Becoming a manager's manager after having managed an operational team is a real change of position. Because leading a team and helping managers to lead their teams are two different approaches. How can you stand back and take a step back while maintaining close contact with all your teams and their direct managers?
Contents
What are the specific characteristics of managerial staff?
Empowerment comes first
As a manager of managers, your expertise is independent of the technical functions (finance, production, R&D, marketing, etc.) that you supervise. So you don't know "more", you know "differently the managers you supervise. Your aim is to support them in carrying out projects with their team. Knowing how to delegate and give responsibility is what enables you to keep time for coordinating teams and resolving the conflicts inherent in teamwork.
Your daily challenge is not to not to dive headlong into the problems that your teams face, but to ask them for solutions and to make decisions based on your assessment of the risks and opportunities.
Differences and similarities with operational managers
There are, of course, similarities between your management actions and those of the managers you supervise:
- Communicating corporate strategy and culture
- Organising teamwork to create the best conditions for effective, long-term cooperation
- Stimulate team ideas based on clear objectives
- Adapting management to each individual
- Dealing with difficulties and conflict within a team
But the experience of operational manager doesn't fully prepare you for this new role. It's not enough to transfer your skills when you become a manager of managers. What makes you different from the managers you supervise is essential:
- Initiating "big" changes
- Drawing up collective operating rules to foster a good team spirit
- Work on collaborative team-building processes over the long term
- Identify high-stakes situations where your decision-making is essential
- Making individual and collective decisions
- Identify your levers of influence and argument to convince management
- Contractualise expectations and management tools to avoid unjustified control by managers
- Strengthening the managerial skills of line managers to help them motivate their own teams
- Leading a team of managers by capitalising on best managerial practice
The new priorities of managers of managers
You now have three main priorities:
- Empowering operational managers your team (resources, skills, contacts, etc.)
- Establishing a stable, shared framework for collaborationvision, values, working methods and tools...
- Empoweringencourage and promote initiative, to develop the efficiency of teams
What are the main risks of failure for a manager of managers?
Here are the most common reasons for failure:
- You're taking a long time to get used to the fact that having more responsibilities and bigger teams doesn't mean that you're expected to "do the same thing", only bigger or more powerful. Taking on your new responsibilities, you've actually changed your paradigm and your team strategy.
- You're not adapting your approach enough to find solutions to the new problems you face in this new role. Repeating what worked before would be handy, but more often than not it doesn't work any more.
- You can't get used to the delicate art of "letting go" with operationsThe key is to strike the right balance so as not to stray too far from this and become a mere relay for communication between management and the teams.
- You haven't yet accepted that you are no longer the person who directly steers the performance of your teams. You haven't yet let go of what you thought was decisive in your own effectiveness as a managerWe'll be looking at your technical expertise and the quality of your relations with the teams in the field.
- Taking up a position as manager of a manager requires you to deeper work to learn a position of authority and leadership - and that has very little to do with management style.
In practice, this means a lack of reflection on the specific issues that should drive each manager of managers :
How can you maintain contact with your teams without bypassing local managers?
How can we bring coherence to the managerial practices of each local manager?
How can we help our teams turn their strategic vision into a reality on the ground?
Supervising managers means moving on from "I manage a team" to "I help the managers in my team to manage their teams". You're now focused on the success of your teams, from which your own success will flow.
How do you manage managers effectively?
Get even more distance and perspective
There's a paradox in the situation of managers of managers. You probably owe your development to your technical skills, but as you've progressed, your scope has expanded. You will almost certainly have to supervise managers whose multi-disciplinary skills you have little or no control over.
Your success in this position depends on your ability to trust them.by taking a step back from the operational content, and your ability to see the big picture.
Modify your questions
When you talk to the managers of your teams, it's important to focus on exploring their relationships with their teams. It's no longer a question of asking them "How are the projects progressing? but rather "How are you working with Julie and Mickael on this project?" or "What support do Julie and Mickael need from you on this project?
By focusing your questions on how they manage their teams and give feedback, you can help them develop their management skills.
Meet and communicate
As a manager of managers, you will no doubt have the impression that you spend most of your time "in meetings", and that you no longer do any "real" work. Yes and no! From now on, your role is to keep your teams' collective alive, to cultivate good relations so as to find support to help them bring each project to fruition, and to circulate information between your teams and the rest of the company. Your role is therefore becoming one of communicator... and influencer.
Identifying the issues at stake for everyone, whether they are employees or managers in your teams, support functions, internal or external customers, or external service providers, is essential if you are to respond to the needs and difficulties of your teams. As a manager's manager, your legitimacy will increasingly come from this.
Your challenge will be to find enough time away from day-to-day interactions to reflect on the strategic objectives, vision and values of your teams.
Show your vision of an effective team
So you're no longer expected to add value through your technical expertise. You undoubtedly manage a multidisciplinary team, but what is your vision of this collective? And how does this vision fit in with the company's strategy and meet its challenges? Developing this vision and creating commitment from your teams are the first steps in leadership.
In conclusion, the failures of managers who have been identified as promising are often due to the fact that they have not fully understood that they need to change their posture, or that they have not succeeded in convincing others to adopt this new posture. Taking the right measure, is to understand the added value of a manager's manager, and the basis of his or her legitimacy. To get through this stage successfully, the support of a professional coach can be useful!
