There is no rule book or guide on how to manage. Every company, every culture, every situation and every individual is different. You can study leadership, read books on leadership, examine the multitude of theories and major in management and leadership in college. Then, that first day comes early in your career when your boss says, “Congratulations, we’re promoting you to team leader!” Now what do I do? Where do I start? Up until now, it was all about me and my performance, my skill, my raise, my bonus, my vacation! Do I need to set rules? Who needs to do what work? Will my staff members, who were once my co-workers support this decision? How do I treat my friend as a subordinate?
With responsibility comes accountability. You are now responsible for your team and you are accountable for their performance, their mistakes and their development in your new role in your organization. Your previous job now becomes their job. Your job to ensure they do their job. You have a duty to communicate clearly, set expectations, measure performance and reward and recognize achievement. You must also endeavor to motivate self-development and professional development. You are now a coach, a psychologist, a mentor, a boss, a leader and a backup to each and every one of your employees to whom you manage. You must provide direction and vision while being open to the ideas of others. In the words of the late Stephen Covey, “Seek first to understand, and then be understood.”
In many ways you will be experiencing a long period of transformation as an individual and as a leader. You will make mistakes. You will say the wrong thing to the wrong person at the wrong time. You have to learn to demonstrate humility. You will have to earn the trust of your followers just as you would expect to gain their trust. And, by the way, when you get an employee who is hell bent on causing major problems, things can get litigious. As a hiring team leader or supervisor, you are now subject to various employment laws such as Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, Sexual Harassment Laws and several others where the supervisory relationship requires an expected level of professional behavior and procedure.
As you gain experience in the leadership role, you will learn. Experience can sometimes be described as the number of mistakes you have made, what you have learned and how gracefully you have recovered. The most important thing a new leader can do is to remain true to oneself. Becoming a leader should never change you into a different person. Leadership should not be to blame for compromising your morals, ethics or values. Remember that being a leader is only temporary, yet being a human being lasts a lifetime.
What are your thoughts on leading a team? Do you have an experience to share? If so, please reply.
Marissa Weagly says
You made some excellent points, and one of which I would love to see covered in more detail. What happens when an employee or team member gets promoted above their previous co-workers. To this point it appears that many of the theories are just based on a leader being placed with already established subordinates. But things get a little tricky when promotions are involved.
I had this happen to me once, but I saw it happen many times. In the Marine Corps people are constantly being promoted above their friends. A bunk mate might pin on Sergeant and suddenly be in charge of the guy he used to go drinking with and shared a room with. I witnessed usually two things that could happen. 1) The Marine who was promoted just continued to act as he was before, usually getting himself in to trouble along the way. 2) He took his promotion very seriously and took charge, but in the process lost a friend and usually gained a very unhappy subordinate.
My experience with this was when I was promoted above one of my best friend’s husband. He and I had worked together from day 1 and the one day I found myself in charge of him. It was difficult. But he handled it gracefully. It was fortunate that he was rational and was a hard worker regardless. But it caused more issues with my other subordinates. They just assumed that because we were friends before I was promoted that I favored him. It turns out he was just really good at his job. Luckily he was promoted fairly quickly after me and then the challenge disappeared.
Seeing research based on promotions would be interesting, although I am sure it would be hard to study.