Professional coaching: 6 tips for a young manager

Since the function of manager is present in all organizations, some freshly promoted young talents would be tempted to think that they already know all the challenges of this position. However, just because you have achieved success in your previous role does not mean that it will be the same as a young manager. Today, we are giving you 6 postures that our professional coaches work on a regular basis during individual coaching sessions with talents who have just taken on a managerial position.

Tip 1: Accept being the boss of the team.

When you become the manager of a team, especially when it comes to the one you were part of, it can be tempting to behave like the “buddy”, or conversely, show extreme authoritarianism under the pretext that you have just obtained new stripes. To avoid this, you have to know how to find The right distance in terms of management. That means knowing how to take on the role of boss by giving development feedback when necessary, and being careful not to rely entirely on your expertise. The risk is to position yourself as the only “knowing” person in the team, and thus not developing your employees sufficiently.
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‍Talentis Executive Coaches Council : “In our individual coaching sessions, the first piece of advice we usually give is to give the framework, then communicate clear objectives, and finally set operating rules.”

Tip 2: Seek to be respected rather than loved.

As explained above, finding the right relationship distance is all the more difficult when the manager takes the lead of the team that was his before. To find the right relationship distance, you need to be able to stay factual and not get into the emotional register. If only to protect themselves. Indeed, the risk of wanting to be loved is falling out of love! For the manager and the team in general, it will be much more beneficial to cultivate respect between oneself and employees.

Talentis Executive Coaches Council : “To find the right relational distance, we generally recommend that the people we support think about the managers they have respected the most, and to be inspired by their management style.”

Tip 3: Go from the “do” stage to the “do-do” stage.

Above all, it means accepting that people are doing worse than you are... at the beginning. A manager who is just starting out must invest time with his employees to save time later! And this is done by taking care to explain to each employee what they expect of them or the task to be completed. “Do it” goes beyond “delegating”.
“Fair-Faire” means support the development of each employee by letting them do it. The main objectives of the manager should be to transmit, challenger, Give confidence to your employees to develop them and let them grow. Feedback is also a very good tool for this.

‍Talentis Executive Coaches Council : “During coaching sessions, we work on the position of manager-coach, manager-developer who transmits and then accompanies the development of autonomy.”

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Read also: The 5 steps of a successful feedback

Tip 4: Consider each employee individually.

It is essential to know how to adapt to each person, regardless of the stage at which they are in their development, in order to be able to best support them. That means that you cannot manage someone who is very independent in the same way as someone who is less autonomous. The idea is for each employee to become better, to gain autonomy to unleash their full potential.

‍Talentis Executive Coaches Council : “We recommend to all young managers who take the lead of a team of Place in their diaries time devoted to the management of each employee to support them in the success of their projects.”

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Also read: how to develop autonomy in your employees?

Tip 5: Manage the collective dynamic.

If I am a team manager, it means that I know how to define common goals, share my vision and Make sure the team knows each other well enough. To succeed in this last point, it is essential that the young manager knows create meeting times. Whether formal or informal. The trap to avoid is to fall into the cliché of the manager who “distributes orders on the fly” in the hallway. Building collective time serves to nourish belonging within the team. Talentis Executive Coaches Council : “We encourage each manager we support to include group time in your agenda to discuss everyone's projects and discover each member of the team in a more personal way.”

Tip 6: Clarify your boss's expectations

This is key advice! One of the first things to do for the young manager, if not the first, is to clarify with his N+1 what he expects of him as the new manager of this team. One of the problems that young managers encounter when they take up a job is that they don't really know what the managerial role is exactly. It would be very wise for these new managers to ask themselves the following questions:

• What are the expectations of my hierarchy and what resources do I have at my disposal to meet them?
• What is the operating contract that we are going to establish?

Talentis Executive Coaches Council : “We suggest that young managers Clarify the operating contract very quickly with their N+1. This will give them valuable insight into who they are going to work with and prevent them from missing out on the real expectations of their boss.”

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‍Finally, during individual coaching sessions with young managers, the Talentis Executive Coaches They work with them to make the implicit explicit. Make explicit with their collaborators the operating rules, the framework in which they will work, the frequency and time of formal and informal collective time; and make the expectations explicit with their boss, and establish the operating contract. The most important thing for a manager starting out in this type of responsibility is to keep in mind that nothing is obvious: everyone has their own representation of reality and it is therefore essential that everything be explained.

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