What got YOU here, won't get THEM there - 5 leaderships tips I wish I had

Transitioning from individual contributor to manager was undoubtedly the toughest time in my professional career. You’re expected to maintain the high standards that led to your managerial promotion whilst simultaneously learning one of the toughest and most sophisticated skills in life – management. It’s often not helped by the fact senior leadership tend to believe exceptional individual performers will miraculously become exceptional managers without sufficient training and support.

The thing that scared me most was the fact I was no longer in direct control of my success. Sure, I could guide, train, motivate and direct people; but my success would be fundamentally decided by someone else “putting the ball in the back of the net”.

Below are 5 pearls of wisdom that I wish had been bestowed upon me when I embarked on the journey of leadership:

1)     Don’t try and be a master of everything

Many junior managers fall into the trap of believing they need to be fantastic at every facet of the function they're attempting to manage. Not only is this not necessary, it’s not possible. Figure out what you’re best at and take ownership of that. Be open about what you’re not good at and use external resources to plug that gap. It’s OK to tell your reports you’re not good at something. It’s also OK to say “I don’t know” when they ask you a question. They will respect you far more than if you feign excellence and deliver incompetence.

2)     Your employees are more responsible for their performance than you are

I cringe when I think back to what I used to tell my employees – “follow my direction and if you’re not successful, that’s on me, not you”. Many inexperienced managers echo a similar rhetoric and whilst I understand the thinking, consider the message this is actually conveying: “blindly follow my metrics without any thought or conviction and you don’t need to be remotely accountable for your performance”. Your job as a leader is to guide, encourage, train, discipline, direct, coach and motivate your employees but THEIR job is to perform. As I leader, I fully commit to doing the above and if the performance doesn’t follow, it’s not on me, it’s on them.

3)      Write down a list of your strengths & weaknesses and review regularly

This was the first action I took when I launched my own business. I wrote down all my strengths and made a conscious effort to spend as much time as possible doing these things. Even more crucially, I wrote down all my weaknesses and came up with a plan of how to tackle them, when they inevitably reared their ugly head. I read the list at the start of each month to ensure I’m utilizing my strengths and prepared for my weaknesses.

4)     Build a culture, not a team

Visualize what you want your culture to look like before you build it. What are you passionate about? What type of culture would you be proud of? Understand and define exactly what you want it to look like and be unyielding in your pursuit of it. Do not hire people who do not align with your cultural philosophies, not matter how strong they appear, and do not allow others to derail your vision. People above you and alongside you may not truly understand what you’re trying to achieve but so long as you do and your employees do, the chances are you’ll succeed.

5)     What got YOU here, won’t get THEM there

Times change, you must do likewise. Do not manage as you have been managed, manage as you SHOULD manage. If I think back to my formative years as a sales person / manager – it was being brutally told I was terrible at my job a dozen times a day and that anyone who didn’t spend 60 hours a week in the office and 3 hours a day on the phone was worthless. Was this constructive? Yes. Do I correlate a lot of my moderate success to this baptism of fire? Yes. Is it an effective way of managing my current team? Absolutely not. 2019 Chicago is very different from 2010 London… Because it worked for you DOES NOT mean it will work for them and you should manage in the present, not in the past. 

Christopher Atiyah

Chief Executive Officert - Engtal