Are Your New Managers Ready to Lead?

Are Your New Managers Ready to Lead?
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New Managers Readiness
Are your new managers ready to lead?  There is much you can, and should, do to prepare new managers to lead others. Hopefully, your managers have spent time laying the groundwork for their upcoming leadership responsibilities. Taking on a management position is a wonderful opportunity to grow and to have a real impact on your company’s success.

Are Your New Managers Ready to Lead?
Here are tips from our 20+ years of helping new managers and supervisors get ready to lead others.

Get Ready to be a New Manager
There are many ways to practice being a manager and cultivate leadership behaviors before you actually have the title.  To make your new managers ready:

  1. Find a Role Model
    Identify someone in your life you admire and who is successful at leading and managing others. Observe how they manage their time and interact with their team.

    As you sort out what works best at your company, see if you, too, can practice new manager training skills around effective communication, setting goals, gaining agreement, giving feedback, and making decisions.

  2. Take on More Responsibility and Risk
    Seek leadership roles. Show initiative by volunteering to lead special projects. This will give you the opportunity to practice getting things done through others.

    You may stumble as you stretch, but consider small failures as a way to learn how to do things better next time. Great leaders learn from their mistakes.

  3. Become a Management Scholar
    Educate yourself on management best practices. Read all you can about what managers need to know to be successful. And grab any opportunity for a management development program that can teach you the key skills you will need.
  4. Empathy for Others
    Great managers understand what makes their team members tick — what motivates them, what they dream of doing, and how they like to work.

    Fine tune your people sense and learn about different communication and working styles. When you can interact effectively with a variety of personalities, you are well on your way to earning a leadership position.

  5. Address Problems Head-on
    Issues will inevitably arise. Practice tackling the prickly stuff in a timely way. If you delay difficult conversations or ignore conflicts, they will only grow.

    Effective managers don’t hide from problems; they spend their energy on solving them.

  6. Hold Yourself Accountable
    Just as you will need to establish accountability for your team, you must hold yourself responsible for your own behavior. Own your missteps and acknowledge them. No one expects you to be perfect. A little humility can go a long way toward earning the respect of others.

The Bottom Line
Now it’s time to welcome your opportunity and run with it. You will continue to learn through experience. Just make sure you maintain positive, open relationships with your team, work through issues together, and set a premium on continuous improvement.

To learn more about making your new managers ready to lead at the next level, download 3 Must-Have Ingredients of High Performing Teams for New Managers

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