So many new managers don’t get the training or skills they need to be effective, lead their teams, and achieve meaningful results. As a result, well-intentioned and hard-working new managers often fall into these common mistakes that new managers make; Frustration makes their teams redundant, reduces their credibility and reduces their impact.
When you equip your managers with the essential skills to avoid these mistakes, you’ll achieve results faster, have more agile teams, reduce turnover, build a strong culture, and be able to focus everyone’s energy on serving your customers with better products and services, rather than dealing with every Time with internal friction.
If you’re a new manager, eliminating these mistakes and building effective habits early on will leverage your influence, build your career, reduce your frustration, and help you enjoy your work. These are practical ways you can build a strong foundation for your career.
Here are the common mistakes that new managers make:
- Avoid warranty calls
- Prefer former friends and colleagues
- Be an expert in everything
- Being Push Over
- Suppose people need to know
- Expecting people to understand
- Leave the tracking to Chance
- Assume that people know how to achieve a goal or express a value
- Use fear to motivate
- Don’t invest in trust
10 mistakes new managers make
We’ve made a lot of these mistakes and seen them in many of the managers we’ve worked with. The good news is that with a little practice and focused effort, you can avoid these common mistakes that new managers make. Here’s a look at some of the biggest challenges for new managers and what to do instead.
1. Avoid warranty calls
New managers often engage in magical thinking. A team member is late or disrespectful to another person and the new manager thinks “Oh wow, that wasn’t good. Well, they definitely realize they messed up. I’m sure they won’t do it again.”
And then it happens again, and the new manager thinks, “I can’t believe it… that’s twice now. They must know it’s not cool.” And the manager says nothing. Meanwhile, poor performance or toxic behavior continues and becomes the norm.
What to do: Address poor performance and disruptive behavior as soon as it happens. You don’t need to make a big deal out of it or get visibly angry. You can use the INSPIRE method to show up for a conversation with curiosity. Start with your intention for the conversation, explain what you noticed and invite their perspective. Then, when appropriate, you can move into mutual commitment and align on next steps.
When you approach accountability conversations this way, your teammate knows you care. They know you want them to succeed. They know you want to hear their point of view. You invested in them, and good luck to the team.
Further reading: How to provide more meaningful performance feedback (this article describes a step-by-step methodology for doing this well)
2. Prefer former friends and colleagues
New managers often face the challenge of top friends and former colleagues trying to leverage their relationship for special treatment. But your credibility, respect and credibility depend on treating people equally and putting the team first.
What to do: Some people will tell you not to be friends with your team, but that’s not always possible – especially if you’re already friends. The key is to have a conversation and set clear expectations about your new responsibilities. Be clear about what success looks like for each person and team. Help everyone (especially your friends) to understand that you care about each person individually, and you will first have to make decisions that consider the well-being of the team.
Further reading: leading friends and former colleagues
3. Be the expert in everything
You were good at your job before you were promoted, and you have ideas about how everything should work. Of course, you want to leverage that confidence to inspire your team. But, you can’t possibly have all the answers—and your team knows it. Especially if you have the responsibility of leading a team that has deep technical experience, they will know more about their work than you do.
What to do: Earn the right to be heard by listening first. Be interested. Ask your team to teach you something new every day.
Further reading: 9 questions to help your team solve problems themselves
4. Be a pushover
At the other end of the continuum is the manager lacking power and conviction. You want your people to like you, so you don’t address negative behaviors or underperformance. Your best players lose faith in you and the negative players drag down the team’s performance.
What to do: Before you can practice consistent accountability and keep everyone on track, you need a solid foundation. So, reconnect with your values and the reason your team exists. You are in a position to support your people and accomplish a mission.
Strengthen the “why” behind every “what”.
Further reading: Executive presence is a virtual world: what matters now
And download our free eBook, 7 Practical Ways to Be A Little Bolder.
5. Assume people need to know
This mistake is very common for new managers (and more than a few veterans!). The project makes sense to you. Follow-up activities are just “what you do”. Customer care is common sense. Everyone knows these things, right?
Not really.
What to do: One of the most essential steps you can take when starting a new leadership role is to clarify what success looks like. Use a 5 by 5 communication strategy for the most essential aspects of teamwork. This means you deliver critical messages five different times using five different forms of communication. People will internalize these key messages when you communicate with repetition and variety.
Further reading: 5×5 communication for remote teams
6. Expect people to understand
This is another common mistake new managers make (and again, many veterans too). You definitely said that. Maybe you even said it five times, five different ways. But what did the other person hear? They may think they understand or they may be embarrassed to ask clarifying questions. Either way, everyday misunderstandings compound to create tons of wasted time and energy.
You don’t know people really understand until you ask them.
What to do: The solution to these misunderstandings is to “check understanding”. Communication has not occurred until there is a “send” and a “receive”. When you check for understanding, ask the person you are talking to to share their understanding. If you’re not on the same page, clarify and check again.
Further reading: Check for Understanding: Leadership Communication Best Practices (Video)
7. Leave the tracking to chance
Many new managers leave follow-up to chance. Even when your team is talented and well-intentioned, there are many factors that disrupt follow-up and prevent them from doing what matters most. Sometimes, you may be the one interfering (with other priorities you’ve delegated). Other times, it can be a crush of competing priorities from other projects or departments.
What to do: Take a call to “schedule the finish”. It’s not just assigning a deadline. It is an open conversation about when all parties agree to complete the task or project and how that task interacts with other priorities. The conversation ends with both parties scheduling the next step, the completion or the follow-up call in their calendars. Follow-up is no longer left to chance. It’s really timed for both of you.
Further reading: High ROI Leadership: Time the End
8. Assume that people know how to gain priority or express value
The team discusses their goal. You checked the understanding of team values. Anyone can express their KPI. Everything is good, right?
Not yet – understanding the goal is one thing. Figuring out how to achieve it is another thing entirely. Often, another mistake new managers make is to focus on the goal and push people to perform without discussing the specific activities and consistent behaviors that will help everyone achieve success. People may work hard and be busy, but their efforts do not yield results.
What to do: For each critical goal, value, and metric, take time with your team to discuss and identify the two or three critical behaviors or activities that lead to success. If you don’t know what these are, it may take practice and investigation to figure it out.
Further reading: Creating Clarity: Strategic Activities for People-Centered Leaders
9. Use fear to motivate
When the team is not meeting their goals, a mistake new managers make is to become frustrated and rely on fear to get results. Fear is an insidious leadership trap – because it works. We have known many leaders who relied on fear to get results because it was an easy way to make something happen.
Fear drives effort, but with a single focus: to escape from fear. Everything else is closed. The problem with using fear to motivate is that the “something” you get is the minimum effort people need to escape the fear. They don’t choose to give their best and they can’t be creative.
What to do: Start by acknowledging your fears and anxieties. If you’re tempted to use fear as a motivator, you’re probably stressed yourself. Acknowledge your feelings. Breathe through them, reconnect with your values and the reason your team exists.
Once you’ve managed your anxiety, bring the challenge to your team. Be real about the situation, express your confidence and ask for their ideas on how you can get there together.
Further reading: How to Avoid Toxic Bullies in Your Organization
10. Do not invest in trust
Some new managers assume that people will trust them because of their past performance or because of their title. But trust is a relationship and relationships take time and effort to build. With distrustYou will find that everything else about your leadership is much more difficult.
What to do: Trust can feel abstract, but the people who study trust have identified four elements that consistently contribute to trust (and the absence of which destroys trust). These elements are:
- Credibility – Does your team believe you know what you’re doing? (And do they feel you believe they know what they’re doing?)
- Reliability – Can your team trust you to do what you say you will do?
- Connectedness – Do you and your team know each other as human beings? Do you know their “people, pets or projects”? What is important to them outside of work?
- Best Interest – Do your people believe you have their best interests at heart? This is an important element of trust. If people believe you have their best interests at heart, they will forgive any flaw in the other elements. But if they don’t believe you have their best interest at heart, perfecting the other three won’t make that much of a difference.
As you consider these elements of trust, where should you invest your time and effort? For example, some well-meaning managers are unreliable because they overcommit and haven’t learned how to manage their time. If this is you, start by carefully considering why you’re saying “yes” and the commitments you’re making.
Identify the area where you have the most room for improvement and invest in performing there more consistently.
Further reading: How to build trust faster with new hires
your turn
These ten common mistakes that new managers make are also opportunities to distinguish yourself and build a solid foundation for an amazing leadership career. Improve these habits now and your impact will multiply, results will improve, and you will be a manager people want to work with.
We’d love to hear from you: What are the other common mistakes new managers make (and most importantly, what can they do instead to build a strong leadership foundation?)
Reading more or what customers tell us is very helpful for new managers
Leadership skills: 6 skills you can’t lead without
