In this episode of the Irreverent, Bold, Unfiltered leadership podcast, the host addresses two key audiences: (1) individual contributors who have just been promoted to their first management role, and (2) the senior leaders who are sponsoring those promotions. Drawing on the book The Leadership Pipeline, the host outlines the essential mindset shifts and practical skills needed for a successful transition. He stresses the importance of formal development—leadership courses and behavioral assessments—to help new managers understand their own style and how to work with others. A major theme is the need to unlearn old habits, especially the instinct to keep doing the work themselves, and to instead delegate, allow team members to fail, and use those moments as coaching opportunities. The host then enumerates the core management competencies (planning work, setting cadence, defining expectations, running one‑ons, handling handovers, and reporting) and the core leadership competencies (hiring, firing, coaching, motivating, and articulating a clear team vision). He frames the manager’s role as an orchestrator—like a conductor who does not play an instrument but guides the ensemble. Finally, he notes that many organizations no longer provide adequate support for first‑time managers, making sponsorship and deliberate development critical for reducing the high failure rate. The episode ends with a call to action for both new managers and their sponsors to focus on team success over personal achievement.
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Good morning, leaders. Wake up, smell the coffee. It's 6:30 in the morning somewhere in the world. Welcome to the Irreverent, Bold, Unfiltered podcast and videocast about leadership. You want to move your career to the next level? Look nowhere else. You found the right place. Let's get going, shall we? All right, all right, all right. Well, it's been a while. You know, summertime, taking some This well-deserved time off with the family and traveling around the world. But here I am back to discuss a very important topic, which is what does it take? What do I need to know? How do I— how can I help people when they're becoming managers for the first time? So, I would say that this podcast is essentially for 2 populations. The number one population is obviously the people who are becoming managers for the first time after being an individual contributor. But I would add that this is also for any manager, any leader that has somebody that is promoting somebody into management role for the first time, who has a very important role is to make sure that those people are very successful. So, Either you're becoming a manager or you're having somebody in your team that is becoming a manager. I think that this few minutes in front of us will be very helpful. My inspiration, the book behind me, The Leadership Pipeline, very good book that I would highly recommend for people as they move up the management ladder. So first, what is it? So, Individual contributor to manager, usually it happens as a result of one of two things or two things. The first one is either the person and you are good at what you're doing. It's rarely that people are getting promoted for doing a bad job. But also, they demonstrated some leadership skills, traits. And that's a little more subjective, but hopefully, they have been put in a position where those skills have been tested. Okay? So, in that transition, I think there are a couple of requirements. And unfortunately, there is not enough of those requirements that really happen in the real world. The first one is attend yourself or ask your company or you as a manager put those people in the leadership course in the leadership training. I know it sounds old, but it's extremely, extremely useful. And also, I would say something that was very, very common 20, 25, 30 years ago, but it's having a behavioral test. I don't care which one is it, Myers-Briggs, 7 tests, whatever. It doesn't matter. But it helps people understand 2 things. Yeah. who they are and reinforcing who they are. And 2, understanding the other styles. I think that one thing that if I go back in my career that we don't really embrace when we become manager is to understand the various styles and how they accommodate your own style. So, please, leadership course. And behavioral tests. I think those 2 things are pretty important. So, what are the challenges as you become a manager for the first time? As every step in the management ladder, you have to unlearn things. And very often, people forget about that. And you have to learn new things. And there's a lot of focus on the latter, but the former is extremely important. It's as important to try to unlearn things because they're going to be— what made you successful in the past is going to stand in the way of your success moving forward, believe it or not. And, you have to unlearn them and then learn the new skills at the same time. So, what is it that you need to unlearn? Well, you need to unlearn to do things yourself. It sounds easy. It's not because you know how to do it. That's actually the reason essentially that you've been promoted initially. So, you know how to do things. And actually, you're probably better at it than a lot of your teammates. So, as you're getting promoted, it's really hard to not do things. And why is it important is that because there is nothing worse Think about yourself. There's nothing worse when somebody is doing something instead of letting you potentially fail. That's okay. But it is really, really, really for people when they see that. Now, at times, you may want to do it. When you do it, say it. Say, hey, I'm going to take that call from the customer. I'm going to lead that meeting with the customer. I'm taking some sales example here. instead of you, but I'm doing it that you can learn from it. Don't do it all the time just as an excuse. It's like, okay, well, I'm going to say that to the other guy. No. It's like when you do it, then do it not often, then say it and put it in the context of a teaching moment. It's like, okay, well, I'm going to do it, but it's to coach you on something. Think about, in this case, think about big player in a sport who became coach. And actually, there's not a lot of them who were extremely successful. And if you think about those examples of former expert, big player who became a coach, thinking about Kenny Douglas or Zinedine Zidane in soccer or— Yeah. Or Jacques Lemire in hockey and Mike Ditka, for instance, now that I'm thinking about it. They were quite somewhat humble and didn't— they approached the thing slightly differently when they became a coach and were successful. But there's not a lot of them when you think about it. So, when you do it, say it, right? And it's harder than it seems. And my call on anybody who's a manager who has somebody in his or her team that becomes manager for the first time, when you see that, that people are doing the job instead of letting their team doing the right thing, call. Call on them. When they do, call, right? And when you see you doing it, then call yourself on it. Yeah. All right. So, that's what you need to unlearn. You need to unlearn to do what you're best at. That's as hard as it sounds. What is it that you need to learn and things that you need to think about as you move forward? Remember that podcast? Hopefully, you listened to it about management versus leadership. Actually, there are management skills and leadership skills that you have to learn in that very first step. In terms of learning things, the first thing that you need to learn is how to plan work and how to manage a team. That's a process. That's management skills. And that's where I think that management courses are extremely useful to learn about that because it's all— there's a lot of things. And we're going to go back to that because I want to switch to the leadership skills that you need to learn and then we'll go into the details. And it's all about the people management. It's not the leadership, i.e., how do you hire? How do you fire? Believe it or not, those are leadership skills and not management skills and how you coach and motivate. People and team. That's the things that you need to learn. So let's go back to the management skills that you need to learn. Planning work. What's the cadence of my team? What's the discipline? What are my expectations that I need to set for the team? There's nothing worse than a team that don't know what they're expected to deliver. How many one-on-ones? I would recommend at least weekly. What are the formats of the one-to-many, i.e., the team meeting that I want to have? How am I going to manage vacation and overlap and handovers? What are the reporting that I'm expecting as manager? What are the rules and regulations of all team meetings? What are the behaviors that are expected? What good looks like? See the list? It's a huge list. You can put stop, go back 1 minute. It's all the things that you need to learn. And it's teachable very easily in order to manage properly as a first-time manager. In terms of the leadership skills, so I talk about hiring and firing and coaching and motivating. Let's start with the first. Why is it leadership hiring and firing? Well, When you hire, it's all about attracting the right talent for your team. So, you plan, which is much more a management thing, in terms of what do you need for your team. And then, you need to hire to attract internally and externally those people to your team. And I wouldn't use the word selling in terms of, hey, how do you sell those roles? But it's how do you attract? And attraction is a phenomenon that people want to follow you because they're attracted, right? And that's pure, pure leadership, right? So, think about that also on how complementary you want your team to be. Why is performance— why is firing in the leadership skills that you need to learn? Very simple. When you fire somebody, he or she should never be surprised, which means that as you lead people, not as you manage them, as you lead people, they have to understand what good looks like. They have to understand what is it that is acceptable or non-acceptable. And you have to manage and to lead that performance, should it be good or not good. And, as you go through the firing process, wherever there's a big leadership moment is how you're going to help the person to exit unless it's for enormous fault and mistake, which happens from time to time, but just from time to time. You have to make sure that the person is going to be in a position to find a job. That's what you owe them. in that process. And that's leadership. Management is like, okay, you're fired, get out of here. That's managing a firing. That's not leading a firing. And also think about that this is your reputation that goes with the person. Okay. The most important thing, well, one of the most important things in terms of management, especially as a first-time manager, is coaching and motivating people. How do you give feedback? How do you motivate a team? How do you motivate somebody, there are courses and techniques, but it's essentially a leadership skill, right? So, this is the things that you need to learn: planning work, team management, those are management skills, hiring and firing, all the things that are underneath that, and coaching and motivating. Overall, if I have to kind of not sum it up, but to put a wrap around all the things that I've just discussed in terms of the learning things that you need to learn. It's how you give people the vision of what this team is all about and how you're going to get to that vision, how you're going to help them. And it doesn't need to be a full company. It's like even a team of 5 people in a 100,000-employee company has a specific mission. And you have to, based on what you've been asked to deliver, to deliver a vision on how you're going to get there for your team, right? And how you're going to help and support those people, right? It's one of the most complicated. And unfortunately, I think that nowadays companies are not helping as they used to people becoming a manager for the first time. And there is as many failures than there are successes. Although it's actually not simple, but less hard than it seems with the right amount of help and support. So, in summary, think about the things that you need to learn, but also please, please, please think about the things you need to unlearn. You need to unlearn to do things. Now, you're an orchestrator. In an orchestra, the chef is not playing any instrument. Right. is orchestrating. That's the same thing, right? And in terms of what is it that you need to learn, management skills, planning work, team management, in terms of leadership skills, hiring, firing, motivating, and coaching. Never forget one thing. And if you're a manager promoting somebody in that position, let's make sure that they understand that your success is not the success of what you're doing anymore. Right. It's your team's success that becomes your success. In order to be successful as a team, everybody needs to be successful, or at least it needs to be in the majority of success. And no matter how good you are as a person, as an individual, as one person, if the rest, if your team is not successful, you're not successful. So, I hope it has been useful. It's been a relatively short one but for a very important topic. And I see you soon on what does it take to become a manager of managers, second-line manager. On that note, I hope you had a good summer. Knock it out of the park. Everybody's going to come back to work soon and you're going to make a difference. And I wish you a very, very successful second half of the year. Thank you. Bye.
