Yay! I'm a manager!

News on 18 September 2019

What style do you adopt? What are you allowed to say to people?

First, it’s not just about you

Being a manager means that your job is to look after your team. It’s not just about you as an individual anymore. Your team are the most important thing.

When you are part of a team you have individual goals. You will need to get your hands dirty (not always literally) by doing the job. Now that you’re a manager it means that you’re not going to be doing the same work. Your job now involves looking after a team of people and helping them to achieve their goals. If they hit their goals, then you hit yours.

Confidentiality

When you were part of the team and you heard a rumour about someone else, you might have joined in on the conversation about what was being said. Now you’re the manager, you will know what’s actually going on. However, you can’t tell anyone and need to be trusted to keep secrets. You’re a bit like an MI5 agent, but without any cool gadgets.

Remember that most things that involve individual employees are going to be confidential. If you’re not sure, then speak to your HR Advisor and have a chat to your manager, or even have a look on the ICO website.

Next please!

Having a management role comes with different tasks.

There’s a lot of reports. You’ve got to analyse people’s performance. There may even be financial targets for you to review. While all of this is going on, you might also have constant interruptions from people asking if you have 2 minutes.

As tempting as it is to tell them to jog on, you need to make yourself available for your team and find a way to manage your time.

We’re not saying be available 24/7 or to stop in the middle of something urgent.

What we are saying is that you need to judge the situation in front of you and make a balance call on whether or not you can give that person 2 minutes now, or if you just need to finish what you’re doing, so arrange to have a cuppa with them in half an hour or make a convenient slot available to them.

Team goals

You are used to individual targets that you had full control over.

If you didn’t do the work, you didn’t hit your target.

Your new targets are to make sure that the people in your team hit their targets. That’s something that can be difficult to achieve. How do you get people to do the work and hit their targets? Read on and find out!

Getting to know people

Think about the people you currently work with. They are all different, aren’t they?

That doesn’t change when you get promoted. What does change is the fact that if you don’t like someone on a personal level, they shouldn’t know it.

As a manager, part of your role is to ensure that everyone is treated fairly and with dignity and respect. You can’t have favourites and you can’t give people the rubbish work just because you think they are a bit of a pain in the behind.

That aside, you really do need to get to know the people in your team.

How can you motivate someone to be a better version of themselves if you don’t know what makes them tick? For Carly it might be money, so you can entice her with the bonus scheme – be more productive and you get cash! But what about Matteo? Matteo doesn’t really care too much about money. So, to be able to motivate him, you need to know what makes him tick.

Mind reading

You think I’m joking right? Well, only half joking. You need to remember that your team are not mind readers. You’ve asked someone to complete a job ASAP, but what does that really mean? To you it could mean “drop everything you’re doing and work on this instead”, but to them it could mean “get this done by the end of the day”. So, when you are talking to your team about things you need them to complete, be clear and don’t leave any room for interpretation.

Back off!

Yes, you might know how to do their job, but that is no longer YOUR job. So, back off. Do the tasks that you are supposed to do and let your team do their jobs. If someone needs help then by all means, help them. Imagine your boss telling you how to do every little part of your job. It would be awful wouldn’t it?! Now that you’ve thought about how that feels, why would you do that to anyone in your team?

If someone is underperforming you deal with that by setting them tasks, giving them training and coaching them.

Doing the job for them or telling them every step of each process they need to follow isn’t going to help them. Sit down with them, show them where things are going wrong, how to put it right, and support them to get to where they should be.

Dealing with personal problems

At some point you might feel like an agony aunt from a magazine.

Really listening to your employees and having the ability to show them that you do care, without overstepping the mark, is a real talent. If Matteo’s son is unwell and he needs to take him to the hospital for regular appointments, then take an interest in how he’s doing, and look at how you can support Matteo during this difficult time. For example, can you be flexible with his working hours?

If you’re going through a difficult time in your personal life, work can be an escape. But remember, there isn’t a locker at the entrance to your workplace where people can leave their personal problems. These things could have an impact on work, so it’s important to be reasonable.

Don’t ignore problems

Ignoring things like someone being late all the time, won’t help the situation. You need to make sure that you seek advice from your HR Advisor on how you can tackle things like lateness, under performance, sickness issues or even giving feedback.

Ignoring a difficult situation won’t make it go away. Finding the right approach to dealing with it can mean that the whole thing is turned around into something positive. So, don’t be afraid to have that difficult conversation.

Help!

Just been promoted or just started your own business?

The world of HR can be a very scary place for people who haven’t had to deal with these things before.

Don’t feel like you’ve got to do this on your own – we’re here to help! Give us a call to find out how we can help you.