Professional coaching: 6 tips for a young manager
23/3/2018
Rémi Zunino
Rémi Zunino

Professional coaching: 6 tips for a young manager

As the role of manager is present in all organisations, some young, newly promoted talent may be tempted to think that they already know all the issues involved in the job. However, just because you were successful in your previous role does not mean that you will be successful as a young manager. Today, we are sharing with you 6 postures that our professional coaches regularly work on during individual coaching sessions with talents who have just taken up a management position.

Tip 1: Accept that you are the boss of the team.

When you become manager of a team, especially one you used to be part of, it can be tempting to behave like the "buddy", or conversely, to be extremely authoritarian under the pretext that you have just obtained new stripes. To avoid this, you need to know how to find the right management distance. That is to say, you have to know how to take on the role of boss by giving developmental feedback when necessary, and make sure you don't put everything on your expertise. The risk is to position oneself as the only "knower" of the team, and thus not to develop one's employees sufficiently.

Talentis Executive Coaches' advice: "In our individual coaching sessions, the first piece of advice we usually deliver 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 relational distance is all the more difficult when the manager takes over the leadership of the team that was previously his. To find the right relational distance, you have to be able to remain factual and not enter the emotional register. If only to protect oneself. Indeed, the risk of wanting to be liked is to fall out of love! For the manager and the team in general, it is much more beneficial to cultivate respect between oneself and one's colleagues .

Talentis Executive Coaches' advice: "To find the right relational distance, we generally recommend that the people we coach reflect on the managers they have respected the most, and draw inspiration from their management style.

Tip 3: Move from the "doing" stage to the "doing" stage.

This means above all accepting that people do less well than you do... at the beginning. A manager who is just starting out must invest time with his employees in order to gain time afterwards! And this must be done by taking care to explain to each employee what is expected of him or her or the task to be accomplished. "Doing" goes beyond "delegating".
"Doing" means accompanying the development of each employee by letting them do it. The manager's main objectives must be to pass on, challenge and give confidence to his or her employees in order to develop them and let them grow. Feedback is a very good tool for this.

Talentis Executive Coaches' advice: "During the coaching sessions, we work on the posture of manager-coach, manager-developer who transmits and then accompanies the development of autonomy.

Read also: 5 steps to successful feedback

Tip 4: Consider each employee individually.

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

Talentis Executive Coaches' advice: "We recommend that all young managers who take over a team include time in their diaries for the management of each employee to help them succeed in their projects.

Read also: How to develop autonomy among your employees?

Tip 5: Manage the collective dynamic.

If I am a team manager, this means that I know how to define common objectives, share my vision and ensure that the team knows each other well enough. To succeed in this last point, it is essential that the young manager knows how to create meeting times. Whether they are formal or informal. The trap to be avoided is to fall into the cliché of the manager who "hands out orders on the fly" in the corridor. Building collective time serves to nourish belonging within the team. Talentis Executive Coaches' advice: "We encourage each manager that we accompany to include collective time in their agenda to exchange on each person's projects and to discover each team member in a more personal way.

Tip 6: Clarify your boss's expectations

This is a key piece of advice! One of the first things a young manager needs to do, if not the first thing, is to clarify with their N+1 what they expect of them as the new manager of that team. One of the problems that young managers face when they take up their position is that they don't really know what the role of a manager is. It would be very wise for these new managers to ask themselves the following questions:

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

Talentis Executive Coaches' advice: "We suggest that young managers clarify the operating contract with their N+1 very quickly. This will give them precious keys on the person they will be working with and avoid them missing the real expectations of their boss.

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

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