Common mistakes new managers make

I have been working with first time managers for a number of years now, this ranges from coaching through to running training workshops. What I hear and see are a lot of mistakes.

In today’s newsletter I want to look at the top five mistakes new managers make and how to avoid them. Hopefully to help other future managers from making these mistakes in the future.

The top five I regularly see are:

1. Micromanaging

2. Avoiding difficult conversations

3. Failing to provide feedback

4. Not setting clear goals

5. Neglecting personal development

Let’s explore these further and look at some tips to reduce these happening.

Micromanaging

As a new manager the easiest trap to fall into is trying to control everything. You want to be over everything to make sure you know what’s going on and communicate with others that you know what is going on. There is also the element of showing your manager that you are in control. Sometimes the worst part of micromanaging in the early days is that it does truly come from a good place, but executed poorly.

No one likes to be micromanaged.

Ask yourself, do you?

The problem with micromanaging is that team morale will drop, new ideas and innovation is stifled. With reduction in team morale and unhappiness within the team feedback and safety in the team will reduce. People will vote with their feet and cause a vicious circle for you.

For you personally it can lead to burnout as your workload will be increase compared to delegating effectively.

Top Tips:

1. Learn to trust your team: trust can be difficult to navigate for early stage managers (and everyone else). I personally always say that trust is built over time and not instant. But as the manager you can lead with developing this and putting trust in the tasks and work your team are doing. Remember that the team was most likely doing well or delivering, yes there may be some areas for improvement but by and large most teams know their tasks. The best way in doing this is through effective delegation of work.

2. Delegate: As a new manager can be difficult to delegate but this skill you need to learn quick. One thing to practice is during 1:1’s shift from managing to a coach. This will help with delegating tasks as you will working with the team member to make improvements and look at how best to work through challenges themselves vs you doing.

3. Focus on results: Work with the team on accountability and putting in place spaces for updates. Tracking the progress will help you and the team ensure the right results are delivered.

Avoiding difficult conversations

With all new managers, as well as experienced ones, you can take the approach of ignoring difficult conversations. You could shift to the mindset of being liked and bringing hard things up with others. This will have such a big impact on the team. By not having the difficult conversation you will allow the difficulty or issue to fester. The longer things are left the worse this becomes for the team.

Top Tips

1. Learn the SBI Framework: See my other article on this but really focus on Situation, Behaviour and Impact.

2. See these as two way conversations: This is an opportunity to discuss your team members behaviour as well as understand any underlying issues they may have which is causing the behaviour.

3. Role Play the conversation: Through role playing this conversation with either your manager or HR will help you properly prepare for the conversation well.

Failing to provide feedback

As a manager giving feedback to your team is really vital and plays a key part in your teams development. This also relates to both positive and negative feedback. By shying away from dealing with the issue this will likely continue to linger and develop into something further.

Top Tips:

1. Use the GROWTH Framework and for more information on this read this article.

2. Get ahead of this quickly: Delaying any form of giving feedback will have a bigger impact. Our memories of situations fade and bringing this up too late may well result in the feedback no longer being relevant or just missing the mark.

3. Work on getting all the information and facts: Too many times people just jump to conclusions and provide feedback and look at moving forward without the full context. Getting the context and full information ahead of everything will help frame the feedback discussion better.

Not setting clear goals

If you don’t know what you are aiming for you’ll end up in the wrong place. This will be worse if your team aren’t clear in where they are going. Being clear in what you expect of your team is a one key item that you need to ensure motivation and accountability across the team.

Top Tips:

1. Use SMART goals: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound. Following this structure will help ensure the goals you put in place with your team will be successful.

2. Work on teams strengths and look at aligning their goals to strengths. Yes there will be times for development goals and training but focus on the ensuring that the team are aligned with core objectives that will help them progress further.

3. Have regular check-ins on goals and adjust accordingly for accountability

Neglecting personal development

As a new manager you will likely (as we all do) focus on working for the team and doing things for the team. This is all very natural but one thing that is always forgotten is your personal development. Time focussing on you and your development should be a regular thing in your diary.

Top Tips:

1. Focus on continuous improvement

2. Block out time in your calendar for regular times to learn

3. Get feedback from team and others on areas to develop on

4. Build out your own development plan

Hope fully by following the above tips and guidance you can put in place some great structure to help you progress as a new manager in the role.

Book Recommendation

Dare to lead by Brené Brown one of my favourite books (to which there are many!) on leadership and more importantly how leadership isn’t about titles. Based on great research about vulnerability and EQ.

That’s a wrap for this week. Hopefully you can learn from these common mistakes and look at not having these issues when you lead.

PS If you like free things then you will love my free mini course for new managers which you can get here.

PPS If you are hiring for your team or looking to be a manager in the future the best place to start is interviewer training. Buy the course.