First time companies, startups, have first time managers in their ranks. Now there’s a challenge. If you’re leading a startup, a first time company, how do you support your first time managers? Is a startup a place where you can have a first time manager?
How you be affects your results!
"How do you be?" Rather than, "How do you do?" might be a strange way to meet and greet someone you’ve never met before - “Hi Steve, how do you be today!?”. It’s a question, however, we too infrequently ask ourselves - how am I being right now? When you think about managing other people you must first understand that “you cannot manage other people unless you manage yourself first” (Drucker). First-time managers this is for you:
The Predicament of the First-Time Manager
The research
People moving into management for the first time should be the rarest breed of people ever. If the stats are to be believed and there are multiple pieces of research to show this, 50% to 60% of first-time managers fail. How and why would you ever want to take on the role as a first-time manager if you knew that 50% to 60% of those people failed in their new roles. This is especially troubling when most likely, as an individual contributor, you are already a Rockstar.