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I was talking with some colleagues recently about leadership and management. Both had new managers. In one case, the person had joined a new team with a seasoned manager. In the other, an existing team had received a person new to management. They were having very different experiences. None of it was surprising.
It wasn’t surprising to me because leadership is not an unknown. There are vast quantities of writings about how to lead. Where I think new managers go wrong is by reading this advice and trying to apply it as if they were the author. Management guidance and the research that supports it is really just an orientation towards solutions. The manager still has to consider which of what can often be conflicting approaches is the one best suited for them.
I think the biggest challenge for a new manager or someone joining a new team is to over-anticipate. The new employee is going to drop into the team in an unknown state. People may or may not be friendly, projects may or may not be going well, their own role may or may not have been well-performed before their arrival. The new manager may experience all of those things as well as having to immediately start making decisions that impact those same people and projects.
It would be understandable if, for one’s own sake, the new person attempted to plan or prepare. But you can’t really know what to expect until you are in your new role and can absorb what is going on around you. I’ve started enough new roles that I can say with near certainty that whatever you learned prior to taking on the role—during the interview phases, in the post-acceptance-pre-start discussions—you do not really know what is going on in your new organization. This can be because people may hide negative aspects or because the people you speak to really are unaware of the reality of a team’s operation, even if they are on it or lead it.
One Size Fits None
We had a management training recently and the presenter from human resources was explaining how, on their three-person team, they used three different management approaches. This rang true for me. We are often told to bring our authentic selves to work and that means that we are melding introverts and extroverts, procrastinators and keeners, and so on into relationships with each other. Your authentic self is not going to mesh well with everyone and so we compromise, on both sides, to build those team connections.
I tend to be a hands-off manager. That isn’t always great. I will generally leave new people to get oriented to their space, telling them what I think they need to know but otherwise leaving them to get to it. This has worked because I usually am hiring people who are early- to mid-career who already have some experience. If I was hiring someone brand new out of a law or library school, this would be a terrible approach.
A good rule is probably to do unto others as you’d have done to you although use that as a starting point. There are new employees who, even given existing experience, may want or need those check-ins. A new person on a team should be encouraged to ask for that support but it should also be offered. As you have probably experienced, even if you do not want the last slice of cake, it is nice to be asked if you would like it.
A new person to a team and a new manager can both gain from the same approach. Listen. Observe. Do not anticipate. Your first few days in a role carry the lowest expectations; take advantage of it. You do not need to do much more than show up and find traction. This approach will often lead you towards learning about problems and potential opportunities. People will start to describe processes and workflows and you can see what is missing and what contribution you might make.
This is one reason I never seek out my predecessor in a role to learn about it from them. They will have a self-interested perspective that will color my observations. I have met with some of them out of politeness but I tend to discard everything I hear, storing it away for much later consideration. Believe me, your context will make itself clear pretty quickly, for better or worse.
One organization I joined proved that point the very first day. I got to the end of a day of meeting people, learning how to operate the phones, filling out forms. I had one final meeting to clear before I could head home. It turned out to be a termination discussion for a staff person.
While it gave me some very good information—why hadn’t this been resolved under the previous director, for instance—it was not something that had been shared before I’d started. This was an extreme example but within a few days, you’ll start to see the frayed ends of threads you can pull on. A shelf of backlogged items needing processing, a bottleneck where a project is waiting for the only person who can complete it, requests for your approval from people who should be autonomous.
If you are the person joining a team, either as a manager or new hire (maybe both), the more you can manage your own expectations, the better. You may be a new manager’s first hire; they may have no idea what they’re supposed to be doing. Or you may be managing someone in their first professional role or first supervisory role or some other first, and who is equally uncertain about what is expected. Err on the side of over-communicating: ask a lot of questions until you’re sure that you are understanding.
The new person I was speaking with appreciated their weekly sit-downs with their manager. But they also knew that those would start to diminish over time as they grew more confident in their role. I thought it was a good sign that their manager had communicated both of these things—we need to meet, you will eventually become autonomous—right at the outset.
Distinguish the Individual and the Process
I do not think managers have it harder than other new employees. But a new manager may have read more specific advice about being a successful manager than they might have as being a new employee. Your first time leading a team may involve “earning some quick wins” or “making an impact within 180 days” (6 months is somehow magical). Over time, I have lost confidence that this is good advice. Too often I see it attempted in reality with poor outcomes.
This is particularly true for the new manager who sees a problem. The immediate reaction is often to want to fix the problem but there are threshold questions to ask before doing that. This is especially true when you have just joined a team. If something broke, has it broken before? How often? Does it always break in the same way? Does it always break for the same person?
A manager has the ability to change a process. A process change can impact a lot of people. It is common to change a process, unfortunately, when what is really needed is for either one person to be trained or held accountable, or for the manager to understand more about the process.
This aggravates me a lot. In any role I’ve had where I was not the executive, I have received emails from HR telling me to undertake a certain action or to comply with a certain policy or training. It doesn’t matter if I already have done so, because the HR teams never attempt to make that determination before they communicate. (Obviously, this IS a place where you can over-communicate). If a team like HR has a problem with compliance, the training or follow up should be with just those people who need it. More often than not, it is a relatively small number of people.
What seems to be a common approach is for managers to insert themselves into processes in order to “fix” or improve them. Let’s say we have a process where we have shared calendar for people to post their paid time off, so their colleagues know when they’re out. If one day, a person forgets, and the omission creates a scheduling problem, the fix is to help that person remember.
The colleague with the new manager described this situation. The new manager’s solution was to insert themselves into the process. Now, in addition to approving the time off, they would be the only person to update the shared calendar. It reflects a manager who is not thinking through the consequences of their actions. Not only have they created a bottleneck because now no one knows who is away until the manager posts that information, they have taken on a new long-term burden. This is also a warning sign for micro-management.
When you discover something that isn’t working, it’s an opportunity to ask questions. Often, the reason something breaks is either poor communication, poor documentation, or poor performance. A manager and an employee can work together to resolve those issues without impacting an entire team. Both should be asking why: why are we doing this? why am I doing this?
Sometimes the process itself is broken. But broken processes often look like they’re working because the people involved are insulating the break points with additional effort and workarounds. I have noticed this a lot with our university purchasing. A payables process should be highly reliable and repeatable; otherwise, I don’t think it’s defensible. In our situation, there is a high degree of uncertainty in the process governing which invoices will be accepted and why and which will be paid. I’ve learned over time that one must initiate one of a number of workarounds, some of which risk violating internal controls, to bypass this uncertainty. Invoices get paid but not because the process is functional.
One of the greatest contributions a manager or new employee can make is to shine a light on a broken process. Asking why can help other people to take a closer look. That sort of knowledge can lead to not only the process being reconsidered—do we still even need to do this and, if we do, how do we make it work so that it doesn’t require workarounds—but potentially saving time and effort by everyone involved.
What became clear to me in our conversation was that both colleagues could tell within a matter of weeks, if not days, what sort of manager they were dealing with. Good communication, a culture of autonomy and accountability, listening and questioning between the employee and manager (and not just scuttlebutt about the manager on backchannels): all these are healthy signs. Their absence can suggest that not all is optimal within the team or organization.
I think managers bear more responsibility for being deliberate about creating a positive environment. However, it is a multi-directional responsibility. Any employee can ask questions, both for what they need to be successful but also to improve the work being done. We will be hiring a new librarian in a few months and I am looking forward to going through this process again: new eyes on how we do things, new possibilities for growth.