3 Tips for First Time People Managers to connect better with their teams
“Alone we can do so little, together we can do so much.”
— Helen Keller
In 2020 got promoted from an individual contributor to a People Manager. Being a first-time People Manager is a terrific and scary experience at the same time. Responsibility for the team’s growth, workload, mental health, and motivation level is a big one. Like any novice, I am still learning what it means to be a good manager. Each interaction with my manager and direct reports is learning.
Last Monday I was particularly happy thinking that I had a productive day. I thought of winding up early and started preparing dinner. In between, I saw messages from one of the stakeholders about the reassignment of some projects. Lately, we were swamped with projects and decided to take help from the bigger team of Project Managers. I talked to my team and shifted some of their projects to a Project Manager (PM) from another team to free up the team’s bandwidth.
One of the stakeholders was concern about the reassignments as past experience of working with the Project Manager (PM) was not great. Over a call, my manager informed me that we will not reassign these projects to the original Project Mangers. He said we need to strengthen up our weak team members. We should not pull these back as this will dampen PM’s morale and PM will never get a chance to learn. What we can do and should do, is to support and help our team members. It is the responsibility of a manager to enable the team, make them independent, and set them up for success. Learnings from that five minute outweighed my entire day learnings.
I learned three things from that call.
First, learning is to stand by my team no matter what.
If I have to build a fungible team that can work across projects, Brands, stakeholders, geography then, I need to give opportunities to all the team members and more importantly support them. Especially, when they are learning.
Second, learning is to practice Radical Candor.
Give positive and constructive feedback to your team, while caring for them personally at the same time. Be genuinely interested and invested in your team’s growth.
Third, learning is to have open channels of communication with your stakeholders and team.
Ask for feedback regularly. The easiest way to get feedback is, by asking for feedback. This buys time for a manager to take corrective actions when they are needed. Feedback about Aadil was late and non-specific as specifics got lost over a period of time. As a manager, you need actionable feedback.
