As I mentioned in my earlier post, The “WHY” for MyManagementMentor, I am actively seeking input from you, the readers of the blog and visitors to this site, about the topics you would like to see covered here. I have a lengthy list of topics that I’ll cover over time, but your opinions will help set the priorities and sequence. To hear your voices, I created a simple survey form.
The survey asks aspiring managers (individuals looking ahead to their first management role) to name 2 or 3 topics they would like to know more about before they start a management job.
The survey asks two questions of people currently in management roles: What do they wish they had known more about before they got into management and what aspects of their work have they found most surprising or challenging.
The survey will remain open indefinitely, so if you haven’t had a chance to provide your input, please do so. It should take no more than 10 minutes to complete.
The Initial Responses Are In
As of January 10, 2020, 18 people have taken the survey. I have reviewed all of the responses. From them, I extracted 50 comments which I organized them into categories as shown on the chart below. It’s no surprise that the broad topic of “People Management” generated the most responses. (More on that below.)
Some of the ideas mentioned in the comments were:
- Delivering Results: Decision making, planning and time management.
- Management Style: Demonstrating integrity and consistency.
- Leadership: Gaining skills and understanding fundamental leadership principles.
- Career Development: Comments spanned the range from preparing to be a manager to moving from manager to director.
- Corporate Politics: General comments about office politics.
- Communication: Managing stakeholders (outside your team) and reporting to senior management. (More on communication within the team under People Management, below.)
- Change Management: Managing large-scale organizational change.
- Financial Management: General comment about needing to know more before starting a management role.
- Corporate: The difficulty faced by people in remote locations to interact with and be included in decisions made by central “corporate” groups.
People Management is a hot topic!
Managing people is the most time consuming, frustrating, important, rewarding and <you insert an adjective here> part of a manager’s job. Over half of the comments from the survey touch on some aspect of managing people. I separated them into several subcategories.
- Working Relationships: Several comments about young managers overseeing older employees. Also comments about understanding personality types and how people respond differently to praise and feedback.
- Communicating: Establishing and maintaining morale, particularly in difficult times, helping people understand how their work fits into the “big picture”.
- Performance Management: Setting expectations, giving feedback, dealing with poor performance.
- Coaching & Development: Assessing ability and coaching for performance.
- Building Trust: How to gain trust, how trust is expressed.
- Problem-Solving: Understanding root causes and taking corrective action.
- Recruiting & Hiring: Knowing when it’s time to add people.
How I Will Use the Results
I am very pleased with the response to the survey and appreciate the thoughtful comments. I will use your input to help prioritize the content I create here, so that the material I publish relates to your top priority concerns. The next blog post will touch on two topics related to managing people – establishing working relationships and managing performance.
Additionally, everyone who completed survey indicated they were willing to talk with me about their responses and I have begun reaching out to individuals to schedule conversations. These discussions will allow me to ask some follow up questions to clarify the ideas and to dig deeper into the topics for more insights.
As noted above, I will keep the survey open indefinitely. If you haven’t had a chance to provide your input, please take 10 minutes to do so now. As new results accumulate, I will update the charts above.
Did any of the results surprise you? If so, please leave a comment below.
And, as always, if you have any other comments, questions or feedback, please let me know by leaving a comment below or by using the Contact Form. I look forward to hearing from you.