THE CATALYST: Five (5) Leadership Hacks for First Time Managers

By Felix C. Veroya

Hey, congratulations! I have heard you got promoted to a management role. Your promotion got a lot of exciting things in it. Some of your colleagues might believe that they should have been encouraged instead of you. Your former immediate superior and now your equivalent might make you feel the pressure of taking in a higher role. Before you realize it, the skills that made you fill in the new position are not the same skills that can help you excel in the new game.

A few good companies provide tools and training for you to have a smooth management journey, but just, in any case, they do not; I am sharing some hacks on how you can get started. When I took on my first management role at the age of 25, I was fortunate to have the right tools and training, and I want to share what I learned from the point until today.

1. Prioritize building confidence and trust as a new manager. However technical your job may be, success management comes down to having good people skills. In the first few weeks of your new role, refrain from doing significant changes until your second or third month. Schedule a conversation with your team members to establish an open communication channel that is crucial for building trust and confidence for you and your team members. Show that you appreciate your team members, and you value their contributions. Do not abuse utilizing praises as it may result in negative implications, and make sure only to use it when your team members deserve it. Be specific on giving credits by stating the behavior and relating it to how it helped achieve an excellent performance. You can do this in private during your one–on–one check-in. This will not happen overnight, and you must sustain the routine to create a long-lasting impact. I had a personal experience, which I adopted from my previous mentors, who impacted my leadership style.
   
2. Adapt your management style to each person and situation.  If we talk about management styles that we have seen in our workplaces, there are archetypes. We have witnessed autocratic managers that want complete control over everything and expect robot-like performances from their team. We also have seen diplomatic managers who have spent time explaining what needs to be done and why. Leading people requires flexibility and does not have a one tool fits all approach. Your role as a manager is to make sure that there is a balance between control and encouragement based on certain circumstances. So, if someone has knowledge but is not motivated, they need encouragement from you, while if someone is motivated but lacks the ability, they need control from you. When I took my first management role, I must first assess my team members’ motivation and skill to adjust my style to the specific results of my assessment. This helped me get the results I needed from the team while keeping them motivated and encouraged at the same time.
   
3. Delegate to develop your employees. One of the essential skills of a manager is delegation. Delegation is the process of assigning a task, project, or job to an employee to develop his skills and achieve organizational goals. There are many known barriers for managers to delegate. They have not realized that growth is impeded for them and their team members without delegation. Make sure to use delegation to help your team members grow by taking on new or additional tasks to hone skills to progress in the organization. When delegating a job, remember that your team member’s level of experience and expertise may not be the same as yours. After three (3) months in my management role, I have asked my team members if there are things that they want to learn so they can perform their roles better. We ended up doing job rotations, job enrichments, and even one-to-one mentoring on tools they usually use. It became a good exercise, and we have increased our team’s productivity by not being limited to dependency on just a person that can solely do the task or job.
   
4. Run efficient meetings by setting a plan and sharing the floor. Have you attended a conference that felt like you are wasting a precious portion of your time? As a manager, you must learn to plan, lead, and participate in meeting so that you and your team will get value out of them. Meetings are expensive and should be converted into matter. To maximize the productivity of the meeting, send participants an outline of the plan and other related resources if necessary. This will give participants time to prepare for the forum, especially if decisions are made. Make sure to delegate the discussion items following a defined time frame and act as facilitator during the session. Create a space that will make meeting participants feel involved and can pitch their thoughts on the topics being discussed. Whenever I facilitate meetings, I always ask team members for their input regarding the items. Remember, the meeting should be a two-way process of communication.
   
5. Align your employees’ interests with your company’s needs to boost motivation. As a manager, one of your primary responsibilities is to motivate your team. Learn to understand your team member’s strengths to achieve company objectives. I maintain a set of four (4) questionnaires to baseline my team members’ strengths. For the last ten years, I have developed a framework called UPS for Success – Understanding Personal Strengths for Individual and Organizational Success. By utilizing this model, significant results were generated for my previous team members while hitting our department KPIs and targets. By understanding their interests and strengths, you can create a win-win relationship with your team members and motivate them in a much personal manner. 

As a new manager, make sure that you consider the basics and not try to stir your team to avoid unnecessary conflicts. Learn how to communicate properly, serve as a mentor to your team members while you are delegating tasks and jobs to them, and enjoy the leadership journey.

Let’s continue to be #significantlybetter managers, together!

Do you want to talk? Get in touch with me thru fcveroya@asklexph.com.