Entry Level Managers

Managing is a needed skill for those that want to advance in their organization.

Many companies have mentoring initiatives but these seem to deal with big picture career goals and ways to achieve them rather than with the actual techniques of managing. Career growth needs a natural first step and I see that as adding responsibility and creating leverage and that can only be accomplished by transferring work to lower lever people and then stepping up to take on more of the immediate boss’ roles. Here are some starting steps in this process.

1. The manager-to-be needs to want to do it
2. They have to recognize that they will need to learn about managing; and this can be done through attending conferences where leaders will speak and courses are given, reading books, newsletters and articles on managing, listening to recorded speeches particularly while driving or on the treadmill
3. A mentor should be sought out – one with the ability to teach, patience to take the time to see that the follow-through is done right and awareness that mistakes will be made as part of the learning process
4. Mentoring needs to be separated from the actual assignments that will be worked on and divorced from the deadline pressures of getting a project completed
5. Managing needs to be understood that the goal is to get people to do more for you and this also includes motivating and exciting your charges as well as teaching them or showing them how to do something
6. Managers need to take great care explaining what needs to be done or how they want it done and make sure the person they are supervising clearly understands what they must do
7. Inexperienced managers tend to blame the ability of the staff they manage rather than their method of explaining the project. I tend to blame the poor management technique or the ability of the managers
8. Deadlines must be reasonably and clearly communicated and the importance of meeting them must be understood
9. Work assigned needs to be reviewed or supervised at frequent intervals, and at least daily at the beginning of a project
10. Benchmarks should be established to monitor the project and see that it is on schedule. At the beginning of a project, the shorter the work interval and the greater the review frequency, the better. Once the project is organized and running, the frequency intervals can be expanded
11. Work should be organized so it is easy to review and have the next step assigned
12. The person doing the work should be complimented at each review step
13. The manager should make sure all the resources to complete the project are available
14. The new manager should review every instance where something has gone wrong and determine what could have been done so that it would not have occurred. This is a valuable self-assessment I have been very successful with

Growth comes through expanding your reach, responsibility, and spheres of influence and success will depend on how well you can get others to do your work. The above is a start for entry-level managers.

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