Recently, Katherine Spinney Coaching (KSC) celebrated its 7th anniversary. During these past seven years, I have learned a lot about management, leadership and the many, many things that are required to create, sustain, and grow a business. It is a natural time to reflect, celebrate and remember where it all began.
My first job as a manager came when I was in college, inexplicably running a popular bar I was not yet old enough to drink at. My skills and knowledge about how to manage were limited and I did the best I could, which admittedly, wasn’t all that great. When I got my first management position after college, I was no more prepared and struggled with how to do it effectively.
Throughout my struggles, it was always clear to me how important it was to lead well. I just didn’t know how.
Since then, I have dedicated my time and energy to figuring it out and helping others along the way. There are some concepts and skills that I finally feel confident about and others that continue to be a challenge. The work, as they say, is never truly done.
There are countless lessons I have learned since my first management job decades ago. In the spirit of KSC’s seven year anniversary, I am sharing seven of the most significant ones below. I hope they provide you with insight, comfort, and motivation to keep doing the work and to keep doing it well.
1) Managing isn’t for everyone.
People become managers in all kinds of ways for all kinds of reasons. In many cases, it remains the only path to promotion, so people accept the role whether they have interest in it or not. This causes much of the challenges we experience today as only ~ 1/3 of people actually want to manage other people.
There is a lot that is expected of managers and frequently the expectations and the workload are unrealistic if not outright impossible. Even those who love it experience challenges that are taxing and frequent. Those who do not like it often find it unbearable.
If you are in a managerial position and do not want to be there, it is important for everyone’s sake that you figure out how to make it work. Can you do an effective job despite not wanting the role? Are there options for you to find a role that better suits you?
Managing is hard enough even when you love it. It can be downright miserable if you don’t. How can you put yourself in the best position to be successful and fulfilled? How can you ensure that those you manage receive the best leadership possible?
2) Support is critical.
Because of the difficult nature of management, it is imperative that you have support to help you through it. Some combination of supervision, mentoring, coaching, and peer support will help you gain wisdom, reassurance, advice, and the ever-important listening ear. Much of what you do cannot and should not be shared with your staff. Having an appropriate outlet to share what needs sharing will be instrumental in working through your challenges. But you do not need to wait until something goes wrong. Having support is just as important during the celebratory times as well.
3) Learning to confront difficult situations is one of the most important and challenging skills.
Confrontation is difficult for most of us and absolutely essential for all of us. There are countless situations that arise in management that will require you to confront the situation and the people involved in it. This will range from day-to-day items like performance management and can escalate to more serious issues that involve difficult, ethical, and / or legal consequences.
Despite the common declaration that “I’m just not confrontational,” learning to confront others is a skill, not a personality trait, and to be a successful manager, you have no choice but to develop that skill. It will likely be one of the more difficult skills for you to develop and undoubtedly one of the most important. Invest in the necessary support you need to do it well.
4) Doing what is right means doing what is hard.
Earlier in my management career, I encountered a situation where it was obvious that I needed to move staff around, a decision that was as clear as it was unpopular. To prepare the staff for the transition we talked and talked and talked and talked. It was important that I heard their concerns and validate their feelings. It was also important that I let them know the decision was a done deal.
They shared their feelings, and we did what we could to work through them. I am not sure if staff ever fully got over those feelings, but I remain convinced that the decision was the right one (and the numbers validated it as well). If I focused too much on making everyone happy, I would not have been doing my job which was to focus on the children and families we were serving.
There are countless moments in management when doing the right thing will entail doing the hard and often unpopular thing. This does not mean that every unpopular decision you make will be right. You need to listen to others’ objections as it is important for your staff to be heard. Additionally, these objections will help sharpen the decision to make it a better one, or, in some cases, provide clarity that it is not the right one.
It is a tricky balance because your relationships with your team are paramount, and leading them successfully will not be possible if you are always in disagreement. This is why hiring people how have the same end goal in mind is essential. Disagreements over process are inevitable but if you are not on the same page about the mission, it will be a disaster.
5) Your effectiveness is directly correlated to your willingness to adapt.
We all have our defaults regarding our communication styles, confrontation styles, personalities, and temperaments. It is important to be self-aware about these and seek input from those who can see things we cannot. But regardless of what our default styles are, our effectiveness as managers is directly correlated to our ability to adapt and adjust as the situation warrants.
There is a time and a place to take nearly every approach there is to take in communication, confrontation, problem-solving, and conflict resolution. Sticking to one way because it is your preferred way will prohibit you from leading effectively. Situational leadership is the path to success, and it will require you to adjust accordingly, in many cases, far outside of your comfort zone. You need to be willing to venture there to do the work successfully.
6) Caring is essential.
After my disastrous introduction to management, I worked really hard to learn how to do it better. When I finally felt confident in my skills, I could not wait for a fresh start. I took all my hard-earned lessons and started to manage every chance I got. And it did not work.
My staff was resistant, and I kept saying to myself (and regrettably once out loud to one of my staff), “I know what I’m doing. Why won’t anyone to listen to me?”
I had all the skills and strategies down pat, but I neglected to focus on one of the most foundational principles of management- it all begins and ends with relationships.
Management is not some tactical chess game of pure logic and skill. It is necessarily built on relationships and emotional intelligence. The whole adage of people not caring what you know until they know that you care will not be true for everyone, but it will be paramount to a significant number of people you lead. Take the time to learn about your staff as people and lead with empathy to create an environment that allows you and them to be successful.
7) Caring isn’t enough.
Although caring is essential to managing well, it is not enough. You need to care, and you need to manage effectively. You need to invest in support and growth throughout your time as a manager to develop and strengthen your skills. Your competence matters and your care does not excuse your lack thereof. On the contrary, your care for your team must include your care in leading them well. To do so, you need to commit to doing the work even when it is hard, and in many cases, especially so.
Being a manager can and should be fulfilling and meaningful. That does not mean it is without its challenges. If you really want to manage effectively, you need to learn to be comfortable with those challenges and accept that you alone cannot prevent or solve them all.
So much of this work is in recognizing that it needs to be done well and that it can never be done perfectly. There will always be mistakes. There will always be someone who disagrees. Your job is not to pretend or aim for otherwise. Instead, your responsibility is to commit to and invest in doing the job well. Not perfectly, but well.
You will almost certainly get grief at times despite your best efforts. Do not let this discourage you. You have an amazing opportunity to make a positive difference and to do good work. Make sure you do all you can to do it well.
