The transition from contributor to manager is awkward, clumsy, and filled with potential pitfalls. My two new First-Time Manager mentoring programs are designed to help ease the transition and increase the odds of success.
Respect. It’s a complex concept filled, filled with nuance and subtlety and gesture, all buried in a simple word. Most of us are wired to appreciate respect and to reciprocate in kind. And vice-versa. One of the most powerful and effective ways to show respect is to extend our trust. Of course, for all of us, particularly new leaders, that feels risky and almost counter-intuitive. It's not.
New leaders…either those that are first-time leaders or those that find themselves responsible for leading a new team, deal with extremely high degrees of ambiguity at start-up. They lack context for the people, the team culture, the issues, group and individual dynamics and so many important variables in the environment, that they find themselves acting on instinct or avoiding acting because of this knowledge gap. One of the critical challenges for the new leader is quickly closing this context gap.
The Top Ten Challenges of the New Leader, an update on my experience with Twitter (and why all marketers should join), and the Volunteer Management conundrum in our communities that we are capable of solving. Oh, and three developmental suggestions for your professional "To Do" list.
