First of all, congratulations! You just got promoted! You’ve worked hard. You’ve shown your bosses that you can take on bigger responsibilities, that you can be trusted to do more.
Now you’re boss. What do you do next?
1. Celebrate! Gather your network of support—your colleagues, your best friends and family—and make sure you make the most of your promotion. You might want to give yourself a gift as well to commemorate your achievement—a piece of jewelry, a beautiful chair for your home, an expensive meal in a restaurant you’ve always wanted to try. You’ve done it!
2. Meet with each member of your team one by one. Find out more about them—what they like about their job, what frustrates them, why they joined the company, what their strengths and weaknesses are. Discover what they expect from you and the company. Ask what kind of support they need.
3. Check with your boss regarding her expectations of you. What should you be doing differently now that you’re the boss? What does she want you and your team to achieve in the next six months? What advice can she give to make sure you succeed as the new leader of this team? What is her management style—does she expect detailed daily updates, weekly check-ins, monthly reports or all of the above? Being a boss doesn’t only mean managing your team. You also have to be good at managing upwards—understanding your boss and how you can support her.
4. Find a mentor. This can be your boss, but better yet, if you’re part of a large corporation or conglomerate, look for someone whose leadership skills you admire. You can even ask an old college professor. Provide him some guidelines on what you need mentorship on. This can be on anything from leadership, understanding financial statements, team dynamics, motivation and so on. Make time for monthly meetings so you can learn from each other. Usually, your mentor won’t have a deep understanding about the specific challenges of your business. That’s okay. Having someone neutral to bounce ideas off or to just ask for advice when things get tough is helpful.
5. Be okay with being a newbie, with feeling like a fraud. This is a new role and it comes with not knowing everything, with learning as you go. Be okay with not doing things right at first. Remember your first days at the job? Try to have that sense of curiosity again about this new challenge and be gentle with yourself as you navigate your first few months.
6. If there are new teams or people you’ll be working with, set meetings with them. Check in on what they expect from you or your team. Ask how you and your team can better serve them, your customers and the company’s objectives. Find out their style of working. Try to understand the roles of the different departments as a puzzle with each team fitting in to create the whole.
7. Take a Strengths Finder 2.0 test. Find out what your strengths are. Work from a position of strength rather than focusing on your weaknesses. Find the right combination in your team who can complement you in areas where you need help.
8. Read management books but don’t overwhelm yourself. Read these books with the attitude of wanting to learn rather than looking at the advice inside as criticism about how little you know. Here are some of my favorites: It’s Not How Good You Are, It’s How Good You Want to Be, Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity, Creativity Inc., Smarter, Faster, Better, The Power of Habit, Delivering Happiness.
9. Study—your product, your processes, your strategies, your plans, your numbers—and ask questions.
10. Find opportunities for training. Don’t wait for your boss to train you—and don’t blame anyone else for not providing you with any. If there’s something you don’t know, you can look for external training programs, ask HR for programs they have planned or learn online (there are a million e-courses on any topic). If all else fails, there’s always Google. While the best learning happens on the job, the feeling of confidence that comes from knowing for sure cannot be discounted.
11. Be humble. Ask for help. Be of service—to your team, to your customers, to your company. Don’t let this promotion go to your head.
Photo by Hope House Press, Unsplash.com.
