Fantastic, you have been promoted to manager and you’re proud to lead a team. And now what? When managing a team is new to you, you’ll often have questions like: How do I get my team working towards the same goals and directions? How do I deal with resistance? Why don’t I get the expected result when I ask someone to do something? How do I communicate unpleasant news? How do I keep my team motivated and happy?

Making the shift to leadership from a role as an individual employee is one of the most difficult, if not the most difficult, step in a career. Becoming a good manager not only requires learning new skills, but also a personal transformation. New managers must learn to see themselves and their work differently.

Three important aspects 

This move to a managers role, requires a drastic change in the way you think and act. Often top talents within an organisation get promoted to manager without any good guidance into their new role.
That’s why often leaders fall into well-known pitfalls or they keep functioning the same as before. It’s therefore important for new managers to become aware of important aspects in the transformation to leadership.

These are the three most important ones:

1. Moving from self-management (getting results through your own work) to managing others (getting results through the work of others.);
2. Shifting from personal success to focusing on team results and business accomplishments;
3. Moving from developing “hard skills” to developing “soft” or leadership skills.

Four common pitfalls

During this transformation to leadership there are 4 pitfalls to look out for:

• Delegating too little and doing too much yourself;
• Too much focus on processes and too little on people;
• Too much focus on problems and tasks that you already know and understand.
• Focusing on the wrong people.

Would you like to know more about the transformation to leadership, the pitfalls but also the success factors?
Then please contact us We regularly organise workshops and individual coaching sessions about this this topic and we’re happy to help you!