Help! I Have Been Promoted...Now What Do I Do?

HELP! I have been promoted…

Now what do I do?

by

Helmut W. Horchler

This book is a work of non-fiction. Unless otherwise noted, the author and the publisher make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and in some cases, names of people and places have been altered to protect their privacy.

© 2005 Helmut W. Horchler. All Rights Reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

First published by AuthorHouse 06/28/05

ISBN: 1-4208-5520-4 (sc)

ISBN: 1-4208-5519-0 (dj)

ISBN: 978-1-4634-8855-0 (ebk)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2005904322

Printed in the United States of America

Bloomington, Indiana

Contents

PREFACE

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER I

Gathering Information

A. Getting Started

B. Talking to People

1. The General Manager

2. Your New Supervisor

3. Your New Subordinates

4. Your Predecessor

5. The Finance Manager

6. The Human Resource Manager

7. Other Managers

8. The Customer

C. Conclusion

CHAPTER II

Planning

A. Necessity

B. The Fundamentals of Any Plan

1. Statement of Facts/Situation Analysis

2. Problems and Opportunities

3. Strategies and Tactics

4. Budget/Resources

5. Review and Control

C. Summary Comments

CHAPTER III

Staffing

A. Recruiting

B. The Interviewing Process

C. Finding the Right People

1. Essential Characteristics

2. Desirable Characteristics

3. Essential Skills/Background

4. Desirable Skills/Background

5. Recommendations/Considerations

D. Evaluating Candidates/The Interview

E. Retaining Employees

F. Compensation

1. Aspects

2. Considerations

3. Methodology

4. Other Compensation

G. Termination

1. For Cause

2. Redundancy

3. Performance-Related

4. Personality Conflicts

5. Wrong Person

6. Recommendations/Considerations

CHAPTER IV

Motivation

A. Aspects

1. Trust

2. Support

3. Responsiveness

4. Respect

5. Financial Considerations

6. Power

7. Loyalty

8. Communication

9. Titles

B. Motivating the Non-promotable

C. Conclusion

CHAPTER V

Evaluating Performance

A. Ongoing/Informal

B. Formal

1. Considerations

2. Criteria

3. Overall Performance Evaluation

4. Development Progress

5. The Future

6. Grading System

7. Timing

C. Self-evaluation

D. The Performance Review

1. Avoiding No Win Situations

2. Saving Face

3. Reconciling Differences

CHAPTER VI

Modifying Your Behavior

A. Negative Behavior

B. How Others See You/How You See Yourself

1. Informal Feedback

2. DiSC Profiling

3. Behavior and Style

4. Formal Feedback

5. 360-Degree Feedback

6. The Questionnaire

C. Changing Your Behavior

CHAPTER VII

Importance of Corporate/Company Culture

A. Why It Is Important

B. What Is It?

1. Climate

2. Atmosphere

3. Environment

C. What Does This Have to Do With Me?

D. What Determines It?

1. Uncontrollable Factors

2. Partially Controllable Factors

3. Controllable Factors

E. Conclusion

CHAPTER VIII

Practical Philosophies/Proverbs

A. Philosophies

1. Self-fulfilling Prophecy

2. Regrets

3. Trusting People

4. If You Cannot Change It, Accept It

5. Cluttered Desk—Cluttered Mind

6. Do Not Assume; Do Not Take For Granted

7. Making Mistakes Is Normal

8. Be True To What You Believe In

9. Giving Credit Where Credit Is Due

10. If You Have Nothing Nice to Say …

11. If You Don’t Know Where You Are Going…

B. Proverbs

1. Don’t Count Your Chickens Before They Are Hatched

2. The Early Bird Gets the Worm

3. Time Waits for No Man

4. Putting the Cart Before the Horse

5. Trust Is Good; Control Is Better

6. All Work and No Play …

7. If It Is Worth Doing, It Is Worth Doing Well

CHAPTER IX

Points to Ponder

A. Management Style

B. Managing Your Boss

C. Communications

1. Written Communication

2. E-mailing

3. Clichés

D. Commitment to Service

E. Walking the Talk

F. Financial Acumen

G. Materials Management

H. Mistakes to Avoid

CHAPTER X

Leading: More Than Managing

A. Introduction

B. Leading Versus Managing

C. Leadership Qualifications

1. Charisma

2. Vision

3. Recognizing/Identifying Talent

D. Traits

1. Imagination

2. Problem Diagnosis

3. Common Sense

4. Coping with Change

5. Decisiveness

E. Creativity

F. Skills

1. Interpersonal Skills

2. Strategic Thinking

3. Responsibility/Accountability

4. Courage of Conviction

5. Negotiating

G. Summary

CHAPTER XI

Critical Success Factors for a Career

1. Assume Total Responsibility

2. Ask Questions

3. Challenge the Status Quo

4. Learn from the Mistakes of Others

5. Share the Knowledge

6. Keep Your Promises

7. Work Hard and Effectively

8. Pay the Price

9. Exercise Leadership

10. Exhibit Integrity

11. Prove Responsiveness

12. Demonstrate Loyalty and Supportiveness

13. Show Self-confidence

14. Be Service Oriented and Customer Focused

15. Make Presentations

16. Stay Out of Politics

17. Have Fun

Disclaimer

The publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information with regard to the subject matter covered. It represents solely the opinion of the author. Professional, competent service and advice should be sought if expert assistance is required in legal or other matters.

Dedication

This book is dedicated with love to my wife, Reinhilde, for her unqualified support, dedication, and understanding throughout the years.

PREFACE

A sales representative in Thailand was driving me back to my hotel one evening when she suddenly turned to me and asked: Boss, can you teach me how to become a manager?

I was startled. I kept the immediate, facetious response to myself (Sure, I was tempted to say. Right now? On the way back to the hotel? Or do you have a couple of hours’ time tomorrow?), one glance at her face telling me she was serious.

She had been asked to become a sales supervisor, it turned out, for an area outside Bangkok, with four of her current colleagues reporting to her. She was excited, thrilled at the promotion, and probably most of all scared. She wanted to become at least as good a supervisor as she had been a sales representative. She knew the job would be different and much more difficult than what she was used to, and she wanted to be prepared. No special training had been offered to her, nor was it likely to be, based on the size of her company and available resources.

I wanted to help her, but how? Her question alone revealed the depth of her inexperience and management innocence. I could not very well spend a couple of years working closely with her, mentoring her, lecturing and instructing her. She needed help NOW.

This, then, was the genesis of this book, written specifically for the person who must suddenly learn to supervise or manage a group of people for the very first time and is ill prepared for this challenging assignment. It is a tool for the novitiate, no more, no less, on how to get started with managing people. May the faithful reader be successful!

INTRODUCTION

Congratulations on your promotion to manager! your boss tells you one day, and you feel justly proud of having achieved this dream, this milestone in your career to which so many aspire and at which relatively few will really become very good. For the first time in your life you are in charge of other employees and are expected to successfully manage them.

Great! Now what? Where do you begin? How do you actually go about managing?

This book will answer these questions. It will get you started on a—hopefully—long and rewarding career. It covers all fundamentals of the art of managing, and includes in logical sequence the many aspects of what you will need to do and learn, on a daily basis, for your new assignment. Going beyond just managing, it also addresses such issues as leadership, behavioral changes, company culture, and critical success factors for your long term career.

While neither this nor any other book nor training course can be a complete substitute for personal experience, it will allow you to avoid mistakes, bring you more quickly up the learning curve of your management path, and guide you in an easily understandable fashion during those initial, critical months of having to manage people for the first time.

Numerous real life examples throughout the book turn theories into every day practical experiences.

Without understanding and following the basic management guidelines and principles described in this book, the softer and more complex issue of leading will elude you. As you learn to master the technical aspects of managing, your latent leadership abilities will emerge and develop.

Please note that throughout this book, the words supervisor and manager are often used interchangeably, since both titles are used by companies to designate their first line of managers—the lowest level of supervision.

Secondly, this book applies—obviously—equally to men and women. While the pronoun he is used predominantly for the sake of simplicity, a he/she designation is used periodically to remind the reader that both pronouns may be appropriate, and no disrespect for either gender is meant or implied.

CHAPTER I

Gathering Information

You might hope that your professional life would be so simple that by merely spending a couple of hours or days reading a book on how to become a manager, you will become a good one. But that is not to be. As with so many professions, there is no substitute for practical experience. There is no shortcut to gaining essential experience. While some learn more quickly than others, no one has ever been born as a good, experienced manager. Everyone has had to make mistakes and to learn from them.

What a book can show you, however, is how to get started and how to avoid common mistakes. To that end, a little time taken to read about some fundamentals and practical guidelines is time well spent. The relatively few hours you will need to go through this book will eventually save you countless hours and days in getting up the learning curve, and surviving those first critical months as a new manager.

You may already feel that with your recent promotion, you have so much to do that there is not enough time available to go through these eleven chapters, but you would be wrong. This is, in fact, your first lesson: Set priorities (reading this book being the first one), and then take the time you need to study this material. You will not regret it.

A. Getting Started

The very first thing you need to do—if you are being promoted from within, possibly even before your promotion becomes effective—is to talk to people. Talk to them, ask questions, and listen carefully to what they have to tell you. Not everything you hear will be what you want to hear. Sometimes, what people do not tell you is as important as what they do say, and this is something you need to look for: the information that is being withheld. They may not volunteer all that they know, but will instead respond only to your question exactly as asked without adding what you really wanted to learn but did not get across in your question.

Chances are, however, that you will hear more than you wanted to, and the flood of information cascading over you can be confusing and intimidating. You will need to determine what is actually important, and what only appears to be so. This means you will need time to digest and assimilate what you learn, and you must then determine what you want to retain, when and with whom to follow up for additional insights and perspectives, and what conclusions to reach.

It is good to remember that people make mistakes. Identify such mistakes from your discussions and learn from them. A mistake already made by someone else is a mistake you can and should avoid. Be open-minded. Listen without passing vocal judgment. Reserve that for yourself in your subsequent moments of introspection. Give yourself time. Do not jump to immediate conclusions. Keep copious notes to which you can refer later, and take the notes before everything becomes a blur. Do not talk to too many people in one day, or you may not remember at the end of the day who told you what, and yet this can be very important, since different sources can well provide different insights on the same subject.

Some sources tend to be more reliable than others, and carry more weight. Nearly everyone will have their own vested interests. Some may resent you or your promotion, feeling that they should have been advanced instead of you. Some may want to ingratiate themselves with you: Be cautious of the individuals who are excessively nice to you, ones who compliment you too much, or who appear to be unnecessarily eager to please you. Some may be pursuing their own agenda; try to find out what it may be.

If indeed you have been promoted from within your own company, your task of gathering information should be made easier by the fact that you already know most of the people you need to speak with. But keep in mind that you may know someone as a colleague or friend—not as a subordinate or peer. The new relationships can change things rather dramatically. The resentments mentioned earlier can take on a larger role. It is not always easy to suddenly have to accept a colleague or a friend as a new supervisor or subordinate or peer, and this change in status tends to cut both ways.

You have known your new subordinates in another context. They have known you in another context as well. This is a difficult transition for everyone. You do not want to terminate your previous friendships on one hand, and yet you also must clearly establish the bounds of your new relationship on the other. You are the boss now, and no longer the buddy they worked with before. Any socializing you might have done is bound to change or stop entirely, and this too will be hard to understand. You may suddenly be perceived as aloof, or as acting too superior for them.

For some of these very human and naturally to be expected stresses, only time will be able to resolve them. But open communications, the solicitation of information, and seeking their input and insights will definitely speed up the process and will accelerate their support and cooperation.

If you are assuming your first supervisory/management position with a new employer, nearly all that has been said here will apply to you as well. Timing is different, of course, since you most likely will not have access to the people you need to speak with prior to commencing your new employment.

The key difference, however, will be that you do not know any of the people with whom you will be working. This can be advantageous. You will be coming in for your subordinates as their new boss. There are no previous relationships that need changing; no personal histories that have to be addressed. And yet, resentments may still smolder about an outsider coming into the organization for a job others feel they were qualified for and deserving of.

The biggest advantage of coming in new is that there should be no deep-rooted existing biases that have to be overcome first. You are starting with a clean slate, and you have a more level playing field.

B. Talking to People

The individuals with whom you need to speak will vary depending on the size of the organization, how long you have been there, and how well you know—or think you know—the people with whom you will have to work. It will also depend on your supervisor, your subordinates, and perhaps most of all on the nature of your new job. Irrespective of these variables, however, you must speak with:

The General Manager

Your new boss

Your subordinates

Your predecessor (if possible)

The Human Resource, Finance, and other managers

Customers

If the functions exist, it would also be advisable to have meetings with IT, Distribution/Materials Management, the Office/Administration Manager, peers in a similar position as yours, Sales and Marketing, and anyone you will have to work with in your new job. Better to speak with one too many than to omit someone.

The order in which you approach these individuals, apart from the General Manager, is less important than getting them to open up with you. For this to happen, a venue outside the formal office environment may well be more conducive to a productive dialogue—perhaps a lunch, an after-work drink, a quiet cup of coffee or tea somewhere—whatever makes your discussion partner feel at ease and more relaxed than he would be sitting across a desk from you.

As a matter of courtesy, it is suggested that you first meet with the General Manager, after you have advised your new supervisor of your desire to do so, and after telling him what you intend to discuss with the General Manager. Your boss may want to join you. This is obviously his prerogative, and you should not attempt to block his participation. It is a part of keeping everyone involved and in the loop.

1. The General Manager

It is difficult to predict how approachable or accessible your General Manager might be. If you do not know him personally, ask others in the organization about him. Check with his secretary or administrative assistant, who most likely knows him better than anyone else. Regardless of his attitude, there are some things he will enjoy talking about and that are important for you to understand.

It may be obvious, but is worth being reminded of, that when you see him you should first express your thanks and appreciation to him for your promotion (or for having been hired into your position, as the case may be). Assure him that you will work hard and are determined to do well and to contribute in any way you can to the success of the company. Be courteous at all times without coming across as being servile.

A partial list of questions you could then ask him includes:

black.jpg What are the key short-, medium-, and long-term goals of the company?

black.jpg What is his vision for the future?

black.jpg What does he expect from his management team and all employees?

black.jpg What is there in particular that he expects from you?

black.jpg What specific problem areas might he be aware of relating to your new position?

black.jpg What is his strategic view of the business and the competitive environment?

black.jpg What would he like to have changed in the company if he could?

black.jpg What is his philosophy on promotions and people development?

black.jpg What new products are coming down the line that he can already discuss/share with you?

By asking him as many of these questions as is possible or seems appropriate, you show him that you are interested in the broader aspects of the business, and not just your own area of responsibility. Be sure to phrase your questions so they are open-ended and non-aggressive to avoid putting him on the spot or into an embarrassing situation. Do not push if he obviously does not want to, or cannot, answer. Respond to his answers with relevant follow-up questions if time permits. Try to establish a dialogue without appearing to be nosy.

Be alert to signals that indicate he wishes to bring the discussion to an end. Do not overstay your welcome. His time is precious and limited.

And finally, do not neglect to thank him for the time he made available to you. Express your appreciation for the sharing of information.

2. Your New Supervisor

There are distinct advantages and disadvantages about putting your new supervisor next on the list of people with whom to meet. Offhand, common courtesy demands it, but a lot of issues and questions will most certainly come up in your discussions with others. Issues and questions that you will probably want to or should review with your boss. You may also already know him quite well, and any number of subjects that you need to have clarified before you begin your new assignment may already have been covered in the interview process leading up to your promotion or new position. It’s also possible that you were simply promoted because the people having to make or approve that decision felt that they knew you well enough without having to undergo a formal interview process. You might have been tapped for the new assignment based on your track record and what management has seen of you in your previous job assignment.

Whether you went through the interview process or not may determine when you should seek out your supervisor. It may be appropriate to have an initial meeting with him to outline your plan to meet with others