Are you a first time manager, and you already feel it is not so easy? Do you think the situation is overwhelming, and you start identifying with the so-called “impostor syndrome“? If this is your situation, the first thing to do is to stay calm.
Remember these three things: no one is born ready, a boss is not born but is made, and, in short, you are not born a boss: you become one if you have the right help and skills for the job.
5 tips for first time managers
1. Give yourself time to learn
You don’t have to be the perfect boss on the first day. Allow yourself to make mistakes. In addition to tasks and procedures you’ve never faced before, there will be documentation to read, meetings to attend, and job characteristics that are not the same as in your previous position… Learning all of this doesn’t happen all at once.
2. Find your style progressively
Remember, it is not necessary to have your style defined on the first day: your style is built up progressively. As we said earlier, you need time to learn to be a boss for the first time and for your unique way of exercising leadership to emerge.
3. Lean on your colleagues
Turn to your subordinates, your peers, and your superiors. Be sensible in identifying the areas where you need help daily, and be humble enough to ask for it from whoever you think can best support you within the company.
4. Take advantage of mentoring opportunities
Beyond collaborations that you request daily with specific tasks, as a first time manager, look for suitable references to accompany you as a new boss in the task based on the reciprocity provided by the shared and proven experience. Although it may occur in a relatively informal way, mentoring is more powerful if it occurs in a scheduled manner through the direct superior of the new manager who, during the first phase after joining the position, exercises a kind of didactic tutoring, providing security.
5. Be more focused on providing security than on instilling fear
When someone takes on the task of being a first time manager, they can overdo it by exercising an overly authoritarian management style. This blocks the team’s trust in this figure and alienates them from their leader. Therefore, it is in the leader’s best interest to understand that the team needs a firm figure to lean on, not someone unpleasant to whom they cannot turn.
5 areas of work in the manager’s role
1. Authority
Power is attractive from the outside, but exerting it responsibly and appropriately is also difficult, especially when someone is facing the challenge of being a first time manager. Imposing one’s point of view, reprimanding a team member, or defending the work that has been done requires psychological skills that are fundamental to the proper functioning of everyone.
2. Coordinate teamwork
Being a first time manager, or for some time now, is not just about distributing tasks: coordinating is assigning and supervising the functions of different team members consistently and efficiently. This is the only way to make people’s work easier and to make it easier for them to work together towards common goals. In this article, we discuss this and other characteristics of a managerial position on the skills needed to be a manager.
3. Efficient decision making
As we mentioned before, power implies responsibility. A good leader should not freeze when faced with the responsibility of making a decision, no matter how serious or transcendental the decision may be at first. It is not always pleasant to have to press the green or red button and endure the tension of not knowing whether a mistake is being made or bearing the consequences of the chosen option.
4. Problem solving
One of the best things to happen to a team is having a highly qualified problem solver in the coordination position. This capacity implies not freezing when making decisions but also intuition, mental order, and, above all, a high level of knowledge about the work being done by the team.
When someone accepts to be a manager for the first time, inexperience or nerves can cause them to falter in this area, hence the need for managers to have professional support for the correct performance of their duties.
5. Caring for the team’s well-being
A manager who is mature enough to make timely decisions, solve problems effectively, provide security, and help the team work in an orderly fashion is in a good position to attend to another of their responsibilities: caring for the well-being of the people they work with. Being a first time manager may entail mistakes that will be corrected over time, but neglecting the employee should not be one of them.
We hope you found this post on how to face the task of being a first time manager interesting. If you would like more information about ifeel’s emotional well-being service for companies, simply request it, and we will contact your team as soon as possible.
