Five Management Mistakes That New Managers Are Most Likely To Make

Many people will make many new discoveries when they first take up management positions. One of them is that although their new positions are by definition an extension of work, the actual situation is much more difficult than expected. They will be surprised to find that the skills and methods required for success as managers are completely different from those required for success as employees, and there is a certain gap between their current capabilities and the requirements of the new position. In their previous work, their success mainly depended on their personal expertise and efforts. As managers, they are responsible for arranging the schedule for a team and leading the implementation. For those who used to focus only on their own performance, they are often not ready for it.

Let's take Michael Jones, the new branch manager of a securities company just mentioned, as an example (all the characters in the article are pseudonyms). Michael has been a broker for 13 years, with outstanding performance. He is one of the most aggressive and innovative professionals in his field. In his company, the new branch manager is generally promoted layer by layer based on his personal ability and performance. Therefore, no one was surprised when the regional director asked him to consider transferring to a management position. He also firmly believes that he knows how to become an effective manager. In fact, he has said many times that if he was appointed as the supervisor, he would be willing and able to keep the branch office in order and improve the business situation. However, a month after taking office, he often felt very panic, because it was more difficult to implement his own ideas than he thought. He realized that he had given up his "security blanket" and had no way back.

Although Michael was surprised by his reaction, it was quite normal. Learning to be a leader is a process of learning through practice. This skill cannot be taught in class. The main way to obtain it is on-the-job experience, especially negative experience - because the new manager's ability cannot meet the job requirements, he must make progress through continuous attempts and mistakes. Most star employees seldom make mistakes, which is also a new experience for them. In addition, few managers understand that they are learning when they are nervous and make mistakes. This kind of learning is a gradually increasing process.

As the process unfolds slowly, a new professional identity begins to emerge as the new manager abandons the way of thinking and habits that he relied on to achieve early career success. He began to adopt new ways of thinking and behavior, and found new ways to measure success and obtain job satisfaction. Not surprisingly, this psychological adjustment is quite laborious. As a new manager pointed out, "I never knew that promotion would be so painful."

It's painful and stressful. The new manager will inevitably think about two questions: "Will I like management?" and "Can I be competent for management?" Of course, these questions cannot be answered immediately. The answers can only be found from experience. Moreover, there is usually a more disturbing question accompanying these two questions: "What kind of person will I become?"

New manager's wrong view

It's not easy to be someone else's boss, but I don't want to make this kind of thing scary. In my research, I found that the transformation process is often more difficult because new managers have some wrong ideas about their roles. Some of their ideas about what it means to be a manager are still correct. However, because these ideas are too simple and not comprehensive, they will have some wrong expectations and try to make them conform to the reality of management. If the new manager can admit the following wrong views - some of which almost everyone agrees with, almost become a myth - he can greatly improve his chances of success. (For the comparison of various wrong views and the reality, see the sub column "Why the new manager does not understand")

Managers hold important power

When asked to describe their roles, new managers usually focus on the power and privileges conferred by the boss's position. They take it for granted that this position gives them more authority, so that they have more freedom and autonomy to carry out activities that they think are most beneficial to the enterprise. In the words of a new manager, they will no longer be "bothered by unreasonable requirements of other races".

The new manager with this assumption will suddenly wake up. The new managers I studied said that they did not gain new power, but found themselves trapped in various interdependent relationships. They do not feel free, but feel bound. This is especially true if they are used to the relative freedom they enjoyed when they were star employees in the past. They are trapped in a network of relationships involving not only subordinates, but also supervisors, peer managers and others inside and outside the enterprise. All of these people will make various demanding and often conflicting demands on them. As a result, their daily work becomes stressful, busy and fragmented.

"The truth is, everything is out of your control," said a new manager. "Only when I close the door can I feel the control in my hand. But then I feel that I have not done what I should do - with my employees." Another new manager said: "It's shameless that I may lose my job because of my own employees."

The people who are most likely to make a mess of the new manager's life are those outside his official duties, such as external suppliers or managers of another department. Sally McDonald is a rising star in a chemical company. When she took over the position of a product development manager, she was confident. Her personal performance is impeccable, she has a deep understanding of the company culture, and she has also participated in leadership development training courses. Three weeks later, she said in dismay, "Being a manager is not a boss, but a hostage. Many terrorists in the enterprise want to kidnap me."

Only when new managers put aside the myth of power and accept the reality that they must deal with various dependencies can they become effective leaders. As we have seen, this means that they need to manage not only their direct reports, but also the environment in which they operate. Unless they can identify the key people the team depends on and establish effective relationships with them, the team will lack the resources needed to carry out its work.

Even if new managers understand the importance of these relationships, they will often ignore or forget them and focus on the more urgent tasks they think, that is, leading those closest to themselves: their subordinates. When a new manager finally accepts his role as a network builder, he often feels powerless to meet many requirements of the role. In addition, it is tiring to communicate with other parties in a relatively weak position, which is also a dilemma that new managers at the bottom of the enterprise hierarchy often encounter.

However, managing dependencies can bring huge rewards. When Winona Finch was responsible for business development in a large media company in the United States, she developed a business plan to launch the Latin American version of an American youth magazine under the company. After the project was temporarily approved, Finch asked to manage the project. She and her team face many obstacles. The senior management of the company does not favor international projects. Before getting the final capital injection, Finch must also reach an agreement with the regional distributors that occupy 20% of the Latin American market. For a publication that has not yet passed the test, it is not easy to compete for the scarce newsstand space. In order to control costs, her project will have to rely on the sales staff of the Spanish version of the company's flagship women's magazine, who are accustomed to selling different types of products.

Although she has to deal with a lot of trivial matters in the process of establishing a new enterprise, Finch, who was an acting manager two years ago, knows that she must spend time and energy managing the relationship with her boss and peer managers. For example, every two weeks, she would collect and sort out the management records of the department heads, and then hand them to the headquarters executives for circulation. In order to strengthen communication with the women's magazine, she launched regular Latin American business meetings so that senior managers around the world who are responsible for the youth magazine and women's magazine can discuss regional strategies.

Despite her previous experience, Finch will still face some pressure that new managers will encounter. "It's like taking finals 365 days a year," she said. However, the new version of the magazine was published as scheduled, which exceeded the expectations of the business plan.