#201: From Individual Contributor to First-Time Manager | Part I

would you like to accelerate your career and reach your full potential in just minutes a day welcome to the lead X show with New York Times bestselling author and eat 500 entrepreneur Kevin Crews [Music] what are the secrets to success for a first-time manager hello everyone Kevin Cruz here and it's Monday which means it's time for another show highlighting manager tips tools and rules today we're gonna talk about the key difference between being an individual contributor and a manager and what you should do in your first 90 days as a manager but first have you told all of your manager friends maybe all of your manager direct reports about lead x.org that's dot o-r-g every day we offer a free training course video based training on topics like how to give feedback how to run effective meetings how to set goals and objectives for team members and extreme productivity just visit lead X dot o-r-g alright so let's dive in if you're listening to this show you've probably recently been promoted into management or maybe you're still an individual contributor and you're just getting ready for that day to come which is very smart be ready for the job that you want either way it's great to consider what being a manager is all about we need to get that clear because even though most organizations promote their high achieving individual contributors into management being a manager is in no way like a bigger higher paid version of whatever it is that you used to do the job itself is different so let's start with the basics you know what's the definition of a manager what's the definition of management officially a manager is a person responsible for controlling or administering a part of an organization a Department of Business unit whatever but that definition isn't very helpful these days most managers are basically held accountable for two things first business outcomes you still need to focus on those cold hard results but the second thing managers need to do you need to grow and keep your people you need to retain your people so these team members the people who report to you are often called direct reports or just directs so you're gonna hear me use that phrase your directs and on this theme about definition of Management the role of Management you know a lot of people are wondering about well what's the difference between being a manager and a leader you know management most people consider management it's like allocating resources monitoring budgets controlling risk all that kind of mundane stuff the leadership part a leader focuses more on having a big vision how to motivate employees maybe develop and share values the truth is you need to do both the the lines between management and leadership are really blurred these days I like to say you need to manage tasks and you need to lead your people and in no way do I mean you need to micromanage people's tasks it's really managing tasks related to your department or your function again those budgets things like that and you need to lead your people now recently for an earlier episode of the lead X show and for some lead X training we were putting together I reached out and I interviewed a great entrepreneur he's this founder co-founder and CEO of fresh books the online accounting company his name's Mike McDermott now McDermott has literally started this company in his parents basement and they stayed there for years but today they have over 300 employees with customers in over a hundred different countries around the world so he went from being a manager of nobody to a manager of a small team where now if you count up like his you know what's called the downline he's leading over 300 people and his his key points well first was kind of funny he said you will fail you know as a first-time manager get comfortable with making all kinds of mistakes but he really paused and thought about it and he came back to this same point he said you used to be promoted and rewarded and you got attention and attaboys and attagirls from what you personally got done in a given day and that has changed as a leader it's not about how much you got done in a day it's not how much your team got done in a given day so we go back to that key point here like this is the point you got to anchor in your mind as a manager you're now going to be evaluated by the results of your team the results you're getting through your team members and to your ability to grow and keep these same team members okay so how do you make sure you get off to a strong start as a new manager what should you do in your first 90 days going from being an individual contributor to a new manager and actually I think this is good advice what should you do in the first 90 days anytime you take over a new team and have a new boss so in your first 90 days you're gonna be drinking from a firehose so many people to meet so much to learn and so many fires to put out but you have to use your first 90 days to build a foundation for your future success if you wait six months later 12 months later it's too late you're already gonna be judged on your results or lack thereof so your first 90 days are critical you need to set yourself up for success with your boss with your team members and with yourself so first let's talk about how do you set yourself up for success with your manager with your boss the number one thing is you need to find out how you're gonna be evaluated how will you know if you're doing a good job or not so for example let's say you're a new manager for a sales team well maybe the marketplace is just so competitive that your boss just you to maintain the status quo you know just keep results going like they always have been and that's a win but maybe you're replacing a bad manager and your boss thinks you need to be increasing market share by 50% or increasing sales by 50% or maybe it's not even about sales you know maybe it's not so much about the numbers but your boss really wants you to open up a key account you got to open up you know Saint st. Peter's Hospital you got to open up the Acme Bank or whatever it is so to get clear on this how are you gonna be judged you just have to have a direct conversation you can ask your boss things like how will you be measuring my performance or are there specific short-term and long-term goals you have for me or if you're a little more dairy you know you just have a really good relationship with your manager you know you could ask her something like hey let's imagine it's one year from now and you come in you're high-fiving me because I've had such an amazing year what would I have had to have done what would I have accomplished for you to feel that way and this is gonna get not just like how are you gonna be evaluated but what great looks like and when it comes to your manager in addition to understanding how you're gonna be evaluated another critical thing is what is your managers communication style like both what is it that they want to know about and what channels do they prefer you know do they want real-time updates via slack all throughout the day or instant message or whatever or maybe they just want at the end of the day send me one email with what's going on or maybe they say listen I don't micromanage when we get together once a week for our face-to-face fill me and then pick up the phone if it's emergency there's no right or wrong answer here it's just what is their preference what is their style and I can remember I once worked for a CEO who loved communicating via email he ran this global company I don't know how many people were there at the time 300 people maybe all via email now this was my last company so he was actually a strategic investor so I president of the company founder of the company but he was my number one investor and he was the CEO technically I reported to him and my office was in the same building you know down the hall and when I first started you know I'd get into work I'd walk by he's be in his office his doors open I say hello good morning I'd walk into my office my door was open but he never came in he never saw me and he would just send me emails either simple questions yes/no questions or these issues that were gonna be twenty back-and-forth s-- and at first I thought maybe he didn't see me walk by his office maybe doesn't know I'm here maybe doesn't know my door is open and that he could just barge in so I would get up from my desk walk into his office if his door was open and I'd be like oh hey I just got your email about the such-and-such this is what's going on and I was just answer but then I realized when I when he would invite me in you say oh come on in and sit down to talk he would still keep his head down and he would type out emails to other people on his laptop but while we were talking now this horrified me at first I'm the opposite of that like if you were to come into my office if I was working from the laptop I would literally close the case I would make eye contact I would turn my chair so I'm facing you you know or come out round from my desk so there's no power play going on we'd sit at a side table I'm all about like active listening making you feel important all the rest but hey this guy was my boss and if his style is to communicate via email that that's what I was gonna do so I stopped going into his office I stopped asking for meetings through his assistant I would just email on all the all the questions all the issues big and small and it worked out fine I mean it was five years built a great big company sold it for a lot of money it worked fine but the key is I mean sure like I encourage you to ask your new boss hey you know how do you like to communicate are you an email person a phone person a text message they might tell you but they also just might be polite and if I had asked this boss I go how do you like me to communicate he probably would have said whatever you want just walk on in you know just come on at anytime but his actions said something else so ask your boss but then see you know what is she doing how is she reaching out to you all right so that sets you up for success with your boss how are you gonna be evaluated and what is your managers preferred communication style now the second thing in your first 90 days you need to start building a genuine relationship with your direct reports you want to build trust which comes from building authentic relationships when you have high trust your team is gonna feel more engaged in their work they're gonna be more innovative because they won't fear making small mistakes they're not gonna fear failure and if they do make a mistake they're gonna bring it to your attention when it's a small problem and not when it's festered and become a big problem now a lot of times new managers you know we want to make a big impact we want to help everyone we want to get respect but and show people that we know you know what we're doing so we charge in and we we give everybody our great new ideas we solve everyone else's problems but instead what we need to do is we need to take time to get to know people meet with them one-on-one maybe go out coffee lunch whatever try to learn about their families their hobbies their personal interests their personal goals what do they like to do in their free time let them get to know the real you what is your leadership style what do you like to do outside of work yes you can talk about the work but first seek to understand you know you want to lead a whole person not just the work that they're touching you know eight hours a day what are they working on how does it align with the goals of the organization and what are their ideas for improving things so the third and final thing your first 90 days to set yourself up for success take care of yourself like what are the systems you're gonna put into place to support yourself because there's always going to be more to do at the end of every day there's always gonna be more more to do more than you can ever do so you need to realize how am I going to thrive over the long term you're gonna be successful over the long term but that's gonna involve lots of mistakes as well how will you learn how will you manage stress who can be part of your support system I reached out to the CEO of the iconic travel company Lonely Planet I'm sure many of you have have heard of Loney Lonely Planet and it was interesting this billionaire bought Lonely Planet several years ago and he put a first time manager who is all of 24 years old Daniel Houghton in charge well Daniels been on the job for five years now as CEO so I interviewed him to find out like what has he learned he went from never having managed anyone to managing 300 people at Lonely Planet you know what was his advice for first-time managers and he really hit on this third point like find mentors you know he says it's dangerous to be insulated it's dangerous to not think outside of the box and you know whether it's mentors they don't all have to be you know in his case fellow CEOs he said it can be friends it can be other people people he can reach out to to get their advice to blow off steam with but outside the organization people you know that can help him and he also said you know it was one of his failures as first I think he said six to nine months he was working seven days a week he was working a hundred hours a week I can relate to that's what I was doing in my 20s as well and then he hit that wall and he I don't know if he used the term burned out or if that was what I heard but it was the same thing he said he just got to a point where he was not very effective anymore he certainly wasn't efficient he was running out of energy and so now you know he found ways to rest to recharge to take time off on the weekends to put his phone on mute or airplane mode or whatever so that he's not constantly drawn to it so that's it those are the three things you're gonna have a million other things that you you need to do you probably do need to do in your first 90 days but you also need to take time to set yourself up for success meet with your new manager to discuss expectations and communication spend time getting to know your new team members on a personal level and finally don't forget to create a support network for yourself you

Channel: LEADx

Views: 5,376

Keywords: LEADx, Kevin Kruse, leadership, podcast, The LEADx Show, Productivity, Employee Engagement, Time Management, The LEADx Leadership Show, The LEADx Leadership Show with Kevin Kruse, author, book, business, entepreneur, entepreneurship, career, coaching, inspiration, motivation, keynote, keynote speaker, manager, management, leader, boss

Id: u0TTn8n-JzQ

Length: 16min 4sec (964 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 11 2017