Transitioning to a People manager

  • Cape Town, Western Cape, South Africa

Author:  Tani Amarasinghe Moodley

Short Description

Managing people for the first time can be an incredibly daunting experience and Transitioning to a People manager. If you have been promoted from within, the very people that were your peers before, your coffee buddy, your friend whom you let off some steam and complained about things with etc, is now the person that […]

Managing people for the first time can be an incredibly daunting experience and Transitioning to a People manager.

If you have been promoted from within, the very people that were your peers before, your coffee buddy, your friend whom you let off some steam and complained about things with etc, is now the person that you have to manage.

That person whom you shared a couple beers with yesterday, might be the person you have to discipline, or performance manage tomorrow.

Things are no longer the same.

You may think that you can have the same relationship that you always had with that person…but you cannot.

It must change and evolve otherwise that person whom you thought you could count on working with you, might just end up working against you.

Even if you are an external hire, people know what your work history has been to date (thank you Linked In!) and they will challenge you in a multitude of ways.

If it is not the challenge of internal relationships, building and establishing new boundaries, and developing your own authentic leadership style, you need to deal with the reality that you are no longer an individual contributor.

Your success is no longer determined by your own output alone.

Your success is dependent on your team’s success, and you have to motivate that team to perform and deliver and …not always under optimal circumstances.

Transitioning to a People manager

You have to transition from being responsible only for yourself, your actions, behaviour, attitude, and performance, to being responsible for other people and being held accountable for their performance. It requires a mindset shift.

The problem is that most organisations do not provide the necessary support to new managers to successfully make this transition.

HCM has a number of offerings and services designed to aid new managers overcome some of these challenges.

These include inter alia management training, facilitated workshops for the individual or team, individual coaching sessions aimed at all levels of management, tools and techniques to help build resilience and manage complexity.

This Transitioning to a People manager course covers holistically what every new manager needs to know about successfully leading a team. It is comprised of approximately 40 slides and over an hour’s worth of video content developed by myself Tani Amarasinghe Moodley (CEO: HCM).

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

Transitioning to a People manager article written by: Tani Moodley

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