When you’re new to something, you make mistakes. That’s how you learn. Young managers make lots of mistakes. It still makes me cringe to think about how incompetent I was as a young manager.
But hey, that’s just the way it works. You get out there, screw up, and hopefully learn from your mistakes.
Unfortunately, not everyone does … learn. That’s the business world’s natural selection process at work. Sometimes young managers self-destruct before their careers even have a chance of getting off the ground.
Here are five ways young managers terrorize their employees and sabotage their own careers:
1. Full of authority they think they’ve suddenly acquired with a title, they order people around and expect quiet compliance and obedience.
2. They put the micro in micromanager, becoming little Napoleon control freaks who don’t just tell employees what to do, but how to do it, too.
3. Thinking they’ve acquired something important that they’re afraid to lose, they stop taking risks for fear of failure.
4. Taking their perceived importance way too seriously, they become full of themselves, enslaved by a hyper-inflated ego.
5. They think they’ve actually arrived somewhere instead of realizing that they’ve only just arrived at the beginning.
And so on. In short, they act like children. We give children a lot of leeway because we figure they’ll eventually grow into mature, fully functioning adults. But like I said, young managers don’t always follow that template. Some make it, others fail miserably, and everyone else falls somewhere in between.
So, if that list of unsavory characteristics describes managers you’ve had or even have now, and they’re not exactly spring chickens, now you know why. Because they never grew up.
We talked about this in Are You a Dysfunctional Manager? or, as some call it, the 5 Stages of Management Development. But what we didn’t discuss is whether there’s some way for managers who are stuck in the “screw up” stage to get with the program. Actually, there is.
It’s counterintuitive, but most of the characteristics people tend to assign to youth are actually adult characteristics, and vice versa. Seriously, it’s true. Here’s the Counterintuitive Guide to Growing Into a Mature Leader:
* Lighten up. Don’t be so hard on yourself. Figure out where you left your sense of humor. Get over yourself. After all, you’re nothing special, just a flesh and blood manager trying to make it in a tough and highly competitive corporate world. Once you take the pressure off yourself, you’ll begin to realize how counterproductive it is to micromanage your poor employees.
* Let yourself fail. Make mistakes. Take risks. Believe it or not, you have less to lose than you think and, in fact, far more to lose if you don’t take risks. They say “no pain no gain,” and “no risk no reward.” But the truth is that, if you don’t take risks, your risk of failure actually goes sky high because playing it safe is a sure way to fail. I know it doesn’t make sense, but in business management and leadership, it’s true, nevertheless.
* Give up control over the little things. Just let them go. Instead, set your sites on the big picture. Set mid-to-high-level goals so you - and your employees - can actually use your brains and skills to achieve them, instead of constantly scrambling and reacting. Imagine accomplishing those goals by motivating, engaging, and challenging your people to do their best. Imagine that.
* Remember life. Most of us think we’re on a path to somewhere, but actually, we’re not. This - what you do every day of your life - is all there is. Life is about connecting with people. And business life is about satisfying your customers and stakeholders who also happen to be people. It’s also about doing a good job, which, incidentally, will make you feel good. They say life is short, but I think it’s long. No matter how old or experienced you are, you likely have a long way to go. Remember that.
By,
Steve Tobak
