3 Tips for First Time Manager
The transition from individual contributor to manager is one of the hardest for many mid career professionals. It is hard because most managers are not sufficiently trained on how to be a manager themselves and therefore do not know how to coach their next level to be a good manager.
The unfortunate truth is when someone is promoted into a managerial role, the person is expected to know what to do with the assumption that because the person has done such a great job being an individual contributor, the person should be able to be a good manager. It is a mistake to assume a good individual contributor will naturally be a good manager. It is also untrue to assume the high performer can take on cognitive load (Paas, 2003) without a limit.
Tackling the challenges in earning the promotion from an individual contributor to a manager is a topic worth another article on its own. In the context of this article, the author assumes the person has already earned that promotion and about to start the new role as a first time manager.
Below are the top 3 tips for being a first time manager:
Tip 1: Get ready for a lot of context switching
As an individual contributor (IC), IC get to spend a lot of time in performing deep work (Newport, 2016). Sometimes, IC can even complain to the manager when there are too many unintended distractions to keep the IC from focusing. Some of the more sophisticated employees refer this as context switching (Rietveld, 2012).
As a manager, you lose the privilege to complain about context switching. A manager is expected to deal with wide breadth of challenges of different nature. For example, in one morning you might involve in a 30-min discussion on hiring strategy with team leads and other managers, the next 30-min meeting on an one-on-one with a direct report, then another 30-min time block on an implementation for strengthening security in production environment. All back to back. Also, not to mention the amount of messages and emails come in along the way to grab your attention. Handling context switching is expected for a manager.
However, that doesn’t mean a manager’s job is only jumping from task to task. At times, a manager is also expected to lead projects (spells putting in a lot of individual effort in initiatives and hard works behind the scene). Here is a secret, the more effortless it seems for the manager to present a project or topic, the more effort the manager has put in preparation in the background.
Tip 2: Repeat, repeat, repeat
Early in the author’s software development career, he was trained on programming concepts such as OOP and principle such as SOLID and DRY. These principles trained software development professionals to be efficient with objects, codes and technical implementation in general. However, being a manager is the exact opposite. A large portion of a manager job is to deal with people issue. With people, trying to be efficient is a bad idea. In people, slow is fast.
DRY (Hunt &Thomas 1999) stands for Don’t Repeat Yourself, which is a popular software development principle for efficiency by not introducing redundancy. Technical professionals often apply such principles while designing solutions. The technical professional who transitions into being a first time manager will quickly face frustrations if the same mindset is carried into the new role. As a manager, be prepared to repeat some information multiple times. Sometimes, the multiple times can even be targeted on the same person.
A piece of important information should not be simply communicated through email once and expect everyone in the team, department or organization to understand and remember. At times, for extremely sensitive communication, the manager might even have to repeat it in one-on-one meeting for everyone. For some other important information such as organizational structure changes, major product delivery timeline, priorities and strategies, etc will often be repeated multiple times in group settings. Also, be prepared to engage in conversation where a member of the organization will ask you the same question that you have just explained to another member 15 minutes ago.
However, that does not mean a manager should not think about efficient way to solve problem. For example, pulling the necessary stakeholders for a timeline review meeting rather than approaching the stakeholders one by one. For first time manager, do expect there are more times that you thought you need to repeat the same conversation.
Tip 3: Avoid being the Superman
It is very common that individual contributors who are extremely effective in execution get promoted to be a manager. Usually that person is the de-facto member in the team. The person will sometimes be 2x or 3x more productive than the other members because the person has very deep domain knowledge and excellent technical skills to be the most productive person in the team. The author call this person the Superman. (The author will leave the discussion on how appropriate it is to use such selection criteria to promote someone to be a manager out of the discussion in this article. Do note that what mentioned above commonly happens in organizations.)
When the Superman carries the same approach and working habit into the new role as a manager, this will potentially set the team up for failure. The Superman manager will become the bottleneck and the single point of failure for the team. The Superman manager should instead spend the time to train and equip the team members to have the equivalent knowledge and skillsets, if not better, than the Superman manager himself. The Superman manager should identify the appropriate challenge that matches team members’ capability, allow them to learn and experiment and coach them on how to solve challenges beyond their level by walking through the thinking process.
However, that does not mean a manager should only be the traffic controller and assigning works to different team members in the name of delegation. A manager should maintain the capability to step in and roll up the sleeves to get the hands dirty when situation requires. While keeping an eye one the quality of the team members work, the manager usually involve in designing and reviewing the deliverables.
Summary
This story is inspired by a conversation the author was having with a senior engineer in a coaching call. The question the engineer asked was “How do I know if I’m ready to be a manager?” Referring to the tips, how likely will a person enjoy performing the works mentioned above. If the answer is yes, that’s a good start; if the answer is no, just realize that managerial role is not the only option to advance in career development.
Good luck being a first time manager!
References:
Hunt, Andrew; Thomas, David (1999). The Pragmatic Programmer : From Journeyman to Master (1 ed.). USA: Addison-Wesley. pp. 320. ISBN 978–0201616224.
Newport, C. (2016). Deep work: Rules for focused success in a distracted world. Hachette UK.
Paas, F., Tuovinen, J. E., Tabbers, H., & Van Gerven, P. W. (2003). Cognitive load measurement as a means to advance cognitive load theory. Educational psychologist, 38(1), 63–71.
Rietveld, E. (2012). Context-switching and responsiveness to real relevance. Heidegger and cognitive science, 105–135.
