Congratulate yourself for being one great manager.
You have come a long way in your career journey.
Why? Because being a manager is no easy task.
In fact, you have to keep up with your employer’s growing expectations all the time. Expectedly, having managerial skills prompt you to perform your duties coherently and with plenty of initiative.
You are now also a more people-driven person. You understand what leadership wants from you.
Which reminds me of Gary Vaynerchuk’s point of view: On a leadership level, it’s not just the people who work for you, instead you work for them and are invested in their personal growth and development.
So here are my top 4 focus areas – which, when you become a manager, you’re expected to perform.
  1. Think about what your contributions are towards the firm value. Always keep an eye for your financial contributions towards your firm’s value. What’s the business valuation impact you want to make? Think about your leadership’s business priorities – long-term and short-term – and align your resources (financial, physical, people) accordingly. This also means focusing on build a brand and business concurrently to offset any business and financial risks.
  2. Teamwork wins when you work for a common purpose. Working in silos doesn’t mesh well in a managerial capacity. Once you and your team aligns with a common purpose of your business, you can accelerate value creation via cohesion. It’s great to have different perspectives, but ultimately it should have a qualified consensus for your team and business. The more you work with healthy disagreements, you should never lose focus on what you are arriving at. A feeling of inclusion – even with implied understanding between you and team – goes a long way in creating successful business outcomes. Denise Pirrotti Hummel, CEO at Lead Inclusively, raised the importance of being understood well in her piece, here.
  3. Empathize. Help. Fail forward. It’s OK to fail. But fail forward (borrowed this expression from my Ziva meditation guide – and it’s so apt to mention about it here). You will progressively learn what areas bring out your highest potential and what areas of improvement can you focus on, but with some people support and feedback. Sometimes failing fast will help you course-correct in a shorter time-frame rather than taking comfort in an occasional success hyperbole. You happen to realise the importance of small wins when you fail often. This keeps you driven even in flailing times. Result? You develop more empathy and care for yourself and your team.
  4. Have ownership. You’re the ultimate weight lifter for your team. Even in lightweight situations, you should take full accountability and ownership for your team’s success and failures. This helps your team to imbibe these qualities and become mini-managers of their own work (not just their jobs). The best part? Managerial readiness starts to seed in your team’s work.
While being a manager may sound like ‘managing people,’ but it also means a gateway to realise the leader in you.
Being a manager is a role for some people, position for some people, job for some people, career for some people.
But in its deepest meaning, it is a mission: to create an organisation out of scrappiness, to unleash your highest potential that evokes your people to level up to their abilities, and to bring a meaningful change in the way people think and act.
So whether you think about the tactical stuff or strategic imperative of your business, when you’re a manager, you will holistically work for the best interest, growth and fulfilment of your organisation.
Be the best manager you can ever be!