Prime Your Managers For Success!

As any industry watcher would tell you, young managers (less than 30 years old) are a recent phenomenon. This has been accelerating even in traditional industries as they adapt to new-age technologies and management philosophies. Hiring younger managers has become increasingly common in the modern corporate landscape.

However, this poses a new challenge for the companies. On the face of it, hiring from elite management institutions might address issues around technical naivety and purely theoretical understanding of the business. There is also the added benefit of grooming them from a young age so as to benefit the company’s long-term prospects.

However, lack of experience can lead to many issues which prevent them from achieving their potential. Let us take a look at a couple of these pain points today.

Managing The New Team Dynamics

This is the most commonly faced problem by first-time managers, especially if they have been promoted from an internal team. With the advent of social media platforms and other networking tools, it has become a normal practice to be connected with your coworkers outside work and share a lot of your personal life events and experiences. While these practices do help build better relationships within the team and boost a sense of belonging and morale, they also cause unintended consequences. The biggest one is the thinning of personal boundaries between the employees.

While this is not an issue when it happens between equals, a manager needs to be emotionally disconnected to a certain extent from the team members to be able to make impartial judgements, give honest feedback and make tough decisions when needed. Lack of interpersonal boundaries can make it difficult to do so.

This is further complicated when it is a first-time manager promoted internally, because it means there are prior relationships with the team members which need to be transitioned into the new dynamic and need to be managed delicately.

Understanding And Implementing Delegation

This is perhaps the one thing that can never be fully learnt from textbooks or case studies. Any successful manager needs to be able to assess a few things: what they are capable of themselves, and what their team is capable of, both as individuals and as a collective. Based on these assessments, how best to divide responsibilities of executing the task at hand is the biggest task they will undertake on a regular basis.

Just because there is no perfect way to learn this before starting, it doesn’t mean that there is no way to prepare. However, there are some common issues that get in the way of successfully delegating work to the team:

1. (Perceived) lack of authority: Unless the incoming first-time manager already has a very good reputation (which is unlikely), this is the first challenge they have to face. It is often compounded by the fact that first-time managers are usually not adept at setting the tone and clear expectations upfront.
2. Lack of trust: Another factor that hinders first-time managers is the absence of trust between the team and the manager, especially for external hires. This can evolve into the team members doubting the manager’s ability and actions, which can cause chaos.

Now that we know what are the biggest factors holding your first-time managers back, it is time to look at how Able Ventures can help ease these and have your managers smoothly transition into their new role. 

How Able Ventures Helps

Based on our extensive experience in professional training and comprehensive employee behaviour, Able Ventures has come up with an exclusive gamified F1 Bootcamp for first-time managers.

This course consists of a meticulously prepared curriculum designed for all first-time managers, regardless of whether they are young management graduates or seasoned professionals taking their first step into management.

At the end of our F1 Bootcamp, your first-time managers will learn the following:

• Understanding and maintaining a manager’s mindset
• How to establish trust and communication with their team members
• How to handle conflict within their team and create a harmonious work environment
• Understanding and delegating their tasks
• Evaluating team performance and helping each one of them grow with proper feedback and coaching
• Problem-solving under extreme pressure

Taking on a managerial responsibility for the first time is a challenge for anyone. The best way to ensure their, and by extension, the company’s success is to make sure that they are fully equipped with all the skills required. So what are you waiting for? Contact us today and get your first-time managers enrolled in our exclusive F1 Bootcamp to prepare them for the life of a manager.