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Getting on Top of Your New Role

Learning Objectives

By the end of this chapter you should be able to:

• Discuss the issues involved in the transition from individual contributor to manager.

• Build productive relationships with subordinates.

• Build productive relationships with peers.

• Create a plan for the first 90 days in your new job.

It’s Monday morning, day 1 of your new job as a first-time manager. You looked the same in the mirror. Perhaps you dressed a bit more formally this morning, but not dramatically so. If you’re working for the same company that you worked for yesterday, you probably rubbed shoulders with the same people in the elevator, greeted people in the same way as you walked through the corridors, and poured yourself a cup of coffee like everyone else.

Everything appears the same on the surface, but you feel different.

The difference becomes more tangible as you approach your new work space. People with whom you’ve worked for the past two years say “Good morning,” but there’s something unusual in the way they do it—as if they are sizing you up, as if they are looking for something different in you. They all congratulated you two weeks ago when your promotion was announced, but they did so as your workplace pals. “Are they my pals today?” you wonder.

Your new reality becomes more tangible when you enter your new work area. Yes, it’s still small, but this one is all yours—no cube-mate. And there’s a window and a small conference table with two chairs over on one side, which gets you to thinking about how you’ll use that table. You form a mental image of yourself and a subordinate sitting at that table talking about some problem for which your help is needed. You visualize yourself sitting at that table, skimming a résumé while a job candidate in a new suit waits and watches nervously. “I’ve never hired anyone before,” you say to yourself.

You’re probably experiencing some anxiety at this point. Like a runner waiting for the starting gun before a 10 kilometer race, you may feel an odd blend of nervousness (“Now what do I do?”) and anticipation (“I finally have a chance to try some of the new things I’ve wanted to do”).

Day 1 for a newly minted manager marks an important work-life passage, ushering in new responsibilities and accountabilities. The new manager is also cast in a new role within the organization. Organizations are, above all else, mini-societies shaped by a bewildering mix of leadership, formal authority, individual influence and ambition, internal politics, interpersonal dependencies, sub-group interests, collaborative networks, and informal coalitions. The new manager must identify where he or she fits into this social enterprise and figure out how best to accomplish his or her goals.

This chapter will help you understand the transition from individual contributor to manager, and your new role as a manager with respect to two important groups: subordinates and peers.

FROM INDIVIDUAL CONTRIBUTOR TO MANAGER

Most new supervisors and managers are plucked from a set of employees who have no other responsibility than to complete assigned tasks. Even when they must collaborate with others in completing those tasks, they are not responsible for the work or behavior of others—only for themselves. They are individual contributors. A manager, in contrast, is responsible for getting things done through people and other resources—not through his or her individual handiwork alone. Thus, the manager isn’t simply accountable for his or her own output and actions, but for those of subordinates as well.

This added responsibility for the work and behavior or others creates a dramatic difference between the lives of managers and individual contributors. That difference was captured not long ago by the student newspaper at Harvard Business School in an interview it conducted with a U.S. Army captain—the military equivalent of a corporate middle manager—who was nearing the end of his two-year program as an MBA student. When asked how his life as a student differed from his life as an active duty officer, he said this (paraphrased):

The biggest difference I notice as a student is that I don’t have to worry about anyone but myself, which makes my life much easier and less complicated. I have my assignments to do, and I collaborate periodically with other students on case presentations. But in the end, I have no responsibilities for anything but my own work. As a company commander in the Army, it was very different. I had over a hundred people to worry about all day, every day. If someone wasn’t pulling his weight or was having a problem, it wasn’t just his problem. It was my problem and my responsibility.

That young officer’s observation nicely captures a key role difference between the individual contributor and the manager, and that difference is one of the first attitudinal hurdles that the new manager must overcome. While the individual contributor focuses on managing assigned tasks, the manager must focus on a far broader set of concerns that involve planning and assigning work to others, monitoring their performance, coaching, problem-solving, resolving disputes, and on and on.

One of the most common stumbling blocks for new managers is a failure to appreciate how their role has changed. They continue thinking and acting as individual contributors, focusing on tasks while overlooking the management of their subordinates, planning, coordinating effort, and so forth. They have trouble letting go of their old tasks and moving on to their new responsibilities. This is a partly the fault of the system through which people are selected for managerial work. Most new managers are promoted because of their high performance as individual contributors. They had mastered important task-related skills and were very good at applying them. Those skills earned them praise and recognition—and promotions! As managers, however, those skills are less important. As they rise through the managerial ranks, they must shift their attention. Exhibit 1-1 describes how technical, task-oriented skills become less important as a person moves from the individual contributor role through the ranks of management. Interpersonal and decision-making skills rise in importance during these transitions.

Now consider the case of Amelia, who is making the transition to management, and confronting its challenges.

Like most people promoted into management, Amelia had been very successful in her old job. “After eight years working the phones, I was the go-to gal for problem calls. If a customer wanted something a little out of the ordinary, I would figure out how to make the system work for him. After I was promoted to supervisor, I had to really hold myself back from solving everybody’s problems like I used to. Hey, I had enjoyed personally helping customers and being a hero! But once I became the supervisor, I needed to help my subordinates solve those problems themselves.”

One way Amelia found to change from being the hero to being a manager was to talk with her friend Ellen, who had been promoted in another department a year before. The transition was fresh in Ellen’s memory, and she shared some of the lessons she had learned. If you are a new manager, or anticipate becoming one in the near future, you can learn a lot by talking with people who have already made the transition to that role.

RELATIONSHIPS WITH SUBORDINATES

Getting on top of your new role requires that you establish a business-like and productive relationship with the people who report to you. You and they depend on each other. You depend on them for quality performance of your unit’s work, and they depend on you for resources and rewards. If you all understand this mutual dependence, you’ll be off to a good start.

Dealing with Former Peers

If you are like many new managers, you were promoted from the ranks and are now managing former peers. This has its advantages and disadvantages:

You may find that the most important thing you can do as the manager of former coworkers is for both you and them to recognize that your relationship has changed. You can be friends and trust each other, but you cannot be “pals” in the sense that you once were. You can continue having lunch together, but not as an occasion to grouse about the company and its “stupid” policies. And if you have lunch with subordinates, you must spread yourself around; you cannot always go with Bill or Helen without giving the appearance of favoritism. Your relationships have to become more businesslike and somewhat more formal.

It is possible to make this change to a more professional relationship without seeming like your promotion has “gone straight to your head.” Your new activities may even help. For example, if your calendar is full of meetings and other duties, it will not seem unreasonable to suggest that your former coworkers set up a time to talk with you rather than always catching you on the fly. If you are courteous and fair in your dealings with all staff, your employees will also notice that you do not favor old friends. Even those who would have liked to take advantage of your friendship will respect you for this.

Stepping in as a manager of people with whom you had no previous relationship (as peer or coworker) is simpler. However, whether you’re promoted from the ranks or hired in from the outside, you should recognize that your new subordinates will have certain expectations of you. They will expect you to:

• Eliminate task-related impediments that are outside their own spheres of authority and action—problems that only management can solve.

• Provide the resources they need to accomplish their assigned tasks.

• Listen when they have grievances or improvement suggestions.

• Be fair in how you assign work and reward effort.

• Keep them informed about matters that affect their work and careers.

• Be a champion for their work unit with upper management.

• Make decisions.

• Advocate for their training and career development.

• Work harder than they do.

Some subordinate expectations will put you a difficult position. Many new managers, for example, find that their people demand more of their time than they have time to give. They also discover that subordinates want to drag them into the middle of conflicts and workplace problems that subordinates should settle on their own. As a manager, you must exercise good judgment in determining which conflicts you want to wade into, and which problems you want to take on. Subordinates may also try to “delegate up” problems or tasks they prefer not to deal with. Given the many demands on your time, you cannot allow your staff to push every problem onto your shoulders—especially if you have capable workers who are expected to deal with problems as part of their normal duties.

Breaking the Ice

Any lack of clarity about your role will cause speculation and gossip among subordinates. They need to know very soon how you intend to manage and what your expectations are of them. The best way deal with this situation is to meet individually with each of your direct reports. Naturally, you will talk informally with your staff from your first day, but it’s best to schedule these one-on-one meetings after you’ve been on the job for a few weeks. This will give you a chance to form some impressions about your new environment and role. Prepare for these meetings by reviewing each person’s personnel file, which should be available from the human resources department. Those files will describe each person’s job, compensation, employment background, and will contain past performance data.

Make your meeting with each subordinate friendly but businesslike. Share the unit’s broader goals and indicate your commitment to them. But encourage the subordinate to do most of the talking—about themselves, their personal goals, their work, what they see as impediments to their success and the unit’s success, and so forth. This is your chance to demonstrate your accessibility and your willingness to listen: two traits that workers respect in a manager. If anyone tries to go off on a rant about how bad the company is or how unfairly he’s been treated, redirect the conversation to goals and to the positive steps that can be taken toward them.

These initial meetings with individual subordinates may not be the time for you to communicate your plans and your expectations of them. Especially if you are new to the company or the department, you may not yet know what you expect of each employee. You may need time to listen, analyze, and think about those matters. Instead, use these meetings to clarify your role in the minds of your people. You want them to understand that you are:

• Committed to working with them toward the unit’s goals.

• A person who stands up for his interests while respecting those of others

• Fair-minded but intolerant of chronic whiners and slackers.

• Open to positive suggestions.

• Friendly but serious about your work and responsibilities.

• Results-oriented.

• Confident—not someone who needs to be liked.

• An initiator of action, not a passive bystander.

If you can frame yourself in terms of those characteristics, you will earn respect and succeed in communicating your role to subordinates.

RELATIONSHIPS WITH PEERS

New managers often think that their subordinates, formal organizational authority, and annual budget are the only resources they need to achieve their assigned goals. In reality, they seldom have anywhere near what they need. Budgets are lean and there always seem to be too few hands to do all the work. New managers also find that they are dependent to a greater or lesser degree on the cooperation and assistance of people in other parts of the company (more on this in Chapter 4). You’d never realize this by looking at the organization chart, like the one shown in Exhibit 1-2, which describes a company in tidy little boxes. Those lines and boxes, however, simply indicate reporting relationships, not how work is actually done and how company goals are achieved. Much of that happens within the “white space” between the boxes on the chart.

Example 1: The Eastern Sales Manager has an important account whose purchases are not being shipped because of a credit problem. The Sales Manager knows the CFO’s assistant and calls her up to explain the problem and how it’s being cleared up. “I know that our policy is not to ship new orders if any outstanding purchase payments are past due by more than 30 days, but here’s the situation …” He makes a case for shipping now and making this good customer happy while the payment problem is being sorted out. The CFO’s office approves the deal, and the problem is solved.

Example 2: The Inventory Control manager, who works for the Vice President of Manufacturing, has just returned from the annual Inventory Control Association annual conference. While there, he attended a workshop at which a new, cost-saving application of IT tools was described. Hopeful that he could use the same tools to advantage, the manager called up an acquaintance in his own company’s IT department. After discussing the situation, the two agree to meet for lunch in the company cafeteria to discuss the possibilities.

Example 3: A manager in New Product Development is being pressed by her boss, the Vice President of Manufacturing, to provide specifications for a new line of flat-bed scanners for which she is responsible. She cannot provide those specs until the Marketing department completes its research on customer requirements for the new scanners. She and the marketing research manager have collaborated successfully on several other projects, so she has no reluctance in contacting him and pressing him to complete his research as quickly as possible. “We have all the data already,” he tells her, “but we haven’t been able to tabulate it all because so many people are on vacation this month.” To solve the problem, they agree to jointly contact the head of human resources and prevail on him to hire a temp to handle the tabulation work.

Notice in each of these examples how solutions were created by peers working across organizational boundaries. No subordinates were involved, nor did these managers receive any support from their bosses. Each case underscores the importance of developing good working relationships with people in other parts of the enterprise, even when no formal connection is present. These are people who have or are experiencing problems similar to yours. If you are like most new managers, you will find former and current peers to be your most valuable source of support— both technical and emotional. Unlike your boss, peers have no judgmental role to play in your work life, which makes them easier to approach.

Here are some things you can do as a new manager to build a peer network that will help you achieve your goals:

• Get to know as many “achievers” as you can within the company: managers, non-managers, and technical professionals. Once a week, for example, call a different one of these people on the telephone and say, “Hi, I’m so-and-so, a new manager in the XYZ department. I’d like to make your acquaintance and learn about what you do and how we might help each other. Would you have time for coffee anytime soon?” You’ll be amazed by how much you’ll learn if you follow this technique.

• Join cross-functional teams when you can. Cross-functional teams bring people with different skills and experiences together to solve problems and exploit opportunities. Being a member of one or more of these teams will bring you into close contact with key members of the organization. By working with them, you’ll quickly learn which of them are effective and reliable. You’ll also develop working relationships that are likely to pay off in the future.

• Remember that to get you must give. Reciprocity is the currency of collaboration in workplace networks. If someone does you a favor, look for an opportunity to repay it.

• Develop a reputation for action. Talk is cheap. The workplace is full of people who will say, “We ought to do . . .” or “Somebody ought to do … ” Few of these people deliver. If you develop the opposite reputation, people in your peer network will want you on their teams.

YOUR 90-DAY PLAN

In his book, The First 90 Days: Critical Success Strategies for New Leaders at All Levels, Harvard Business School professor Michael Watkins makes the point that leaders, from the CEO level down, are highly vulnerable during the first few months in their new jobs. While these new leaders are trying to orient themselves and figure out what to do and how to deal with their new situations and subordinates, everyone around them is forming opinions about their competence. (Watkins, 2003). It may be tempting to make a big splash right away, but successful managers take their time to assess the situation. Use your first 90 days on the job to listen, learn, and lead.

Listen

Rather than springing into action on Day 1, listen to what your subordinates, peers, and boss have to say about the situation you’re in, the roadblocks to change, company priorities, and so forth. We’ve already suggested that you get to know your subordinates through one-on-one informal meetings in which you spend most of your time listening. Extend those one-on-ones to staff meetings in the weeks that follow. Get your people engaged in dialogue about workplace problems and opportunities. Some good ideas are bound to emerge. Invite participation from other departments by individuals who have useful information and insights. Again, let other people do most of the talking.

Learn

Use the first few weeks to learn as much as possible about your unit’s resources, its constraints, its customers, and its performance. As a new manager, you probably never had budget responsibilities before, so use this time to study your budget and learn where your unit stands on a year-to-date basis. If your unit has direct contact with customers, get out of the office and spend some time with important customers. Accompanying your company’s sales or service reps on their calls one day each week will teach you a great deal about the competitive situation, customer expectations, and what people think of your company and its products.

What you learn in the first few weeks will help you develop action plans.

Lead

Listening and learning are important, even if you have ideas of what needs to be done. But sometime within the first 90 days, you must “brand” yourself as a doer, a problem-solver, an action-oriented manager who gets results. Too many new managers feel that if they just keep the machinery turning and don’t make any mistakes, their job is done. Their focus is on activities, not results. “I may take on some initiatives next year,” they say, “but not until I’ve settled into the job.” Don’t take this approach. The company and your boss shouldn’t have to wait until you’re totally comfortable in your new role. Instead, plan to put some points on the scoreboard by the end of the first 90 days. Solve a problem, launch an initiative, introduce an innovation—do something that will make people say “Wow. It looks like we finally got the right manager in that position.” Otherwise your boss, peers, and subordinates will mark you down as a mediocre, risk-averse manager.

What should you do? The answer will be determined by the situation. However, do not attempt to do too much at once. That will likely lead to failure, and failure at this stage will darken everyone’s mood and dampen their spirits. If you fail on this first venture, you may not be able to rally people for another venture. So, consider what you’ve learned about the situation and identify two or three things that:

• Are clearly achievable.

• Are viewed as important by your boss, your people, and the organization.

• Can be achieved within 90 days.

Call these the “low-hanging fruit” or “quick wins” if you like. Success with these will please your boss and create forward momentum, which will inspire confidence in your people, making it easier to rally them around future initiatives. More important, it will give you the personal confidence you need to confront larger, more challenging problems and opportunities.

This chapter has identified actions you must take in stepping into your new role as manager. It has suggested how you can relate to two important constituencies: subordinates and peers. Your most important constituent, however, is your boss. What should you do about him or her? That question is addressed in the next chapter.

The first task of a new manager is to develop a new mindset: that of a manager instead of an individual contributor. One issue involved in this transition includes understanding how your role in the organization has changed, how you now fit into the social enterprise of the workplace, and how you can best accomplish your goals. Another challenge is to shift the emphasis from the technical and task-oriented skills critical to your past success as an individual contributor to the decision-making and people skills at the core of your new role as manager. Whereas in the past you were accountable only for your own success or failure, as a manager you are now responsible for the work and performance of others.

In this new role, you must forge new relationships with your subordinates and peers. If you were promoted into your new position and are managing former peers, you’ll have several advantages: knowledge of their strengths and weaknesses, familiarity with the work and ongoing problems and issues, and an understanding of organizational politics. Disadvantages of managing former peers can include their knowledge of your weaknesses, possible resentment of your promotion, and unrealistic expectations that you will show favoritism or pull rank. All new subordinates will have expectations that you can remove impediments, provide resources, listen to grievances, demonstrate fairness, communicate openly, champion the unit, make decisions, advocate for them professionally, and work harder than they do. Individual meetings with your subordinates will give you the opportunity to communicate how you intend to manage and what your expectations are of them.

Your new peers may include colleagues who outranked you in the past. Most new managers find former and current peers to be their most valuable source of support. You can build a strong peer network by getting to know as many “achievers” as you can within the company, joining cross-functional teams when you can, remembering that to get you must give, and developing a reputation for action.

To assure a successful transition, create a 90-day plan that focuses on listening, learning, and leading. Listen to what your subordinates, peers, and boss have to say about a range of issues. Engage people in dialogue at staff meetings and invite participation from other departments by individuals with useful information and insights. Learn as much as you can about your unit’s resources, constraints, customers, and performance. This information will help you develop action plans. Lead by identifying yourself as an action-oriented manager and delivering on two or three goals that are clearly achievable; viewed as important by your boss, subordinates, and the organization; and can be accomplished within 90 days.

1. What should you do in the first 90 days in your new managerial position?	1. (d)
(a) Concentrate on technical tasks.
(b) Exercise formal authority whenever possible so that people will know that you are in charge.
(c) Encourage dissent.
(d) Listen, learn, and lead.
2. One way of building a peer network within the larger company is to:	2. (a)
(a) join cross-functional teams.
(b) become more specialized.
(c) delegate more work to subordinates.
(d) plot your own path.
3. Identify one disadvantage for the person who must now manage former peers.	3. (b)
(a) Former peers believe that they can trust their new manager.
(b) Former peers know the new manager’s weaknesses.
(c) The new manager doesn’t know how to communicate.
(d) Former peers expect the new manager to be successful.
4. Which of the following becomes more important as one rises higher and higher in the ranks of management?	4. (a)
(a) Decision-making and people skills
(b) Task-oriented skills
(c) Technical know-how
(d) Daily routines
5. As described in this chapter, one of the most common stumbling blocks for new managers is a failure to:	5. (c)
(a) master budgeting concepts.
(b) use their new organizational power to its full advantage.
(c) appreciate how their role has changed.
(d) enforce behavioral discipline.