Episode 236 Transcript:

0:00:00 Ramona Shaw: Managing A group of ICs individual contributors is different than managing other managers. For those of you who are planning to transition into that higher level of leadership, or those of you are already managing managers and you wonder if you are ticking all the boxes to do that, well then this episode is for you. Here are the two questions this podcast answers. 1. How do you successfully transition into your first official leadership role?

0:00:26 Ramona Shaw: And 2 how do you keep climbing that leadership ladder and continuously get promoted? Although the competition and the expectations get bigger, this show The Manager Track podcast will provide the answers. I’m your host Ramona Shaw. I’m on a mission to create workplaces where work is seen as a source of contribution, connection and personal fulfillment. And this transition starts with developing a new generation of leaders who know how to lead. So everyone wins and grows.

0:00:54 Ramona Shaw: In the show, you’ll learn how to think, communicate and act as confident and competent leader. You know you can be welcome to this episode of The Manager Track podcast. In our one on one coaching practice, our executive Coaching services, we support many leaders who are operating at the Director VP level or the C suite. And of course what most of them have in common is that they are managing other managers or sometimes, you know, there are a few layers into management. So they’re managing managers of managers.

0:01:25 Ramona Shaw: And whenever you are sort of leveling up to a higher level of leadership, there are a few things that need to change. And today I specifically want to talk about what to pay attention to and sort of the common pitfalls that we see when people manage other managers versus managing a group of ICs. So I’m going to share seven specific areas or suggestions on how to manage managers. Well, I’m going to go through each of them and then as usual I’ll recap them at the end so that you can keep up and take notes or really identify what are some of the action items that you’re taking away from this episode. I want to make this brief concise and very practical for you.

0:02:09 Ramona Shaw: One thing that I say upfront in terms of the mindset shift that needs to happen moving into that management layer where you manage other managers at that level, if not even earlier, it’s becoming more and more important for you to see your primary team as your peers, not your group of direct reports. The reason being is that at the level of where you manage other managers, the other managers of managers, I.e. your peers are now stakeholders of yours and a lot of the work and the cross functional work that you’re now overseeing and that’s high stake or High visibility is now dependent on you having really strong relationships with your peers and setting the tone, setting the strategy and setting the direction.

0:03:01 Ramona Shaw: And that happens not by you talking to your director pours or skip levels, but the majority of that work happens among that leadership group that you’re now in. And so while you’re sort of on two teams simultaneously, you’re on the team where it’s your peers and your manager. That’s one team. And then you of course have your team that you’re leading. Either you’re looking at it as sort of the whole group, the whole department that’s under your supervision, or you’re looking at it as you and your director ports either way. So if there’s two groups, there are two teams that you’re part of.

0:03:37 Ramona Shaw: So mentally, what I suggest is that you start to ask yourself, how would I operate differently or how would I see my role differently? If my primary team is now me and my peers and my boss, my secondary team is me and my director ports that again, to go back to the mindset shifts, this is something really important to consider and we start looking at, huh, how am I maybe a little bit too much involved in the weeds with my team and I’m not focused enough on building those cross departmental relationships that are becoming increasingly important as you elevate.

0:04:12 Ramona Shaw: Many people miss that inflection point and they stay too focused with the team. And as a result of that, they’re not well connected, they’re not driving strategy strategy enough, they’re not involved in that on that strategic level sufficiently, and it’s going to make them less effective, if not even cost their job. So with that in mind and you understanding the importance of focusing on your peer relationships and upward relationships more so than ever before, let’s now talk about how to actually manage your managers and dive into these seven suggestions.

0:04:45 Ramona Shaw: The first one is around setting clear expectations and goals. In all our leadership development programs. This is one of those things that we start with at the beginning. It’s really important for you to establish the expectations that you have for your managers. It’s important to do that with your ICs too. But now there’s a bigger ripple effect. If your managers don’t know what they’re doing and what their priorities should be, then neither will your employee, then neither will their employees.

0:05:20 Ramona Shaw: And so you missing out and setting expectations just has a way bigger negative effect and consequence to it than you missing or being unclear and vague in your expectations with one single individual. I 1 I see that you’re working with so it becomes more important to establish that alignment and clarity. I suggest to start off by ensuring that every manager clearly understands what’s the purpose of their role and what’s the purpose of their team.

0:05:50 Ramona Shaw: Purpose of the role, why were they hired and purpose of the team. Two things. Then in addition to that, get clear on what their responsibilities are. Especially if those managers that you manage are new managers, they may not understand what you’re actually expecting and how to prioritize those expectations or responsibilities that they have. Many new managers moving into their first leadership role underestimate how much time it will take and how important it is to their boss that they’re managing the performance, the output, the deliverables, their team and how little of what’s expected has to actually do with the tactical work.

0:06:36 Ramona Shaw: So make sure that’s very clear. Purpose of the role of the team, responsibilities and priorities and typically you could have 30 day priorities or 90 day priorities. This is also not a one time effort. This should be something that you do on a regular basis. Another set of expectations or clarity that I suggest that all falls within that first topic here is to help them understand how to best work with you.

0:07:04 Ramona Shaw: What are things? How do you like to receive information? What kind of decisions should they be making versus when do you need to be involved? How should they present information to or problems to you? How to set up meetings or when you’re available and not available, the list goes on. But what do they need to know about working with you? And then the third point around clarity on expectations is what do you expect of them as leaders?

0:07:30 Ramona Shaw: So often in especially in startups or fast growing small mid sized businesses, there are a lot of people who are getting hired in from other companies and as the company grows suddenly the discrepancy in leadership styles becomes bigger and bigger. If you are managing other managers, come together as a team and identify what are the 3, 5, 7, you name it. Specific things that you expect all managers to do.

0:08:02 Ramona Shaw: As obvious as this may seem to you listening to this podcast, you might say that every manager needs to have weekly or bi weekly one on ones. You might talk about the expectation to solicit feedback or to provide feedback to employees, or to establish clear career development plans for every single employee. You might talk about the importance of having in person gatherings or off sites. You might talk about having a coaching approach fostering critical thinking. You might talk about to the degree to which you allow flexibility in people’s work hours, whatever that may be. Whatever you want to set as here is how we lead this is what matters to us and we want to create some alignment so the team feels that sense of unity in the leadership team that on one hand increases trust, that sense of reliability and clarity on what’s expected for everyone else.

0:09:01 Ramona Shaw: So for you as the leader or the manager of other managers, it is your job to bring the group together and to identify what are those core expectations that we have specifically for managers in our department or in our group. So that all falls within that first suggestions of providing clarity and expectations. Now the second one is to provide resources and support. Now you’re managing other managers. So what you have in common that you didn’t have in common when you were managing just ICs is all of you as a group are responsible for people. And so there are people issues or people challenges, management challenges that you share.

0:09:47 Ramona Shaw: Many of the managers that you manage or the chances are high that they’re first time managers or they have less experience in managing than you. For you to offer support, to share your lessons learned, to act as a coach who’s like asking the important questions, the thought provoking questions about their leadership approach or their leadership challenges. For you to offer guidance where appropriate, as well as be vulnerable about your own growth areas, your own sort of hardships that you’ve had because they are going to learn from you. You’re role modeling how to lead and you’re also role modeling that it’s okay to ask questions, it’s okay to share challenges, it’s okay to solicit feedback which hopefully will also encourage them and demonstrate to them that it’s okay for them to go and solicit feedback and to share with their team that they’re not perfect, that they also have their growth areas.

0:10:51 Ramona Shaw: So that was number two, provide resources, training and so forth of course, but also offer that sense of support, especially on all things management or people related challenges. Then number three is to have regular check ins. We’ve already talked about the one on one. So you might say with all my managers I’m going to do bi weekly or weekly one on ones. Another thing that that many of our clients really love doing is having office hours. And you can set office hours only for your managers so they can bring sort of ad hoc and urgent topics.

0:11:26 Ramona Shaw: And they know that every day between 1 and 2 o’clock for example, you have time blocked where you just hang out on a zoom call and you see if someone wants to come in and ask questions. That would be an office hour. But also have your regular one on ones and try to be as consistent with them as possible. If your managers don’t know if you’re going to reschedule or cancel them, it diminishes the effectiveness of the meeting because then they’ll have to reach out to you when and as things happen, versus trusting that they can create a list and then bring that list to the meeting if they never quite know if that meeting is going to take place or not.

0:12:01 Ramona Shaw: On the note of check ins, it’s also important to do skip level check ins. Skip level check ins means that you talk to your manager’s direct reports. Don’t do that too often. While some people do this on a monthly basis, other people do this on an annual basis. Find the right cadence for you on how often you want to have 30 minute calls, 20 minute calls, or even shorter to have 15 more 15 to 30 minute calls with a selection of skip levels. So you can rotate, but you can also do all skip levels every so often to ask how they’re doing, get a bit of a pulse. Check on how their relationship is with their manager, any suggestions or ideas for the department, and anything else that they want to share with you or questions that they might have for you.

0:12:50 Ramona Shaw: That also gives gives you a bit of a pulse on how the org is doing and the health of the org now that you are a level removed from sort of the maturity of employees on the team. So that was number three. Now let’s move on to number four. Number four is around the topic of accountability. One of the challenges that you might have or the worries that you might have is that your managers tolerate performance issues their teams too long and don’t intervene fast enough to either coach, you know, provide feedback or terminate or redirect an employee into a new role.

0:13:28 Ramona Shaw: So make it a habit or build it as part of your, what we call the leadership system, part of your regular routines and behaviors to check in with your managers on the health of the team, check in on performance issues and what kind of action plans that they set in place with their ICs. Developing a team at high levels of self accountability, that is every single employee feels that sense of accountability and knows what is expected of them and does the best to exceed or meet those expectations.

0:14:00 Ramona Shaw: That is something that needs to come from the top for most leaders. It’s also one of the most challenging things to sort of institutionalize or roll out and cultivate as they are leveling up. Many managers, New year managers, struggle with this. And so for managers who manage managers, this is one of those where you kind of, kind of be on it, make it a regular topic. As I said, track the KPIs and ensure the feedback conversations happen and the action plans are set up and owned by the employee who might have a performance issue. Also on that note, and sort of the flip side of the coin is to offer recognition and make sure that not only you promote and recognize the employees on that in a bigger team, but also your managers have the practice of recognizing and appreciating praising employees.

0:14:53 Ramona Shaw: It changes the culture and it’s one of the most important development tools that you have in your toolkit to provide that kind of positive reinforcement and feedback to the team. It’s also very meaningful if an employee receives a positive recognition not just from their direct manager, but from the manager of the manager. So if they do something well and the manager will give you an update about what they’ve done and CCD employee, sort of that triangle, that’s a very powerful tactic to recognize someone on the team and to show them, hey, I’m an advocate of yours, I’m creating visibility with my boss for what you’ve done or you shouting them out on a slack channel, teams channel or in a team meeting.

0:15:39 Ramona Shaw: And doing that is also setting the tone that recognition is valued on the team and that you have a pulse on things and you see who are the high performers and those who do really good work. That is on the topic of accountability.

0:15:55 Ramona Shaw: Transitioning from being an individual contributor, an IC into your first leadership role is one of the biggest transitions that you’ll.

0:16:02 Ramona Shaw: Make in your career.

0:16:04 Ramona Shaw: Because the things that made you successful as an IC will not be the same things that will make you successful as a leader and especially in a new role. When all eyes are on you, when you know your boss wants you to succeed and is watching closely, your peers are having an eye on you, your team members are keen to figure out how to work with you and whether or not they can trust you during this time. By the way, whether or not you’re a first time manager or you’ve led teams in the past, but you’re in a new role as a new manager.

0:16:36 Ramona Shaw: To the team or even to the.

0:16:37 Ramona Shaw: Business, this is a time in which you don’t want to wing it. Go into such a situation with a plan and with specific tools that will help you build trust and gain the respect of your coworkers. In our new manager toolkit, we’ll give you guides, tools, checklists and lots of things that are important for any new manager to keep in mind. Head on over to archova.org free toolkits to grab your copy. You can also find that link in the show notes or the captions.

0:17:07 Ramona Shaw: I’ll see you over there.

0:17:09 Ramona Shaw: Now I’m going to move to my fifth topic, which is around communication and collaboration. Just like I mentioned, you have, you need to have strong relationships with your peers. It is also going to be important for your managers to form relationships with their peers inside that your unit, but also with other units or other departments if they’re not already doing that and that’s not already built in.

0:17:33 Ramona Shaw: It’s important for you as the leader to set that in place. What you can do is you can set up meetings, you can even have like management roundtables where they come together, they learn through and with each other about management or management skills. You can initiate projects where you specifically and intentionally assign a couple people from your team and also from other teams to come together and work on a shared goal to start to establish these relationships.

0:18:02 Ramona Shaw: Or instead of you going out and talking to people, encourage them to have conversations on their level first and then for them to come together and present something to you. So again for you to ensure that the collaboration happens not just at your level, but you’re trying to sort of trickle that down and spread that out will make them more effective and hence your whole unit more effective. Number six is around delegating effectively and this includes how much you delegate decisions, how much you delegate tasks and work and responsibilities.

0:18:37 Ramona Shaw: And it also means to not undermine their authority. So let’s start with the decisions. What you may think is someone else’s decision, meaning one of your manager’s decision may not be what your manager thinks. So your manager may have worked at companies where everything had to be rolled up and get approved by their boss. So they’ll bring information to you and they’re asking you to verify, to give the stamp of approval.

0:19:04 Ramona Shaw: When you think that’s not necessary, get really clear with them on what you need to actually be involved in and how much agency they have. Sometimes it’s, you know, up to a certain dollar amount. You have full authority to make decisions. When it comes to approving time off or expenses, this is all going to be your responsibility. I’m not going to get involved when it comes to a certain project. This is going to be, you know, your decision. You’re going to own that decision, Let them know and also check in on a regular basis like, hey, would you like to make more decisions? Do you feel I’m not providing enough support? Would you like for me to be more involved in certain Areas solicit that feedback to see how they’re doing.

0:19:49 Ramona Shaw: Not everyone is going to need to be led the same way by you. So some of them may want your involvement, others may feel like, no, I’d actually like more and love this autonomy. And as long as you can trust them, provide that autonomy to them. Of course, the same is true with the tasks and how much you involve yourself. Now, I want to quickly touch on that not undermining authority point. This is really important, and I see this sadly way too often, where a leader wants to be very supportive to their direct reports, in this case other managers, and they’ll want to ensure that they’re set up for success. They want to ensure that they feel supported.

0:20:27 Ramona Shaw: Maybe you don’t fully trust them yet. And so you know you’re having their back by being in the meeting or being involved in certain workflows or double checking certain work. But all of that actually undermines their authority. If your direct report is responsible for a new project and you’re now showing up to these project meetings, everyone else in the room is looking to you, not to your direct report, because you’re more senior. And so whatever you say is going to ultimately be what they’re going to look at or listen to.

0:21:03 Ramona Shaw: And if you have a different opinion than your director port, you’re going to undermine them. So get yourself out of these situations and if you do go in, make it very clear that you’re sort of a fly on the wall and that the person running the show is, you know, your director portrait. If you do have feedback or you do disagree with them. In most cases, this is not a black and white decision here, but in most cases it’s way better for you to take it offline and behind the scenes.

0:21:32 Ramona Shaw: Coach your direct report, but let the director porter be the face and be the one communicating out versus the two of you sort of being in a dialogue, because you’re going to win and you’re going to undermine that authority of the manager. It’s a sneaky one because oftentimes leaders want to be helpful and they don’t recognize that they’re actually doing the opposite. And it’s making it way harder for your manager to establish their authority and gain people’s respect.

0:22:00 Ramona Shaw: It applies to both the team that they manage, but also cross functionally and how they’re seen by their co workers. Now, last but not least, I’m going to talk about succession planning, identify on each team and sort of start grooming your leadership bench. When you have a team of ICs. So you are a manager and everyone on your team are individual contributors. If one of your individual contributors leaves and you have to step in to do their job, yeah, you, you know, it’s one role, so to speak. It’s like one task that you have to manage.

0:22:41 Ramona Shaw: Not ideal, but doable. If your manager leaves, if you’re managing managers and that manager leaves, you are now you have to step in because no one else is there who could take that on. You now have your whole full plate of things, but you now also responsible for managing that entire team. And many more people and much more of their work is now affected by there being an empty position, a bit of a void present on the team.

0:23:14 Ramona Shaw: So it just becomes increasingly important that you start to think about, what would I do if this person leaves? Who would be able to step into that role? How do we need to develop them? What’s the backup plan? And how do we ensure that information flows and things are documented and someone has the training or has the ability to help out? Even if there are always going to be things that land on your plate, you think ahead of how do you develop leaders in order to build up that bench so that if you move up, you have someone who can step into your role.

0:23:49 Ramona Shaw: And if one of those people steps up or you grow and you expand the team or someone leaves that there is a succession plan. And of course that means every single person should have sort of a career plan or at least a development plan on what would get them to the next level or what are the specific areas that will help them be more productive or higher performing. And then for you to provide stretch assignments or to intentionally set up their work responsibilities to support them with their growth and also provide them opportunities to expand, opportunities to gain new skills or expertise or build relationships or create some visibility from above. So that is that last component around developing succession plans.

0:24:38 Ramona Shaw: I’m going to quickly recap the seven points that we talked about. First, setting clear expectations. Second, we talked about providing resources and training as well as a lot of support for them and being vulnerable. Then we talked about regular check ins, having a bit of a pulse on things with your skip levels. Next, we talked about promoting accountability, ensuring that you know about performance issues and action plans. Then we talked about communication and collaboration across your unit as well as other units and teams.

0:25:14 Ramona Shaw: And then we talked about delegating, effectively, ensuring that you’re not undermining their authority. And then lastly we talked about having a succession plan and developing a leadership bench on your team. All that while keeping in mind that as you elevate your cross departmental relationships become more important, your primary team mentally should now likely be your peers and your boss and your secondary team or your direct reports just mentally so that you ensure that you spend enough of your attention and your effort on building those relationships.

0:25:48 Ramona Shaw: And with that, I’m going to wrap this episode. I hope you found this practical. You had some new ideas or some areas where you thought huh, good for me to think about or good for me to prepare about you. Maybe to hook some notes for when you are managing other managers, it’s a great way to grow. Most people really notice the difference and how they’re up leveling their skill and they’re becoming a lot clearer in their communication and in the way that they spend their time and what they focus on and what they prioritize.

0:26:15 Ramona Shaw: _So while challenging, it’s also a great and really fun place to be. And so that’s it for today. I’ll see you in the next episode of The Manager Track podcast. Ciao for now. If you enjoyed this episode, then check out two other awesome resources to help you become a leader people love to work with. This includes a free masterclass on how to successfully lead as a new manager. Check it out @archova.org/

0:26:39 Ramona Shaw: masterclass. The second resource is my best selling book the Confident and competent New Manager. How to quickly rise to success in your first leadership role. Check it out @archova.org/books or head on over to Amazon and grab your copy there. You can find all those links in the show notes down below.