Hard Truths About People Management That No One Told You
Most people become managers because they perform exceptionally well as Individual contributors, and hence they get promoted. One of the first things organizations do to give them more responsibility is handling and managing others, aka. “a team.” Lo and behold, you are suddenly a manager responsible for other people’s tasks.
This transition comes naturally to some, but it doesn’t come as easy as that for others. The most significant change is to understand that you are not only responsible for your tasks but others’ tasks as well. How to ensure that the team’s objectives are met? Suddenly, there are new expectations. And this is when no one has taught you how to manage teams or people before. No school or college imparts this knowledge. You are thrown at the pool’s deep end, and you have to swim out of it. Maybe there is a small life jacket thrown your way in terms of manager training.
As you keep progressing in your managerial career, you discover the responsibilities and challenges along the way. There are some hard truths about people management that most managers only figure out after years and years of people management. Some keep fighting these hard truths without accepting them.
One of such hard truths is that “There is no such thing as a perfect employee.” You will never find an employee 100% fit in every situation. The right way to approach this puzzle is to look for different pieces that fit together. It is not about finding the perfect employee. It is actually about creating the ideal team that delivers on your objectives day in and day out.
Another hard truth that managers take time to understand and accept is that “You can’t control everything.” You can try your hardest to control everything, but in the end, you’ll eventually fail due to various factors. That’s why it’s essential to learn how to delegate and let go. Delegating tasks and responsibilities allows you to focus on the crucial things. By being proactive about delegation, you’ll be able to manage your time more effectively.
There are six other hard truths like the above two. You can read them here.
When managers take the people management role for the first time, they start managing the team’s work the way they used to work as individual contributors. When they see things not happening the way they would have done it, they feel naturally inclined to “step in” and “rescue the situation” themselves. This automatically leads to a micromanagement tendency. They initially succeed with this technique because Micromanagement works well in certain situations.
But they get a false sense of success and understand that this is the only way to get the results from the team. And hence, the bad habits of Micromanagement set in deep into their managerial styles. That’s when the heartburn for managers starts. The team becomes demotivated by excessive Micromanagement, their performance drops, and they start exiting.
Read more about Micromanagement and how you can avoid it as a manager.
In the end, managers must understand that people management is all about balance and situational awareness. You are balancing the team’s needs vs. performance needs. Balancing stakeholders and ensuring no one is ignored. Understanding situations and responding accordingly. Basically, one size fits all approach doesn’t work. Actual effectiveness in people management comes in by building the core skill set required for people management. These are the manager’s ability to guide, analytical skills, emotional competence, and interpersonal skills. Each of these is an onion that you need to open layer by layer.
There are a few tips that we have put together for effective management in such new roles.
In the end, people management can be extremely rewarding or extremely frustrating. It just depends on how you approach it. You can take it as it comes and leave it to luck. Or you can take it by the horns and learn how to become an effective people manager. But one thing is for sure. Your career growth is dependent on your ability to lead and manage people. If you are good at it, you will succeed, no doubt. But if you are not, you will still grow to a certain level before hitting a plateau.
When a team member is struggling, it can be challenging to know what to do. I am sure you would have found yourself in this situation in your career already. If not, wait for it. It will come to you. It is natural to feel tempted to give up on them and hope they will miraculously pull themselves together in these situations. On the other hand, you might be inclined to do everything in your power to help them get back on track.
If you notice that one of your team members is struggling to meet expectations, it’s essential to take action. This could mean anything from encouraging and motivational words to constructive feedback and suggestions for improvement. Doing so can not only help the team member rebound but also set an excellent example for the rest of the employees. Acting in a supportive manner helps keep morale high and ensures that everyone is working towards the same goal. If a team member is struggling, you must address the issue as soon as possible so that everyone can move forward in a positive direction.
More often than not, the problem is self-confidence. The team member may be suffering from low self-esteem or have low confidence in their abilities. One way to deal with this situation is to let them handle it independently and figure it out. Instead, more proactive or engaged managers will intervene to help the team member navigate this situation. After all, it will impact their team’s performance in the long run. Luckily, there are steps that you can take as a manager that can help a struggling team member to build self-confidence.
Here is a more detailed piece on building your own and your team’s confidence in this situation.
When an employee goes through such a phase, they need the manager’s compassion. At this stage, if the team member feels judged, they will never gain back their confidence. Think from their perspective for a minute. You are assessing their performance. They are trying to prove to you that they are worth being on your team. Your compassion will be the start of confidence for them. It will create lasting trust and loyalty on their side. For some managers, being compassionate comes naturally. For others, you may have to learn to be compassionate.
Read this if you want to dig deeper into the specifics of being compassionate.
The power of positivity is often undermined in such situations. I understand you are also under pressure to deliver on the team’s objectives. But think for a moment. If you don’t solve it now, the overall team’s performance will get dragged. Isn’t it worth investing some time and energy into building confidence for your struggling team member? In this situation, you and your other team members also need positivity. This is where Affirmations come to the rescue.
The word “affirmation” is derived from the Latin meaning “to make firm or strong.” Affirmations are like software updates for your brain. These are constructive statements we deliberately and consistently say to ourselves to create a positive psychological response. And they work surprisingly well! Affirmations can help an individual stay motivated and focused on their goals. So, they are not only relevant for your team but also relevant for you as a manager.
In essence, it is easy to take the easy way out and give up on an individual trying hard to prove themselves to you. But that may only give you a short-term relief of knowing that you have gone past the situation. The more rewarding feeling is when you help a team member get back on the performance track. The benefits that you will reap will be much more intense and prolonged.
Is making decisions an art or a process? 3 simple steps to master it
Team managers and leaders make several decisions every day. Big or small. It may include everything from designing the goals for the next quarter to choosing the right candidate for their team. Managers are the ones who are armed with all the information and skills needed to make educated decisions that enable the progress of the team.
The decision-making process involves choosing one alternative over the rest after a careful evaluation. This includes gathering the essential information and drawing comparisons after a detailed analysis. Afterward, you must act on the resultant decision and handle its effects. Your choices impact the whole team in many ways. At times, they can be the factor that makes or breaks the game for the team.
While good decision-making opens avenues of growth for the organization, bad decisions can put you on the back foot by creating conflicts and harming the environment.
Therefore, we cannot negate the importance of quality decision-making in any team. Although decision-making is a buzzword we hear often, you might be wondering what actually differentiates a good decision-maker from a bad one. And further, how can you become a better decision-maker as a manager?
In order to understand this puzzle, you need to understand the top decision-making abilities which make all the difference. This includes improving efficiency step-wise.
For instance, before beginning to evaluate the options, you can try to collect relevant data to support your ideas. In the later stages, you can include a decision audit process to gather findings about the impact of previous decisions. Such steps will help you fine-tune the strategy and increase efficiency. Focusing on these abilities during different phases of your decision-making process will help you bring a turnaround in your team.
You can read more about the Top 6 Decision-Making Abilities You Will Need As A Manager to augment your process further.
You might have noticed that decision-making involves putting considerable focus on the process. A set decision-making framework will help you immensely make your decisions efficient. When you guide a team, your context and critical values will remain constant, ensuring adherence to these can become a part of your framework. You can similarly develop a framework that suits your needs. Apart from making the process simpler, it will also help you add some speed. And, to take it faster further, you can turn to mental models.
A mental model is a capsule representation of a big concept that simplifies decision-making. In common managerial parlance, it refers to the set of existing experiences and internal norms that a person uses as the basis for interpreting and understanding things and events around them.
As it encompasses the person’s values, beliefs, and norms, a mental model becomes a handy guide in moments of confusion. In addition to being a frame of reference for managers, mental models also help streamline decision-making across the organization. You can learn more about How Mental Models Help In Decision Making As A Manager!
While making any decisions, we try to be our rational best. But, as humans, we tend to fall back to intuitions and heuristics without even realizing it. It might be a surprise that people use intuition much more than logic in decision-making. Our frameworks can suffer from biases that we see as norms.
These issues can arise with managers and leaders too. When a person becomes a manager, they also become an influencer for their team. The bias held by a manager can thus affect the team’s environment, the flow of work, and most importantly – the employees. Biases in a manager can take many forms in the workplace, ranging from unreasonable favoritism to inexplicable discrimination.
All in all, the impact is detrimental to the decision-making process. This is a hurdle on your way to effective decision-making as a manager. Therefore, removing them is essential. In order to do so, you can begin by understanding The Top 10 Most Common Manager Biases. After learning about these biases, you can start working on tackling them to free your decisions from irrationality.
In totality, we can conclude that you can enhance decision-making through three key steps. It begins with understanding essential abilities to improve the quality, using frameworks and models to add speed, and recognizing biases to add objectivity to your decisions. You can help your team generate unforeseen efficiency on the road to success through these exercises.
According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, effectiveness is defined as “the quality or state of being effective.” In a similar vein, manager effectiveness can be described as the ability of a manager to achieve organizational goals and objectives.
As managers, you are assigned vast responsibilities. There is a lot that sits on your shoulders. It requires a tremendous amount of knowledge, good judgment, patience, and strong leadership skills. Therefore it is also essential to have high effectiveness levels to achieve positive results.
Effective people management is not only crucial for the overall success of an organization, but it also has several benefits for managers themselves. For one, effective people management leads to increased productivity and satisfaction among employees. It also helps to build stronger relationships with employees and foster a climate of trust and cooperation. Additionally, effective people management can help managers achieve their objectives more quickly and efficiently, which leads to improved outcomes for the organization. So, if you want to be successful in your career, invest in effective people management!
If you manage your teams effectively, your job becomes a breeze, and you can look ahead in your career. In essence, effective team management is the key to unlocking your career growth.
The question is, how do you become effective in people management? What do you need to do?
We have been researching this topic for the last four years, and after working with 100s of managers, we have unlocked the four core attributes that can help you become an effective manager. These are
Analytical Skills – Your ability to collect and interpret data, solve problems, read between the lines, and much more
Emotional Competence – Your ability to manage your own and your team’s emotions, empathy, conflict resolution ability, and more
Interpersonal Skills – Your ability to balance stakeholders, become your team’s voice, communicate effectively, flow the information seamlessly, and much more
Guidance Ability – Your ability to develop your team members, give them direction, be a role model, and (you guessed it right) much more 😁
Don’t get bogged down by the “much more.” I have a detailed guide ready for your to unlock all of this.
But the journey of becoming an effective manager starts somewhere else. It begins with you being aware of yourself first. Self-awareness is a journey in itself, and I will not become philosophical (although this is my favorite pastime). Self-awareness as a manager is all about understanding your current standing as a manager. How do people feel when they work with you? How did your managerial style get shaped? Who influenced unconsciously?
Self-awareness can help you in understanding more about yourself. To develop self-awareness, it’s essential to understand yourself thoroughly. This means being aware of your values, strengths, weaknesses, assumptions, and areas of improvement.
If you wish to go on this journey, you can read more about it here.
So now you are on your way to becoming a manager that is killing it with their team and the management. You cracked it. This is the time when you start preparing for your next steps. How do you grow from here? Obviously, there is a more significant step from becoming a manager to becoming a leader. But that is for later. For now, you need to take small steps in growing yourself as a professional. You need to take smaller steps that will lead to bigger things. These smaller steps are the stepping stones to Leadership Skills that you will need later in your career.
Here are 10 tactics to help you achieve personal growth as a manager.
In all this, don’t forget that this is a journey. It is a structured process that you must carefully go through. You may need support in this journey, so don’t hesitate to ask for help. You can reach out to the managers you have worked with and pick their brains on things you struggle with. For more resounding support, take professional help through structured pieces of training and tools that can help you in this journey.
When a team is in a crisis, it can be challenging to determine what to do. A crisis can cause a number of different problems, including confusion, chaos, and damaging morale. As a result, it can be challenging to make decisions or put plans into action.
In times of crisis, a team can be overwhelmed and lose focus. The team leader may feel stressed and uncertain about what to do. It leads to a loss of confidence and a decrease in productivity.
As a result, fighting fires is a natural occurrence for any manager or leader. But, many managers find themselves constantly fighting fires – fires caused by their employees, fires caused by faulty products, fires caused by external factors. A one-off crisis is acceptable to manage. But when it becomes repetitive, it becomes a challenge. It can be challenging to keep up with the demand and manage all the issues that come up, especially if you find yourself fighting one fire after the other. It feels that you are losing control of the situation and constantly playing catch up. You also feel exhausted after each day, and it starts impacting your mental wellbeing. You feel like giving up.
Has it happened to you? I am sure you would have felt helpless. If you find yourself again in such a situation, you can try the following measures.
The most common reason managers find themselves fighting many fires is low levels of ownership or accountability in their teams. The first and foremost step you need to take is to reflect if your team feels accountable. Building ownership and accountability are complex in teams. But when you achieve it, things become easier to manage. First of all, there are fewer fires to fight in teams with high ownership and accountability. Secondly, even when the fires come up, the entire team stands together to fight them instead of only the manager holding the fort.
How do you build accountability?
The second most common reason managers find themselves firefighting is time management. Managers who manage their time better find themselves fighting fewer fires. Why? Time management brings much discipline to self and the team. So most of the internal reasons due to which crises come are reduced.
With better time management, managers can avoid feeling overwhelmed and stressed, leading to making poor decisions that could adversely affect their business. Poor time management also often leads to chronic stress, which can negatively impact both the individual and the team.
Moreover, managers can pre-empt and prevent crises faster and better. They have more time to plan and strategize, which leads to better outcomes. When crises happen, they manage them more effectively and without damaging consequences.
If you want to get better at time management, we have a more detailed piece.
Once you have had a look at time management, the next step would be to look at how you set and meet deadlines. Most crises arise out of poorly planned and executed deadlines. Managers who are adept at setting and meeting deadlines tend to face fewer such situations. Why? When deadlines are met on time, it shows that the organization is capable of handling high-pressure situations calmly and effectively. It builds trust and confidence among stakeholders, leading to a reduced sense of crisis and chaos. In turn, this leads to improved performance and more effective response to any crisis. So, if you want your team to handle stress and pressure well, make sure they are familiar with the importance of setting and meeting deadlines.
Setting and meeting deadlines is an art that you can learn.
In essence, if you constantly find yourself firefighting, it is time to stop and think for a moment. You can’t go on like this. Something needs to change, and you are the change agent that can and will change. No one else will change your situation. So what are you waiting for? Get going!
