“You are the new manager”, it’s a piece of good news but the bad news is that new managers are bound to mess. People will suddenly expect more from you. You will be having no option to be uncertain or indecisive. From hiring the wrong people to failing to get people working, you’ll have it all in your journey.

Of course, nobody is born leader. You learn from the mistakes. But there are a few things that you should know before you step into the new role. To get off on the right foot, here are some things you should keep in mind.

1. What’s your philosophy?

To be effective as a leader follow what Voltaire, one of the greatest thinkers, said, “Stand upright, speak thy thoughts, declare The truth thou hast, that all may share; Be bold, proclaim it everywhere: They only live who dare.”

When you are managing people, you definitely don’t automatically become a leader, but both are about getting the right followership. Firstly, I’d recommend any new manager to think about your leadership philosophy. You feel empowered because you now have people who will work for you or are you excited about helping others reach the same place? Here are some key components that will determine your philosophy:

Theory — How you define leadership and what it is about

— How you define leadership and what it is about Attitude — What’s your mindset in regards to leadership

— What’s your mindset in regards to leadership Principle — The values you hold important

— The values you hold important Behavior — Your behavior to reach the desired result

2. Get along well with a project planning tool

The manager has a complex role — formulate team objectives, manage teamwork, monitor the needs and many more. And a new manager may feel stuck while organizing all the moving pieces into one coherent plan. A project planning tool that can help project managers cross essential project planning milestones with ease organizing all the moving pieces into one coherent plan.

ProofHub entails a number of features that helps you work with teams of all sizes when it comes to project planning. It sets a basis for project management life cycle. ProofHub caters to the requirements of a manager to plan, execute, and control all aspects of the project.

Why should you invest in ProofHub (planning tool)?

Plan in minutes

Keep better schedules

Work delegation easier

Optimized decision making

Delivering work faster

Track progress accurately

Make working on projects simpler, easier and faster. Try ProofHub!

3. Stop treating your employees like sheep, stop the micromanagement!

Let’s say you tell a team to complete a task. In the usual case, a manager just assigns the job, asks for the needs, and then leaves the team to complete the job. In between, a manager talks to discuss things without interfering with the work directly. But if you watch your team’s every move, picking out every mistake or ask them for progress reports, you probably will be micromanaging them.

Micromanaging is not only annoying but can be damaging. For new managers, one of the biggest challenges will be to learn how to properly delegate. If you’ll be not able to delegate, you will micromanage, leading to a team that is distrusted. Here’s how you can delegate and stop micromanaging.

Manage expectations, not tasks (what needs to be done is different from what is expected).

Forget minutiae, focus on results because, in the end, it is about outcomes and not activity.

Allow honest dialogue among all team members.

Diagnose together then share your thoughts.

Ask employees how this wish to be managed.

Focus on the activities that only you can do.

Trust your teams that they can do the job as well as they would do.

Create transparency in project management (ProofHub’s task management tool brings clarity in work and is a transparent way to assign tasks to teams).

Give your team more responsibility.

4. No critical feedback on people’s emotions. Focus on impact.

The emotional responses of your employees can have a huge effect on your business. Their mood can lead to more toxic or more productive environment. Emotions affect employee satisfaction and experience. You can never ignore the role of emotions in the workplace but just focus on things when giving critical feedback. Develop the emotional intelligence of your employees.

Is it possible to create emotionally intelligent teams? Here’s how:

First, work on building your own personal emotional intelligence by cultivating self-awareness, effective communication, emotional management, conflict resolution, and many more.

Get to know your team members’ strengths and weakness.

Spark passion in your team members always by recognizing their accomplishments, having a flexible work environment, etc.

Set rules that connect to your values.

Develop creative ways to handle situations such as deadlines and grievances.

5. Always dig for reasons to applaud. Never scratch for excuses to gossip.

This is from the quote by the great American author Og Mandino, “Always will I dig for reasons to applaud; never will I scratch for excuses to gossip. When I am tempted to criticize I will bite my tongue; when I am moved to praise I will shout from the rooftops.”

Send an announcement around about how happy you are with their performance, and everyone will go home with happy hearts and motivation. But if you just gossip about them, they will never want to come back to the office with a happy heart.

Hold a meeting to talk about their great achievements, to inspire them.

If you are going to talk about someone’s mistakes, start with your own mistakes first.

Be a good listener.

Ask them for two things you could improve and leave them with one thing you love about their work.

It will never be easy being a manager but you can be one successful manager if you start it right. So, best of luck to you!

Author Bio:

Sandeep Kashyap is the Founder and CEO of ProofHub — a leading project management and collaboration software. He’s one person always on a lookout for innovative ideas about filling the communication gap between groups, teams, and organizations. You’ll find him saying, “Let’s go!” instead of “Go!” many times a day. That’s what makes him write about leadership in a way people are inspired to dream more, learn more, do more, and become more.

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