Just got promoted and don’t know where to start?

Until yesterday you were discussing with your colleagues about the management of the company, now you are one of the management. You used to debate about the bad news or decisions of the company, now you are to one who has to give the bad news.

Being promoted as the manager of your own team is for sure not an easy thing and people who are in such situation face very often hard times.

The first and most important step is to understand the new role and responsibilities. Moving to a management position is nothing else but an extension of your interests as employee to the interests of the company. The scope of the new role in the organization is primarily to make sure that the team members are working towards and achieving the goals of the company. 

Most of the new promoted managers have difficulties in adapting into the new role and they tend to keep the “employee” perspective. They continue doing what they were doing before, concentrate on their individual duties and enjoy the new title. 

The problems appear when they need to take measures that are not seen as positive by their team members, to make and communicate decisions and to take responsibility for the results of their team.

The sooner the new promoted managers understand their role, the more effective they will become as managers and therefore help the team be productive. 

Effects of INCONSISTENT management

Consistency in the workplace helps employees feel secure about their work responsibilities and workplace demands. Consistent management builds trust, respect and credibility and will encourage a rational and reliable behavior. 

Inconsistent managers are a nightmare. 

It is always very hard to work with such people because you never know where they stand and they cannot be trusted. They appear at times to be physically present when their brain has left the building. Sometimes they show empathy sometimes they act as small dictators.

Other than a tremendous annoyance, does leader's inconsistency really cause harm?

YES!

Inconsistent management can damage the morale, self-esteem and productivity of the employees and even impact the overall success of an organization. The potential impact on performance is considerable.   

Let’s take for example inconsistency in commitments.

One of the most demotivating and exhausting aspects within teams at workplace is the wasted time, attention and effort on initiatives or projects that are great and important for a few weeks or a few months and then ignored as leaders move onto the next “hot” idea. If you have committed to a course of action, be consistent and follow-up, seeing it to its end.

Managers who are not consistent in their decision making and behavior will create fear and uncertainty throughout the team.

A manager has always the attention of his team members and he needs to show the same positive and consistent face them.  Of course, we are all humans and not all mornings are nice and shiny. However, self-control is absolutely necessary in order to avoid outbursts of anger, mixed messages, or other destructive and morale-sapping leadership behavior.

How do employees naturally react to inconsistent management?

They don’t trust their manager anymore. They will doubt any advice, guidance or promises and they will act accordingly.

They will start skipping hierarchical levels and go to those managers that are consistent and reliable.

They will approve, but not agree. Most employees are afraid of conflict especially with their managers and therefore, they will never tell their manager directly that they don’t understand a decision or that their manager is acting out of character on a certain occasion. They will simply nod and smile and go back to their office thinking “Here we go again. Another nonsense and useless decision.”

They will have a very slow reaction to the guidelines and requests of the manager. All of their time and energy will be spent talking about or complaining about their manager and about his irregular moods or missteps and work won’t get done.

Consistency makes very often the difference between failure and success. Even the best business plans will fail without a dedication to consistency.  

“You can do it!” - why encouragements can fail

Managers have more than other people the power and tools to influence people’s lives. Employees look up to their managers for examples and for feedback. They try to learn and find those qualities who could also make them successful.

Self confidence is a quality that can be trained and that needs to be feed with constant reassurement so that it will stay at a high level. Even the people who have generally a high level of self confidence go through moments of uncertainty when they need someone to tell them “You can do it!”

It happens quite a lot to hear encouragements from our managers but somehow only a few of these incentives have an impact on us. Why? Maybe because we don’t appreciate those persons, because we think they are just saying it to make us feel good or because they don’t know us good enough to be able to estimate if we can do what we want or not.

I was asked many times who is the person who influenced my professional life and whom I appreciate as a professional. My thoughts go always to one of my first managers because he encouraged me to pursue my dream. He said I have all it takes to achieve what I want and he is convinced I can do it. For me it meant so much, specially because I was at the beginning of my career and I was not sure if I had chosen the right area to work in. His words had such an impact on me and motivated me to work very hard for what I wanted professionally.

Thinking back, I realize that this specific encouragement had such a positive impact on me because I had a great respect for that person, I was impressed by his career and we worked together for enough time so that he could see my performance and potential. And there was something else. There was something in the way he talk to me. I had the feeling he is honest.

The risk of encouraging someone is to be perceived as fake and therefore cause more damage than good.

We shouldn't say “You can do it!” to someone if:

• we don’t know the other person good enough to tell what are his\her skills and abilities
• we think the person can’t do what she\he wants but we say it anyway because we find nothing better to say and we think it can’t hurt
• we don’t have enough information about what the other person wants to do
• we don’t have any examples and arguments to support our encouragement.

For some people it is natural to make positive and effective encouragements, however most of us need to learn this ability and to refine it in time. I find this to be an essential ability for every manager because this will help to build up and maintain an increased employee motivation. Employee who have a high level of self confidence can also have a great performance and do whatever it takes to reach the goals of the company.  

Bad employees vs. bad managers

Despite all leadership and management theories, books and materials, in real life there are still many managers who have learned how to lead from one of their bosses, added a bit of their personal touch and just went with the flow. 

How many people, before coordinating a team, read something about it or go to training? How many managers question their leading style and try to improve it?

 In my opinion, all of them should do that. There should be a mandatory course for all of those who want or already coordinate people. Before influencing someone’s career, professional performances and life they should know what the role means, what are the responsibilities that come along with it.

One of them is the responsibility for the performance of the team and of each member of the team. When an employee is not performing, the first who is evaluated should be his manager. Has the manager properly trained that employee? Did the manager offered right induction, clear assignments, feedback and advice on improving his performance or any guidance at all? Has the manager done his job in providing for the employee the right environment to perform?

Only after all these questions have been answered, should be questioned the capability of the employee to perform on his position and in that specific organization.

Often, employees are evaluated and considered weak performers or even fired because of the incompetency of their managers. For the higher management it's most of the times more comfortable to believe what the team managers say rather than questioning how things were done. After all it’s harder to replace a manager than an operational employee.

This is one of the reasons why multinational companies are preferred by employees. There you have a training system put in place, an induction procedure and a performance appraisals process which at least offers the minimum premises for the employees to perform on their positions.