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Email ThisSince my early days in college, I’ve studied management styles, reading about businesses, top leaders and entrepreneurs, usually in my free time. As the low man on the totem pole at one of the largest organizations on the planet, I had the opportunity to work with great managers and I was able to watch less than perfect managers struggle through the process.
Today, I’m a co-founder of a small company. And I’m quickly learning that management is no easy task. It’s an art that probably takes years to master. Every manager, no matter how great, still runs into challenges that question what they think they know, every single day. So for your reference (and mine), here is a list of nine management mistakes that new managers can hopefully avoid.
1. Doing too much work
Going from employee to manager is a promotion. It means more responsibility, and the responsibility is making sure everyone else gets their work done. Then you get yours done.
If you’re at the office (virtual or not) for 10 hours, a majority of that time should be devoted to talking with employees, figuring out how to improve your team—their assignments, their self-management skills, and your relationship with them. The funny thing is that when you become a manager, and your personal task list shrinks, I guarantee your time at the office will grow. Since you’re not spending all day in front of a computer checking off your to-do list, you’ve got to get the actual work done somehow. And often, it will be early in the morning or late at night, when everyone else is still sleeping or celebrating the end of another work day.
2. Failing to realize what “work” is, now
In high school and college, work consists of papers, studying and calculus problems. When you graduate to the real world, typical entry-level work means sitting in a cubicle, staring at a computer and putting together PowerPoint presentations or creating Excel documents. Then, all of a sudden, you’re promoted to manager and everything changes.
High School, college and entry level life are all about hands on, check off my to-do list type of work. Management work is completely different. It’s talking, it’s thinking, it’s planning, but it’s still work and it’s more vital to the bottom line. If you don’t turn that corner and come to grips with the fact that when you’re just chatting with someone about their weekend, you’re actually doing work, then you will fail as a manager, because this means you think it’s about you, when in reality it’s about everyone else.
3. Delegating the grunt work
You have a lot of authority as a manager; you can delegate all of your work if you really want to. But be careful. Before you delegate anything, ask yourself the question, “Am I delegating this because it’s boring and tedious, or am I delegating this because it truly makes more sense for someone else to do it?”
Obviously, you have to delegate grunt work sometimes. But when you do, be sure to explain why you’re delegating, how its helping the company, and be sure to delegate some interesting work the next time around.
4. Failing to ask for advice
Ask for advice. All the time. There is no secret to getting the most out of your employees. The best thing you can do is ask the people who have been there before. If you’re a first time manager, someone must be managing you as well. Pick the one or two people who you believe are great managers and ask them what they would do in your position.
You don’t have to take their advice. But you should consider their advice seriously and decide if it applies to your situation. Even CEOs need mentors. I bet there isn’t a single CEO out there who doesn’t have a handful of mentors. So find your managing mentor and ask for advice.
5. Keeping an “eye” on employees
You’re a manager. You’re not a supervisor. It’s not your job to keep an eye on your employees and to know what they are doing at every second of the day. Your job is to mentor, train and coach them so they can be successful in this job and the next.
We no longer work on an assembly line, so much of how people spend their time is up to them. The best you can do is trust that you work with good people and that they will get the work done when it needs to be done. It’s about results, and results can be independent of time.
6. Failing to prepare
Whether it’s a task, a project or a meeting, great managers are always prepared. What your employees produce is always a reflection on you as a manager, so the best thing you can do is prepare as much as you possibly can and give your team as much direction as they need.
Again, it’s all about results, and if you delegate a task to someone without clearly explaining what you are looking for, things will get lost in translation. Your employee may produce exactly what he thought you wanted, but it won’t be what you were looking for, and it WILL be your fault because you failed to properly prepare him for the project.
7. Being too Nice
Everyone is not going to love you. And if you want to be a manager you have to get beyond taking things personally. From my experiences, this is and will be a big problem for Generation Y, especially when we find ourselves managing someone older. We’ve been taught to be nice and respectful and courteous, but nice can be misconstrued as timid, and a timid manager is not someone who inspires trust and confidence.
It’s ok to demand things from people. It’s ok to tell people to do something rather than ask. And it’s ok if everyone doesn’t think you’re the greatest. There’s a fine line between being tough and being an asshole, but that’s what management is. It’s an art, and it’s that fine line that you must learn how to toe if you want to be a great one.
8. Pretending to have all the answers
Nobody has all the answers, so there is no need to pretend that you do. If someone asks a tough question and you don’t have a great response, just admit that you don’t know. Snap decisions and answers feel great. They can make you appear cool and in control, but remember that a quick response to a seemingly innocent question can lead to someone wasting days or weeks working on something that you didn’t properly think through.
It’s OK to go back to your office, talk to the right people, figure out what the best approach is, and then answer the question.
9. Taking a break
Unlike the tasks on your to-do list, management is never over. You may think you’re done for the day after you settle an issue, or after you meet with everyone on your team. But the truth is, it never ends. When you take a break from managing, that’s when things start to go south.
When you forget to go chat with your extroverted employees and you forget to check in with your newest hires to be sure they are ok, there’s a snowball effect. Not only is your work as a manager not being done, but because you’re not managing, your employees are not doing their work, and it’s your fault, not theirs. So whatever you do, don’t slack off. It’s all on you now.
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I’d like to add one — relying on gut instinct and opinion to make all your management style decisions. It’s important to stay up to date on current research, case studies, and use evidence-based studies to formulate your next action.
So much of management can be felt through and learned through experience, but there are systems and data that can quantify others’ management experiences, saving you time when you leverage it.Great sources are trade magazines, scholarly journals, and collegiate researchers completing projects to earn their degrees.
Isn’t the small company you founded this one?
Why don’t you write about things you actually know and have experience with instead of these generic, cookie-cutter, regurgitative posts that never go anywhere?
I disagree with what you are saying about number 3, Delegating the grunt work.
Since when is it appropriate for the boss to be doing the grunt work? Sounds like a very inefficient manner of doing things. As a boss, your job is coordinating the efforts of your team or department, not doing the copying or research.
jrandom42: I think that what he is saying is that you shouldn’t delegate a task just because it is boring. If there isn’t anyone on your team who job it is to actually DO ‘grunt work’ then everyone should share in it.
So if you are a manager, and you have some administative tasks that need to be done, and there isn’t someone who is supposed to specifically DO these tasks, then don’t shove it off on one of your underlings just because it’s boring.
However, if doing this grunt work is important to understanding the job, and it would actually help train someone or provide more information, then it is ok to fram it that way. Just don’t abuse this excuse.
Thank you for your comments about manager’s role is to mentor, coach, and train employees. It is surprising how many seasoned managers and executives have not learned what their role is as a manager. Unfortunately in corporate America, we have even high level executives that want to micro-manage and supervise professionals like they were front line, entry level staff.
Good post! I think the biggest thing that new managers tend to forget is the level of responsibility they have. Accountability is the HUGE differentiator between management and the rest of the team.
While it is amiable to believe that a manager shouldn’t delegate grunt work this isn’t something I’d suggest many experienced managers would really suggest. As somebody who has hired/fired and promoted many managers I can tell you that I have never seen a manager run into problems for ‘dumping’ grunt work onto their team. There is however often a fear, especially by new managers, that doing so will cause some level of discomfort on the team. It may sound hard hearted, but tough. As a manager, you need to focus on where you provide value. You’ve been given this role to be leveraged across many people, doing grunt work is rarely something that is helping the organization as much as you can help the organization by spending your time coaching or doing something more strategic.
The element of truth is that as a manager you also need to lead. Good leaders are people their team can relate to. Different managers achieve this through different methods. One of the best ways to get people to enjoy their work is to find the skills that each person has (talents they are good at) and delegate tasks to that align with those skills. Not every task will scratch that itch, but the more you can direct tasks that align with talents & desires the more success that person will have and the happier they will be. The more you do that the more they will feel like you are engaging their career/life/whatever is important to them. Simultaneously you will find that it will be less important that some tasks aren’t interesting. Or you can spread the ‘grunt work’ around. If you have a large team and are always ditching the ‘grunt’ work to somebody who is ill suited to doing that work and they don’t like it while at the same time there are other people paid just as much (or little) and with the same skill set who you don’t apportion the work to, that might cause you problems.
In my mind, the rule of what to delegate and what not to delegate should look like this:
1) What are the things that you must do personally because of your unique skills or position for instance, if you need to meet with your boss, obviously you should do that yourself. It could also involve confidential information/high level of skill or strategically is something that you personally think is something you want to do. You should not delegate these tasks.
2) What are the things where you are adding unique value because if your background. For instance, I bring a unique background having been part of several successful product launches. I can not hope to completely instill that experience into my team members so there are some meetings/activities I need to do myself. There are other areas where a specific type of coaching is something I need to do myself. Another example is when I reach that unfortunate time when an employee needs to be terminated. If I have a new manager working for me, and it’s their employee, I know that manager is about to go through something very difficult (and for those of you who have ever been fired, you may not know it but unless your manager was a true ass the time leading up to your termination was almost certainly very tough emotionally on your manager) – so I know I too must help that manager directly. It’s not something I can delegate.
3) What are the things that you do because they seem like the right thing to do: These are topics you need to look at hard. You should ask yourself a few questions: are you busy enough that these tasks are taking away from items in #1 or #2, if they are consider delegating them, or perhaps restructuring the amount of time you have involved in them and begin the process of teaching somebody how to do it.
4) The things you do just because you’ve done them for years: These are the tough ones, but you must learn to delegate these. Odds are you did them as an individual contributor because you could. You became the expert and it’s easy enough for you to do it that even now it seems like delegating it will be more effort than just doing the task. Seriously consider if this is really true for the next 10 times you have to do that same task. Good managers create succession plans in case somebody isn’t available. In this case, you’re creating a succession plan for yourself.
Just another managers thoughts.
I think you missed what I consider to be the biggest mistake new (or experienced) managers make: They fail to set good goals and objectives for the employees that work for them.
Sound goals are generally SMART (if you’re not familiar with the term SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Timely). Goals that are SMART are ones where an employee can figure out how they are measuring up and what they need to do to be better. They help employees know what they should really be doing instead of just guessing.
Employees with good goals can be self guided and motivated because they don’t have to come to their manager to figure out what to do next.
The biggest mistake most managers make, especially new ones is that they assume their employees either already know what to do or that they have no idea what to do. Those who think their employees already know what to do don’t set objectives or goals at all. They assume that the person was educated or trained to do the job so just do it. Those who assume employees have no idea what to do give new updates all the time. They can appear random and their employees are paralyzed because they can not take the next action with out direction from their boss. People who suffer from either pitfall are actually successful for a little while. But it doesn’t scale, and it’s definitely not something that is in the best interest of their organization.
Thanks for all the comments. In regards to the “grunt work” point. I think its absolutely mandatory that every boss does some work that isn’t always fun. You cannot expect your employees to do work that sucks for 7 or 8 hours a day while you do the fun work for 8 hours. There must be a mix on both sides.
The level of responsibility is another great point. It’s amazing how much pressure managers are under as compared to entry level employees who are only responsible for their own work. The best managers have to embrace the responsibility rather than run from it.
I also think goals are very important. A lot of managers skip over this part because setting goals for each employee or helping them set goals is actually a ton of work for the manager, but its absolutely necessary so everyone is on the same page.
Again, thanks for the comments.
-Ryan
A lot of times a new manager is promoted because they have the functional knowledge of the department, with limited management skills…different skill sets.
I would add another item…training. If the company doesn’t offer training then the new manager has to find a mentor, ask advice from seasoned managers and continuously read on the subject of managing employees. Effectively managing employees takes knowledge and strong listenings skills.