Top 10 Hacks for a First time People Manager

It can be tough to adjust to a role of a Manager, the first piece of advice is to understand that it’s normal to be nervous.

It’s an exciting challenge, but there will be struggles, whether you like it or not.

The key more than anything is to change your mindset and get into a new way of approaching work.

Once you take some time to step back, you’ll be in a better position to plan and avoid these challenges as much as possible.

It can be hard being a manager, especially if it’s your first time. Even if you’ve been a manager before but you’ve been promoted or reassigned, you’ll find that there are new things being thrown at you all the time.

One of your key responsibilities is improving employee satisfaction within your team, while completing your own tasks.

You’ll see with most of the challenges that they’re internal, meaning only you can fix them.

Here are 10 challenges that every new manager will face.

1.Failure To Set Clear Goals And Expectations

As a manager, your main task is to motivate employees. It’s hard to be motivated if you have no clear directions. Often, a lack of clarity on the job causes confusion between employee and manager, leading to disappointment on both sides.

The best thing you can do to fix all of this is to set clear goals that align everyone on the team.

Objectives and Key Results have been the best thing I’ve seen to align everyone around a shared goal. What’s great about this is the “key results” set expectations very clearly.

Both employees and managers have measurable results, making it easier to tell if they hit their mark or not.

2.Poor Time Management

This is a tough one for new managers.

Now, in addition to managing your own tasks, you have to manage an entire team, putting out fires and dealing with their problems.

Trying to juggle all of this can easily become overwhelming. The best piece of advice for new managers is to block time off on your own calendar.

Make it clear to employees that there are certain times that are only for you.

A very simple hack that Managers like to do is actually block time off on calendar with “meetings with self” so that others know that they are already “booked” for that time.

3.Unclear Or Inconsistent Communication

One of the easiest ways to loose respect is to be inconsistent in your communication and messaging.

Employees need to know that they can trust what you’re saying to be true.

Inconsistent communication is relatively easy to fix, but unclear communication can be an even bigger problem.

Work on your messaging, make it as crystal clear as possible. I’m always reminded of Jason Fried’s wise words from the book “Getting Real”:

If you are trying to decide between a few people to fill a position, always hire the better writer. It doesn’t matter if that person is a designer, programmer, marketer, salesperson, or whatever, the writing skills will pay off. Effective, concise writing and editing leads to effective, concise code, design, emails, instant messages, and more.
That’s because being a good writer is about more than words. Good writers know how to communicate. They make things easy to understand. They can put themselves in someone else’s shoes. They know what to omit. They think clearly. And those are the qualities you need.

4.Pressure To Perform

One of the most nerve racking things about being a new manager is the pressure to perform.

You were just given an incredible opportunity and now you want to show that you were worth it.

Just relax. Rome wasn’t built in a day.

Make sure to set clear expectations with your boss, and more importantly, yourself. You won’t get amazing results right away, it will take time.

Slow and steady wins the race, take your time to plan properly and set yourself up for success.

5.Shifting From Coworker To Boss

Picture this — you’re close with your coworkers and suddenly you’re promoted to being their manager, you’re no longer “one of them.”

This is a common situation and can be pretty awkward.

How do you tell your friends what to do without it affecting your friendship?

It’s a tough question. Being tough with your friends is not an easy thing to do, but you need to learn how to separate work from friendship.

Understand that when you’re at work, it’s business time and you need to be the boss, but when you’re out of work, that’s your personal life.

6.Hiring

Hiring is tough.

Hiring is especially tough for new managers that have never done this before.

This might be your hardest challenge as a new manager, because bringing someone onto the team is a big decision.

Luckily, there are resources online, but don’t be shy to ask other people in your company, from other managers to the HR team.

The best way to hire someone is through a work sample test, meaning you give them a small project to see how well they perform, communicate, and interact with the team.

Many inexperienced people involved with hiring will generally go with “gut feeling”, but this is a bad idea.

What has been proven to work instead, is a structured interview, where candidates are asked the same set of questions with specific ways of evaluating the responses.

There are two kinds of structured interviews: behavioral and situational.

Behavioral interviews look at past performance (“Tell me about a time when…”), whereas situational interviews are hypothetical (“What would you do if…”)

A smart manager will dive deep and ask lots of follow up questions.

7.Letting someone GO

Even more difficult than hiring is letting go an employee.

This is a tough one, and it’s hard to find perfect advice for this.

The best advice is if you make it a team decision. You should be meeting with your team regularly for one-on-one sessions.

During those one-on-ones, get personal and ask employees what they think of certain colleagues. You’ll naturally see patterns come up.

It’s important to give everyone a chance and work with them to help them improve, but at a certain point you’ll likely face this challenge.

8.Solving Other People’s Problems

Managers don’t get nearly enough credit for all that they do.

They’re part manager, part psychologist. Inevitably, you’ll start receiving complaints from employees and start having to deal with their problems.

Step one is to accept it and get ready for it.

Step two is to attack any issue early on before it becomes a serious problem. Monthly one-on-ones can be a great way to make sure a problem doesn’t last for too long.

9.Getting The Team To Be Productive

A smart manager will understand that the key to their success is to make the team as productive as possible.

This can be a challenge because everyone is different, requires different levels of attention, and works in different ways.

What you need to do as a manager, is create an environment that’s good for everyone. Some people like working later, some earlier, some people like being told what to do, some people like being left alone.

Find out what works best and adjust accordingly.

10. Not Asking For Help

Many first-time managers will want to prove that they don’t need any help — big mistake.

Don’t be shy to ask around for help. Ask HR about training that you might not know about, ask about expensing training courses online, whatever it takes to make you and your team the best!

Well, have fun learning, and dont forget to give me your claps if you liked my work.