Someday (perhaps even now) your organization will be hiring and promoting once again. When you’re able to promote people to supervisory roles, here are six ways you can help them to be successful.
1. Validate their new status to others. All too often, people are promoted to their first management position without any formal announcement. This robs them of the legitimacy they need with reports who were formerly their peers, and with other supervisors and managers, their new peers. Announce the promotion on your company intranet, at meetings, and other places to spread the news.
2. Advise them to be friendly but not fast friends with their direct reports. You bestow a dubious honor when you promote someone to supervise former coworkers. Their applause dies down the moment the new boss has to deliver unwelcome news. Morale takes a further nose dive when supervisors show favoritism to their best buddies or have to reprimand employees who thought they were a supervisor’s best buddy. At this point former peers freeze out new supervisors, feeling they’ve gone over to the “dark side” – management!
3. Show them how to think like a manager. In their new role, they will need to stretch beyond an interest in their old work unit to an interest in bigger, cross-functional issues, beyond taking orders to giving them judiciously, beyond taking short-term action to making long-term plans, and beyond working a set number of hours to working until a problem is solved.
4. Along those same lines, explain and role model how to delegate. Help new supervisors understand that an important part of their new role is to stretch and develop their direct reports. By delegating, they can free up some time to take on new, more advanced challenges. Encourage them to practice delegating with small projects and tasks and work up to larger ones. (The text of my book, You Can’t Do It All: Effective Delegation for Supervisors is available for you to read or download at my website, www.cts-online.net. )
5. Plug them into a new network. There are important people in and outside your organization whom they should meet. Introduce them to these key people soon after their promotion. Also advise them how information is communicated at the managerial level. Who are the “go to” people? (And for that matter, who are the “avoid at all costs!” people?) How do decisions get made and things get done?
6. Even before they begin their new job, help them establish a professional image. If their dress and behavior are appropriate, tell them – they might not be sure. If you have suggestions, share those, too.
Remember, you can’t just promote someone and say, “Okay, succeed!” Though it might feel like micromanaging for a few weeks, your impulse not to spend time with a new supervisor could be disastrous.
If your organization would like a keynote speech or training program on this or other topics, contact Jeanne at (402) 475-1127 or (800) 410-3178, or email her at jbaer@cts-online.net or see her website at www.cts-online.net.
Copyright 2012 Creative Training Solutions