The Workplace Coach

Congratulations you’ve been promoted and you now have a team of people working for you. It’s important to remember though that it is no longer your job to do the work yourself, instead you are charged with looking after the people who do the work. That’s going to take some getting used to right?

The biggest adjustment you will need to make is “letting go” of doing all those things that reside in your comfort zone. You have the technical skills, this might even be why you got the promotion, but your challenge now is to step into that space outside of your comfort zone. You know… start looking after all of the people management stuff.

Many new managers, as well as large number of experienced managers, have a constant struggle with managing the people side of the equation. I mean seriously, there is a lot to do in this space. Not only do you need to manage workloads, team morale and performance, but you also need to look after your people’s career development, their wellbeing, their physical and psychosocial safety, their attendance, engagement and motivation. It’s a massive responsibility!!

Lucky for you the good people in HR have developed systems, policies and processes to help you keep it all straight. There will be performance management processes, career development guidelines, timesheets, engagement surveys, feedback forms, KPIs and PIPs and PDRs and any number of tools that have equally awesome acronyms. You could fill your whole day every day just completing forms and following HR processes.

Do you want to know the shortcut? Are you interested in the secret to being the laziest manager in the company but the one with the highest performing team?

Spend more time building relationships with your people.

That’s it.

Simple.

Start blocking out thirty minutes every week to meet with each of your direct reports. These are not ‘performance discussions’ they are check ins. They getting to know you, getting to know me chats. They are ‘how is everything going’ conversations. Make it a ‘let’s go for coffee meeting’ and talk about anything except work.

Your mission is to get to know your people, as people. Ask about their family, what they like doing outside of work, what their long term career plans might be. Pretend you are at a friends barbecue and you are getting to know the people you have just met. It’s friendly and informal. You are most definitely not wearing your boss hat during these meetings. In fact, your goal should be to never ever have to wear your boss hat again.

What will happen over time as you get to know your people, and they get to know you, these informal chats will start to take on a bit of a work improvement flavour. It won’t be a subordinate ‘reporting to the boss’ work flavour though, it will be more of a collegiate ‘we are in this together’ type of flavour. They might ask for your advice, you might ask for theirs.

You see what is happening here is that both parties these conversations are learning to trust each other. Learning that it’s a safe place to be yourself, to ask for help, offer an opinion and float some ideas.

That’s the secret sauce. Give trust, receive trust. Be genuine and authentic. Be consistent. You will find that you spend far less time ‘managing your team’ and have far more time to do the things that you need to do to keep your own boss happy. You will be the laziest manager in the place… with the highest performing team.

Now try booking in half an hour a week with your own boss too.