When switching your role from professional expert to manager, how should your perspective and mindset change?
Remember that you are no longer responsible for yourself and your own results only. You are now responsible for the results of your entire team.
Can you control all they are doing? Or can you do their work instead, to ensure the quality level you are used to delivering? Clearly not, or else you will become a bottleneck for your team’s activity and deliverables.
What can you do to make the shift?
- Acknowledge that your success as a manager depends on your team, so support and develop your team members to improve the team’s performance as a whole.
- Instead of focusing on executing what is being assigned to you, start focusing on setting the agenda and translating the organizational direction and objectives into clear and understandable items for your team.
- Shift from an individual, self-centered mindset to a collective one, considering the impact of your actions and decisions on your team, your organization, and, of course, on your clients.
Now, some thoughts for self-reflection:
- How are you enabling your team members to produce the best outcomes possible?
- As a manager, how are you creating value for your organization, and how is this value different from the one you were generating as an individual contributor?
