8 Tips to Succeed in Your First Management Role

Congratulations on your new role. It can be both exciting and daunting going into your first leadership role. You’ve taken that next step in your career, but you are also taking on more responsibility, which comes with new challenges. We’ve supported many new managers over the years and here are our top tips to help you succeed in your first management role.  

1. Understand your role 

It may seem obvious but understanding what your role is will help you feel more comfortable in the job. When we get a promotion, it can be common to experience some Imposter Syndrome. These are those nagging feelings that you’re not good enough for the job and you’re going to be “found out”.  

Remember, you were hired because your employer thinks you are right for the job. That’s why understanding how you fit into the team is vitally important.  

Firstly, if you’ve been promoted within the same company there might be some adjustment for you and your previous team to see you as a manager. Overnight, you’ve gone from being one of the team to managing a team. This needs you to step into a new identity at work.   

If your new role is at a different company, then this transition may feel easier. You have no connection to the people you’ll be managing and therefore you can adopt these new managerial behaviours without needing to adjust to how your colleagues usually see you.   

Secondly, it’s important to know what’s expected of you as a manager. For many years it was normal to see leaders as “all-knowing”. They were the people who told the team what to do. If there was a problem, then the manager had the answers. This is a lot of pressure for someone to take on.  

These days, it’s more common for managers to not have all the answers but, instead, get the best out of their teams to help solve the problems at work. Leaders should make sure each employee is bringing their strengths and talents to the workplace. 

Thirdly, as you’re now a manager, your place in the team has changed. It might seem obvious, but new managers can sometimes take a while to adjust to no longer being one of the team. Instead, they don’t always hear the office gossip or the low-level gripes happening within the group. Make sure you give yourself time to adjust to this change.   

2. Get training 

Most new managers have no formal training when they’re offered the role. While you have many of the skills to do the job, there will still be a lot to learn. In fact, 82% of managers have had no training at all. Managing people is a specific skill set. It needs you to approach situations in the right way.  

Taking a course like the Managing People Fundamentals Programme can give you the knowledge, confidence and competence you need in place now so you can concentrate on doing a great job in your first management role.  

3. Lead by example 

Managers have a unique role in a company as they can create change. You may not realise it yet, but how you act at work will set the template for how your team acts. In every business, there is an unwritten rule book about how we behave. We subconsciously pick up cues from those around us about what is the right thing to do and then we do that so we can fit in.  

Before your promotion, you would have taken behaviour cues from your manager. Now, your team are looking to you for the right way to behave at work. This means that if you want your team to turn up to meetings on time, you need to turn up to meetings on time. If you don’t like seeing people work late and answer emails from their phones, make sure you don’t send emails late into the evening, even if you’re still working.  

How you behave now has a greater influence on how others behave. You have an opportunity to use this to get the best from your team.  

4. Learn to listen well 

96% of people believe they are good listeners but only half of us can remember what was said in a conversation immediately after it has happened. In the workplace, 70% of employees say they are negatively affected by poor listening.   

As a manager, it’s crucial that you develop active listening skills. This means addressing some bad listening habits that you may have picked up over the years like interrupting, letting your mind wander or thinking about what you want to say next in response to what you’re hearing.  

Instead, developing active listening skills like allowing someone to talk without interruption, giving them space to pause, and letting them know you understood what they are saying will all help you succeed as a manager.  

You are now in the position where you need to lead the meetings, which means letting others talk and share their ideas, making sure even the quiet team members are heard and listening to the whole team.  

Additionally, your team is going to come to you with any issues they have at work. You must listen well so you can act appropriately.  

5. Build your soft skills 

As a manager, you will need to rely on your soft skills more than in any previous role. You’ll need an abundance of good communication skills and empathy to step into the new leadership role. As you’ll be delegating tasks, communicating what you want from your team members in the right way is important. You need to understand them and how they work so you can give instructions and feedback in the right way.  

 You’ll also need good attention to detail and time management skills as you are now balancing more responsibility and more work. Remember to delegate tasks where you can rather than try to take on everything. You’ll also need to work on your negotiation and conflict resolution skills, which we’ll cover in more detail further down.  

6. Give feedback well  

You will now be responsible for performance reviews and feedback. This is a key part of any leadership role and getting this right is a skill. Employees can sometimes dread performance reviews, even if they are doing a great job. Keep this in mind during the run-up to reviews. If you know a particular team member gets anxious about reviews, consider how you frame the invitation.  

Our key advice is to have your one-to-one’s early with your team and set expectations for these. This will help you establish your role as a new manager in the eyes of those who you manage.

Equally, when you’re giving feedback, try to do so in a constructive way. One technique you can use is Start, Stop, and Continue. Here you take your employees through what you’d like them to start doing, to stop doing and to continue doing well. When it’s framed in this way, negative feedback becomes an action to change rather than something they should feel bad about.  

Likewise, we’re more likely to remember negative feedback over positive. If we know we need to start doing something, stop doing something and continue, we are getting more neutral feedback which will help prevent any negative confirmation bias.  

7. Managing difficult situations 

Finally, one of the most challenging parts of your first management role is managing difficult situations. You will need to have difficult conversations in your new job. Knowing how to approach and handle these conversations will make the process easier.  

While delivering bad news or unexpected feedback will never be easy, there are approaches that you can use which help. New managers often struggle with this side of the job. You are unlikely to have had any training in how to approach difficult situations.  

Make sure you approach the conversation while keeping the other person’s perspective in mind. Understanding how they may react and why will help you handle that when the time comes. While it may be hard at first, you need to be clear, direct and unemotional.  

Showing compassion and empathy is also crucial to challenging conversations. Go back to those listening skills and let the other person talk. You may find yourself coming to a middle ground or uncovering an issue you didn’t know existed.   

Overall, getting training before you have difficult conversations can help you before you have your first one as a new manager.  

8. Work with a mentor 

  As you’re in your first management role there is a lot to learn. You’ll have more responsibility, likely attend more meetings and your workload may increase. It’s common for managers to try to fit their work in during short gaps in the day. This may be a new way of working for you.  

Additionally, you’re now responsible for other people. This means that you are their first port of call when there is something wrong. It may be an issue with work, but managers sometimes need to handle what’s happening in a team member’s personal life as well. You may also have office politics to negotiate.   

Working with a mentor can give you some extra support in your first management role. Someone further on in their career will have already gone through the adjustment to being a new manager. They can help you negotiate some of the pitfalls and work towards your next opportunity.  

Find out if there is someone within your company who can step into a mentorship role to help you succeed in your new role.  This doesn’t need to be a formal agreement but someone more senior who can be a sounding board for your ideas and approach.

Succeeding in your first management role 

Your first management role is an opportunity for you to discover the kind of manager you want to be. It’s a bridge for the next step in your career. Learning and self-development should always feature highly in your role but as a manager, how well you perform will ultimately impact how well your team performs.  

Managing People Fundamentals

Find out how our Managing People Fundamentals course can support both new and experienced managers get the foundational skills they need to excel in their roles.