Developing your management career can be overwhelming, since there are a set of new skills we need to learn and master before we become a successful manager.
But, where do we get the support we need in that process? Who can help us?
I see two clearly different approaches of how you can get that support:
The Traditional Way, used by most of the organizations until the late '90s, and
The New Way, started being used by the world's leading organizations, in response to the challenges the rapid changes in the environment bring to our organizations.
Which are the next steps you are committing to take to further develop your management career?
To your growth and success.
Eduard.
Video Transcript
Developing your management career can be overwhelming, especially at the beginning,
because we come from a position where over the years we have developed certain skills
which helped us become trustful and reliable professionals in our organizations.
And when we are promoted, all of a sudden, we realize that we need a total different
set of skills that we need to develop to become successful managers. And that transition process runs in parallel to us having to attend the daily emergencies, the problems we face in our environment, the demands that our organization and our employees are putting on us.
And we have to think "where can we get the support to have that process as efficient, as flawless as possible?"
Because there is no Standard Operating Procedure manual for a manager that we can open
and read what to do in every specific situation.
The purpose of today's video is to describe two situations, two ways where managers can get support. I'm calling them, The Traditional Way ,and The New Way
Let's just start with The Traditional Way.
I'm calling it The Traditional Way because that was the way managers got support in organizations until approximately in 1990s.
And the process was the following:
Somebody was appointed manager, and the organization, not all, some of them, would provide some basic trainings on what being manager is about and so on, and they were left by their own.
So, the new managers got support by observing some other successful managers, how they were doing, and coping and replicating the actions, the behaviors, the best practices that made, that manager, that other person successful.
So, following that process was kind of perpetuating the culture of the company.
Every person was looking at some senior person in the organization to build his own style,
his old way of doing things, and this will be a continuation of the management style in the organization.
The problem of this process, of this way of getting support, is that new managers, were copying, not only the good things: the good practices, the best practices, the best behaviors, but also the malpractices, and the bad behaviors, and the bad actions that some other people would have been taking.
So, I would like to say that this process worked for many years, and worked, mainly because of the slow change rate in the environment.
If the environment is not changing so fast, what somebody else did yesterday,and it was successful, we can do it tomorrow and be successful as well in our environment.
So, as long as the change rate was low, that process kind of worked.
But then, what happens when the environment, when the speed of change, increases?
And this comes the second way, that I call The New Way.
So when the speed of change increases what we did yesterday, is not valid for tomorrow.
What was successful yesterday will not ensure that we will be successful tomorrow.
Organizations have requested to be more flexible, adaptable, resourceful, and we cannot get that level of operation by implementing yesterday's solutions.
We need to develop a new skills. We need to develop a new styles, management
styles, to make things happen differently.
So, in this new way, into this environment, when the dynamics of the change, bring us to that point of finding solutions quickly with our teams to be competitive, I have found that the best way to support our managers, or the best way where managers can get support from, is from two areas:
One area is business, and one area is personal growth.
From the business side, we need to increase our business acumen, and to do that it is very
valuable working with a mentor.
Identifying a person who will widen our business perspective, will guide through our industry view, trends, will show which pitfalls to avoid and, our view will be totally different.
And that new view will be very valuable in our strategic planning, problem solving, or our decision making process.
So, working with a mentor is very, very valuable to grow our business acumen and to understand our industry much better.
The other pillar, the other area, is our personal growth.
If we are growing as a manager, we need to grow personally.
And it's not the method of, as I said before, copying and pasting what somebody else did.
We have to develop our own style. We have to develop our own way of doing things
that will match the market and the environment requests.
So the best way to develop those skills, and our style, is to work with a coach.
Partnering with a coach will help us identify and implement those leadership
skills that we need to really develop our own style that is aligned with our personality, our character, our values, and our priorities.
And by doing like this, we will really speed up that process. It will not be a matter of trial and error, copying and realizing that it's not working.
That will be developing our own management style in an efficient, and in a much more reliable way.
So, from these two areas is from where we will get all the support we need. What is, on the business side, working with a Mentor; on the personal development side, working with a coach.
But don't make the mistake of letting that process to chance.
Make your research, identify who can be the best Mentor for you, who can be the best coach for you.
Talk to them, interview them, and make a professional engagement, where you will identify your goals and they will provide you all the support you will need.
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Thank you very much for listening today.