do. That doesn't always mean that it's wrong; it's just different. Capitalize on those differences".

 

[Ger0n1mo]

I was in IT management for half of my career. You have received very good advice from this forum. I might add, you will have moments during your first few months when it will seem that you have to be a mom to your team with sibling conflicts. But, tell them that you want to treat them as adults as long as they act like ones. And, really do treat them as adults, trusting them to do the right thing. You will want to be involved in budgets, especially to make sure anything you want purchased will be included in the next year's budget. You will have to learn how to manage up and manage down. Managing down well will get you a good reputation. Managing upward will get you promoted. Best wishes.

 

[brett]

As a senior manager, the least enjoyable part of my responsibilities was the HR component. It was also one of the most important, if not the most important.

Surround your self with good people. Not just your team, but your peers and those managers senior to you who have been successful. Learn from them...especially if you have a good mentor.

Then, as you mature as a people manager and have more experience, do exactly the same for those coming behind you. Never be shy to mentor or coach. You will the better for it. And...always be very straight forward and upfront with your team. Individually and as a group. They will respect you for it.

 

[RVplusDog]

Excellent advice!!! Normally I wouldn’t quote a whole post, but this is worthy.

When I got my first management job someone told me to read "The One Minute Manager." Little tiny thin book with great advice. If I had to summarize in one sentence I would say "Make your expectations clear. People usually perform on clear expectations."

Beyond that, treat your people fairly and be honest with them. Advocate for them. There will inevitably be people you like and don't like. That should never be apparent to anyone. Your job is to get the best performance from your entire team and that often means helping the ones you don't like the most.

The vast majority of people want to do a good job. If you constantly recognize that and see your role as facilitating that, getting them the tools, training, and so forth that they need they will appreciate that. You may be the boss but ulimately you succeed from the work of your team. When you have an underperformer your first question should be whether YOU are doing something wrong. Maybe you aren't but see the previous paragraghs. Maybe they don't have the tools or training they need or maybe your instructions have not been clear. Yes, sometimes there is deadwood that has to be purged but in my experience that is pretty rare.

I would also advise against major changes until you have a chance to understand the position better. This may not be an option if major projects or changes are already in the works. People will respect your decisions better if they are made after careful study. Your persepctive may be much different from a higher perch.

Finally, if you were promoted from within you may experience some animosity from rivals for your position. Respect them. Speak honestly with them that you value their work but your relationship may change.

 

[pb4uski]

Reminds me of the joke: A company is like a tree full of monkeys, those at the top look down and see smiling faces, those at the bottom look up and see a-holes. ...

Great analogy!

 

[RVplusDog]

oh - and I found Manager Tools to be a fantastic resource when I was just starting in high-tech management. Lots of good info and insightful podcast for sure.

Good luck! The people development aspect is the most rewarding part of a leadership role.

Manager tools!!! OMG forgot this one. Really good info on lots of little things that add up. A great handshake? They taught me how! Listen to them while you commute.

 

[Amethyst]

Have they updated it to an elbow-bump, or whatever they're using these days?

I do remember getting handshake lessons in one of the "female manager" training classes (I didn't need it, 'cause my Dad taught me how). Along with how to tie your silk scarf around your neck, which was somewhat useful 35 years ago.

Another great thing I learned along the way is to ask questions in a neutral tone. "What happened," gets you a better response than your mama's "What HAPpened?!"

A great handshake? They taught me how! L

 

[Irishgirlyc58]

I found I needed to handle poor performers very carefully.

Yes, it was a government office, but you can reprimand and fire people, no matter what you may have heard. Two reasons why supervisors let goldbrickers get away with it: 1) the documentation and counseling take effort, and 2) the goldbricker will act like Ms./Mr. Persecuted.

Even though the performers may resent Wally, they have gotten used to him, whereas seeing a co-worker disciplined is new to them, and a bit scary. There's a natural tendency on their part to project.

You still have to do your job, but when disciplining poor performers, be very sure of your reasons, do your documentation, give Wally a reasonable chance to improve, and never insult the bad performer to the others.

Agree 100%!
I’ve worked in government for 35 years and yes you can fire people with cause and appropriate documentation.
The person will act like they had no idea there was a problem even though you’ve done 2 years worth of progressive discipline.
I don’t think I saw this: remember the people who report to you are not your friends. They are a team and you can enjoy working with them but they are not your friends and the first time you have to do some type of discipline with one of their colleagues it will show.
Also, your team is really your manager counterpart if you are in a large organization and upper management.

 

[Steevo]

I was in IT for more than 25 years, the last 15 in management at increasingly higher levels, retiring as director of IT engineering for a huge healthcare company.
My best advice is “never stop learning”.
Learn from your staff, learn from your superiors, and continuously educate yourself.
Learn from mistakes, and do not be afraid to make mistakes. Those who try too hard to never mess up tend to be ineffective leaders and unable to guide their own staff to learn and grow through pushing their comfort zones. Delegate and then follow up through one-on-ones with your people, but don’t micro-manage and second-guess them.


Meetings have agendas and result in decisions or plans. Vague discussions without structure waste everyone’s time and do not leave anyone better off or closer to solutions or goals.


One free tool I found helpful for years is the “Manager Tools” podcast series. I spent a lot of time on the road in commute traffic and always found enough time to listen to them two to three times a week when I would otherwise be wasting that time.


Good luck and don’t sweat the small stuff.

 

[Sweetlip]

I have not read all of the responses here so please forgive me if I am duplicating what someone else said.

I retired 15 years ago after a number of years as a senior manager in a large Australian corporate. The bits of advice that I found most useful over the years were:-

1. Always be ruthless with the situation but kind with the people.

2. If you don't have the personal fortitude to be able to fire someone, you are not a manager. If you like firing people, you should not be a manager.

3. You will never usually regret firing someone. It is the ones that you don't fire but should have that you will seriously regret.

These bits of advice all relate to the harder parts of management but the first one is the most important. Whatever the situation is you have to be ruthless, but always be as kind as you can with the people who are affected by your decision which will be made for the greater good of the organisation and the employees thereof.

 

[Lsbcal]

Our son is starting a new position where he will be doing some management in a roll developing new tech business opportunities. The firm is 400 people one that is growing very rapidly. He is reporting to the top guy. So I am interested in this thread and never was a manager myself.

Do you think these 2 resources mentioned above are the best choices to mention to him?
manager tools
ask a manager

Sorry, for piggy backing on the OP's thread. I will understand if this is not deemed a good post to respond to.

 

[OldShooter]

Our son is starting a new position where he will be doing some management in a roll developing new tech business opportunities. The firm is 400 people one that is growing very rapidly. He is reporting to the top guy. So I am interested in this thread and never was a manager myself. ...

In that kind of position he needs to maneuver his manager/CEO into being a teacher and a coach. Your son's very existence at that point in the wiring diagram will be threatening to many people. His job is not in the mold of the One Minute Manager; it is much more complex. He will need the CEO's wisdom, specific to the organization and to people by name.

One time I was managing a project and spending about $2M per week/today's dollars. Everybody laughed at my jokes and told me what good ideas I had. Easy to get a fat (fatter?) head. Your son should be wary of this.

 

[RVplusDog]

I just listened to their free podcasts (link follows). I think free transcripts are available also. Link: https://www.manager-tools.com/all-podcasts

Our son is starting a new position where he will be doing some management in a roll developing new tech business opportunities. The firm is 400 people one that is growing very rapidly. He is reporting to the top guy. So I am interested in this thread and never was a manager myself.

Do you think these 2 resources mentioned above are the best choices to mention to him?
manager tools
ask a manager

Sorry, for piggy backing on the OP's thread. I will understand if this is not deemed a good post to respond to.

 

[Keim]

You say you are a cub scout leader? Take Woodbadge. It is an excellent leadership skills training course. Everything taught will apply to your new position, and as a bonus you'll have a lot of fun.

 

[2cheap2eat]

I was an IT senior manager in high tech mega corp for many years. Depending on the position, you will have more or less a budget. One of the positions which I held for a couple of years within the megacorp, I had a $1B budget for capital purchases.

I do like the advice of not being the boss you always hated. Delegate and trust your staff. No one likes a micro-manager. But it is always a fine line - trust but verify. I HATED Focal/performance review period. It was always the most stressful time of the year and that's when I really wished I was an individual contributor.

Congrats and good luck!

Performance reviews and budgets are lousy part of management, along with the long hours you have to put in!

I’d advice to guide people to own their own career, discuss their ambitions regularly, and get them opportunities to get there (projects, training, etc). This job market is hot, so have to go above & beyond to keep people happy!

 

[2cheap2eat]

Reminds me of the joke: A company is like a tree full of monkeys, those at the top look down and see smiling faces, those at the bottom look up and see a-holes.


Take away: don't be an a-hole in your employees view.

Hilarious

 

[UpQuark]

I would NOT recommend the One Minute Manager for someone managing a professional group. My parents gave me that book when I was put in charge of a few people in a factory, and one guy who had been very helpful I spent a minute telling him how helpful he'd been, and then he kept following me around the factory trying to be helpful and essentially abandoned the work he was supposed to be doing, and I had no idea what to do. Then there was a girl who spent most of her time just chatting and I spent a minute telling her how not-good that was and she cried for the rest of the day and everyone was mad at me for making her cry.


I haven't been a manager in an IT department but I've spent decades as an IT member of staff, and in my opinion Performance reviews are worse than useless. We once had a new hire college graduate and she was extraordinary, but her performance appraisal gave her a 'meets expectations' rating. She was really bothered by that, and who knows if she would have stayed with us, but luckily there was a Peer Award process and she won the peer award and that woke up management to realize she was NOT doing ordinary performance, and mgmt gave her the highest perf review rating the next year.


The place I worked that had the best management was one that had some sort of measureable self-improving management stats. I don't know what they were but the work estimations were spot-on, the processes were all followed, we had what we needed at the time we needed it and we delivered on-time, on-budget etc. We all loved that place and when the contract was up two people died, I think because we were all really sad to have to transfer off to other groups in the company and the stress pushed people to die of things maybe they wouldn't have.


The worst places I've worked at the management confuses 'skipping steps' with 'being fast and agile', or more probably, the managers are forced to meet deadlines that are impossible and are somehow incapable of introducing rational schedules.

One place I worked at had development slip so far we only had a couple days to test, and there were some tests that could not be done in less than 4 days. They delivered the code anyway and it caused like 500 million dollars of screwed up financial transactions, the code had to be backed out and the company had a very red face from it. Everyone had known the code wasn't ready but for some reason managers could not say 'no-go'. After that objective measures were put in place that essentially took the decision out of the managers hands.


I think making an environment where people can safely disagree with their managers is the best for IT. In my experience most serious problems were known by technical staff but managers squashed the information because either they think they knew better than the technical people or they didn't have the courage to face the necessary changes to the schedules.

 

[OldShooter]

Performance reviews and budgets are lousy part of management ...

I had what I came to find was a fairly unique approach to reviews when I was at Megacorp. I would give the blank review form to the employee, ask them to fill it out, and give it back to me a few days before the meeting.

With one exception that I can remember over the years, every employee was harder on themselves that I would have been. Discussing this and my correcting their form to be less harsh made for very positive meetings.

Only once did I get a self-appraisal that did not connect with the real world. That meeting was not fun, but it did bring to the front a problem that I had underestimated.

These were mostly technical employees, EEs, and lab technicians. I can't guess how it would have gone with other types of employees. I had sales employees in the company I owned and I don't think it would have worked with them.

 

[eytonxav]

I had what I came to find was a fairly unique approach to reviews when I was at Megacorp. I would give the blank review form to the employee, ask them to fill it out, and give it back to me a few days before the meeting.

This was not unusual at many companies requiring employees to first complete a self assessment of their performance vs MBOs.

 

[Lsbcal]

This was not unusual at many companies requiring employees to first complete a self assessment of their performance vs MBOs.

As an employee I felt this was a good way for management to avoid being managers.

 

[Aerides]

I had what I came to find was a fairly unique approach to reviews when I was at Megacorp. I would give the blank review form to the employee, ask them to fill it out, and give it back to me a few days before the meeting.

This was not unusual at many companies requiring employees to first complete a self assessment of their performance vs MBOs.

As an employee I felt this was a good way for management to avoid being managers.

This was SOP in my MC for as long as I can remember. Hated it, both as an employee and a manager. Few employees underrated themselves, most felt the need to write a book - never quite grasping it was meant to be a highlight reel.

Still it was helpful, if the employee didn't have much to write in a given section, it was easy to point to it and go "see maybe work on that".

I also hated it because I knew it was mostly meaningless. If you're a star the review is a waste of time. If you're not, no amount of good writing at year end will elevate you (oh and mid year - we did this exercise twice per year)...

 

[Amethyst]

I was deputy manager for a large group of developers. They were the most self-critical employees I've ever worked with - it was a major effort to get them to write about their accomplishments (doing so was part of our appraisal system at that time).

Exceptions to this rule existed, but were rare.

I also loved working with them because they would say startling things to me, such as "I never expected you to learn that so fast." Bear in mind that I have no computer science background. They had been prepared to endure a (female) pointy-haired boss, and when I didn't turn out to be one, it was a shock to some of them.

With one exception that I can remember over the years, every employee was harder on themselves that I would have been. Discussing this and my correcting their form to be less harsh made for very positive meetings.

Only once did I get a self-appraisal that did not connect with the real world. That meeting was not fun, but it did bring to the front a problem that I had underestimated.

These were mostly technical employees, EEs, and lab technicians. I can't guess how it would have gone with other types of employees. I had sales employees in the company I owned and I don't think it would have worked with them.