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How New Managers Become Great Managers

2008-03-11 03:11:34

Editor's Note: Linda Hill's book for the star performer-turned-new-manager,

Becoming a Manager: Mastery of a New Identity appeared a decade ago to much

acclaim. Much of the original book is still fresh today. But a new edition,

Becoming a Manager: How New Managers Master the Challenges of Leadership, adds

chapters and a more prescriptive style to reflect today's world of expanding

globalization, accelerated change, and increased complexity. This excerpt

discusses the importance for young managers to continue to develop as

professionals via wise career choices and self-examination.

Through my research, teaching, and consulting over the past ten years, I have

come to understand more deeply than ever that the best managers are those who

have an appetite for learning and are willing to work on themselves. Management

is very hard; even the most gifted people must commit themselves to lifelong

learning and self-development. In the course of my work, I have had the

privilege of developing teaching materials about many experienced leaders and

their career development. This chapter builds on stories from some of the

talented managers I've encountered who are out there making a difference in

their organizations. We can learn vicariously from their experiences.

Consider the example of one manager who was about to undergo a critical

transition in her career, only four years after first becoming a manager. When

she was about to step into an executive role as senior vice president of

marketing at a nationwide office supplies superstore, she recalled:

I'm not a good example of how to manage your career. I've just been willing to

raise my hand several times for new opportunities. I've taken a lot of what

others would perceive to be career risks, which fortunately have worked

out....1

This manager is much too modest. She is an excellent role model for how to

manage our careers if we hope to move into ever more important managerial

positions. From her story, we see that leadership can be an exciting but

arduous journey of self-development. Over the course of her first years at the

company, she made a series of upward and lateral moves that entailed a number

of tough assignments across many functional areas.

Beginning as the director of regional operations in New England, this manager

had profit and loss responsibility for fifty underperforming stores. Hiring a

strong team of direct reports, she set store standards, instituted training

programs, and rejuvenated performance. Due to her success in operations over

the next two years, this manager received two more challenging assignments.

First, she became director of sales for 150 stores on the east coast, and then,

a year later, she was promoted to vice president and divisional merchandise

manager for furniture and decorative supplies. There she had profit and loss

responsibility for $350 million and twelve people in an area with poor

assortment of merchandise, flat sales, and low direct product profitability.

She and her team turned over 75 percent of the assortment, tripled net direct

product profitability, and increased sales. When she advanced again, she moved

back into the marketing department as senior vice president of small business

and retail marketing. Three years later, based on her performance, she was

appointed president of the company's e-commerce business, a key strategic

initiative for the future success of the company.

The best managers are those who have an appetite for learning and are willing

to work on themselves. This manager, like the other effective leaders I have

studied, is a self-directed learner willing to reinvent herself time and again.

In the pages that follow, I will build on the previous discussion of power to

present a framework for lifelong learning developing a successful managerial

career. I will address four challenges: choosing the right position; getting

off to the right start; landing stretch assignments; and building a network of

developmental relationships. In framing each of these four challenges from the

point of view of the emerging leader, I hope to underscore my belief that

management, especially the leadership functions, cannot be taught. Instead,

managers who want to take on more and more responsibility over the course of

their careers must ask themselves: Am I preparing myself to manage and lead?

How can we learn to manage and lead?

Although some of the qualities of effective management are "innate" or acquired

principally through pre-work socialization (personal integrity, high energy

level, and a drive to lead), much of leadership is learned.2 Management is

primarily learned from on-the-job experiences by doing, observing, and

interacting with others. As unsettling as it is, we have found that the essence

of development is diversity and adversity.3 Warren Bennis, a renowned

leadership expert, has concluded that it is the "crucibles," or tests and

trials, in an individual's life that profoundly shape them as leaders.4 As many

have observed, however, people do not always learn from their experiences.5 To

make meaning from their experiences, managers need to reflect on and

consolidate the lessons of those experiences. To change and grow, they must be

prepared to engage periodically in introspection to collect feedback on and

analyze their behavior, attitudes, and values. The difficulty in remaining

objective about oneself, however, is well documented. There are mechanisms that

keep people from honestly evaluating themselves.6 The more candid feedback that

managers can obtain from varied sources, the more accurate and precise their

assessment will be.

The best assignments from a developmental perspective are ones in which the fit

is imperfect it is a 'stretch'...Indeed, people find it nearly impossible to

accomplish their development alone. To grow and develop, individuals must be

prepared to seek assistance. They must devote time and energy to building a

network of developmental relationships (superior and lateral, internal and

external to the organization). From these developmental relationships (e.g.,

mentors or sponsors), potential managers can better learn from their own

experiences by receiving feedback, advice, and emotional support. These

relationships can be helpful only if the managers are willing to take some

risks, disclose some of their shortcomings, and open themselves to constructive

criticism admittedly a tall order.

Choosing the right position

Establishing a management career begins with choosing the right positions along

the way. Managers should take into account two factors when making decisions

about which job opportunities to pursue: How good is the fit between who they

are and the position (and the organization)? How good is the fit between who

they are and who they want to be? That is, what types of learning opportunities

does the position offer? To the extent that the fit is "perfect" that the

manager has the requisite talents and characteristics (personal values that

match the corporate culture) to do the job the manager will be in a better

position to make an immediate contribution to organizational performance.7

Admittedly, "fit" is subjective, and all too often women or minorities have

been excluded because others have not found them to "fit." One way individuals

have coped with this reality is to hide who they really are or how they really

think until they get a foot in the door. This can be a dangerous tactic. If an

individual's values are not consistent with those of the company, the

compromises demanded may be considerable. Besides, becoming a credible leader

of others when acting out an inauthentic self is very hard.8

The best assignments from a developmental perspective are ones in which the fit

is imperfect it is a "stretch" (in terms of talent, not values). These

assignments are riskier, since the manager is more likely to make mistakes that

might set back his or her career progress or have a negative impact on

organizational performance. But they are also the kinds of assignments from

which managers can acquire new knowledge, skills, perspective, and judgment.

People should look for jobs in which they can leverage initial fit to establish

a self-reinforcing cycle of success whereby, year after year, they acquire more

of the sources of power necessary to be effective and successful. They should

pursue situations in which their strengths are really needed, important

weaknesses are not a serious drawback, and their core values are consistent

with those of the organization; in other words, the stretch should not be too

big or the risk too great.9 Risk should be commensurate with the individual's

ability to cope with and responsibly manage it (for the sake of both the

organization and individual). As a general rule of thumb, the risk is probably

too great if it will take more than six months to progress far enough along the

learning curve to produce meaningful results in a particular job.10

Those early in their careers can glean important self-insight through careful

and systematic introspection.People should seek out diverse experiences to

facilitate and balance their development in multiple areas. This is precisely

what our manager mentioned at the beginning of this chapter did; she rotated

through operations, sales, merchandising, and marketing. Those who are able to

grow beyond their initial strengths and develop a broad repertoire of talents

are more likely to progress in their careers because they have the requisite

abilities to meet the ever-changing demands of their jobs. In this regard,

studies that compare high-potential managers who have "derailed" (become

plateaued or terminated) with high-potential managers who have made it to

senior executive positions are enlightening.11 One characteristic of those who

derail is that initial strengths (e.g., a "hands-on" style or technical

virtuosity) later become "fatal flaws." When faced with new and different

challenges, these managers continue to rely on their initial capabilities, even

when they are no longer sufficient or appropriate. They are unable or unwilling

to develop other complementary capabilities.

In terms of developing leadership talents in particular, it can pay to look for

stretch assignments involving change. Some examples include introducing a new

product or information technology system, revitalizing a mature business, or

starting up a subsidiary in an international market. These sorts of

assignments, almost by definition, require individuals to establish direction,

communicate that direction (vision and strategies) to diverse stakeholders, and

figure out how to motivate the stakeholders to implement the strategies and

fulfill the vision. The more revolutionary as opposed to evolutionary the

change, the more powerful the leadership learning opportunities.

Getting off to the right start

Managers must be aware of their strengths, limitations, motives, and values in

order to make the appropriate trade-offs between fit and learning opportunity

when selecting a position.12 However, they only become aware of who they are

and who they want to become through experience. As they accumulate work

experience, they have an opportunity to make choices and test those choices,

and begin to clarify what they are good at and what is important to them.13

Hence, those early in their careers may have only a vague sense of their

talents, motivations, and values. All too often, they get off to a bad start by

selecting jobs and organizations that simply do not fit their capabilities,

motives, and values very well. Because they are not clear about who they are

and the kinds of jobs to which they are best suited, they are easily seduced by

the money, glamour, or prestige associated with a given job. Some define the

"good" opportunities as those that are popular in the social milieu in which

they find themselves. These individuals end up taking jobs because the jobs are

the popular choice and not because they are excited by the people with whom

they will be spending time or the products or services with which they will be

working. For those in the minority, given the special challenges of building

developmental relationships (discussed below), it is best to pay particular

attention to how comfortable they are with their potential colleagues.

In other instances, people choose jobs that are too demanding for them. Because

they do not fully appreciate their strengths and weaknesses, they get

themselves into situations where they are simply in over their heads. For

example, newly minted MBAs who have never had subordinates reporting to them

before may take jobs in which they will have considerable people management

responsibilities, with little sense of the risk in doing so. Professional

school graduates should be cautious about accepting jobs in highly politicized

environments where only those who are very skillful at handling difficult work

relationships can prosper.

Those early in their careers can glean important self-insight through careful

and systematic introspection. In particular, they should look for pervasive

themes in their past and current experiences that say something about their key

strengths, important limitations, and core values. For example, in trying to

decide whether or not to move into a leadership role, people should ask

themselves the following questions about what kind of work they find most

interesting and fulfilling:

Do I like collaborative work?

Do I tend to become the leader of groups in which I find myself?

Have I ever volunteered to coach or tutor others?

Do I find it intriguing to work on thorny, ambiguous problems?

Do I cope well with stress (e.g., extended hours, tough personal decisions)?

If they cannot answer most of these questions in the affirmative, it may

suggest that they have neither the personal qualities, character, nor

motivation required to be an effective manager.14

If people choose an appropriate position, they will be able to convert their

general competencies into company- and job-specific expertise, develop

relationships, and make a contribution to organizational performance in

relatively short order. Once they begin to make a contribution to

organizational performance (perhaps in a limited way at first), their track

record and credibility in the organization will begin to grow. Therefore,

people will begin to seek them out and be more eager to work with them; in

other words, their network of relationships will grow. Some will be willing to

sponsor and perhaps even mentor them, taking risks on their behalf and

promoting them into stretch assignments. From these assignments, they develop

more expertise and more relationships and therefore are in an even better

position to contribute to key organizational objectives.

Soon, this cycle of success becomes self-reinforcing; their track record and

credibility continue to flourish. As they acquire more power and establish

relationships with a broad range of people, they find themselves holding a more

central position in their network of relationships and thereby they gain even

more power and access to currencies.15 Once they begin to advance, they acquire

more formal authority and can consolidate their power.

See Related Articles

Footnotes:

1. Hill and Doughty (1999).

2. See, for example, McCall (1998).

3. See for example, McCall, Lombardo, and Morrison (1988) or Conger and

Benjamin (1999).

4. Bennis (2002).

5. McCall et al. (1988) and Schon (1983).

6. See for example, Argyris (1991) and Levinson (1992).

7. It is important to avoid an all-too-common pitfall of confusing form (those

who match the images of competence and qualifications) with substance (those

who are truly qualified).

8. Ibarra (2000).

9. Because it is more difficult to change values than attitudes and behaviors,

it is usually recommended that people select positions in organizations whose

cultures basically match their values.

10. If the individual chooses to accept a job in which the risk is indeed

great, it pays to discuss the risks explicitly with superiors and agree on an

action plan in which expectations are clarified as much as possible about what

the individual's goals should be and how he or she can achieve those goals.

11. See for example, Lombardo and McCauley (1988).

12. In choosing a position, people should think broadly about how they define

success, taking into consideration both their work and nonwork values and

goals. Managers today are attending more to the integration of their work,

personal, and family priorities; they are finding it pays to confront early on

their desire for balance between their work and nonwork lives and

organizational expectations about effort and commitment. For insight about how

to think through and manage these issues effectively, see for example Bailyn

(1993) or Hall and Parker (1993).

13. Schein has done much of the seminal research on how people discover and

accept their "career anchor." He identified eight types of career anchors:

security/stability, autonomy/independence, technical/functional, managerial

competence, entrepreneurial creativity, sense of service/dedication to a cause,

pure challenge, and lifestyle. See Schein (1978) or Schein (1987).

14. Many have written about the managerial character or temperament and

motivation required to be a manager. See for example, Hill (1992), McCall

(1998), McClelland (1975), and Schein (1987).

15. Networks are mutually beneficial alliances or exchange relationships based

on the law of reciprocity; that is, "one good (or bad) deed deserves another."

The primary way managers exercise influence and get things done is by providing

resources and services to others in exchange for resources and services they

require. Cohen and Bradford use the metaphor of "currencies" to describe this

process of exchange. As they point out, just as many types of currencies are

traded in the world financial market, many types are "traded" in organizational

life. See for example, Cohen and Bradford (1990). Managers with a broad

repertoire of sources of power are more likely to have access to a variety of

currencies. And managers with more currencies are more likely to have "just the

right one" for building a network with a given person or group on whom they are

dependent.

Reprinted by permission of Harvard Business School Press. Excerpt from Becoming