Not Finished Yet
Nobody Teaches You How to Be a Manager — Even When You've Been Doing It for Years
Congratulations. You've got the job.Maybe it's your first management role.Maybe you've just been given a bigger team or more responsibility.Maybe you've started your own business and suddenly realised that employing people means becoming a manager as well as an entrepreneur.Or perhaps you've stepped into a senior leadership, director or C-suite role where the decisions are bigger, the consequences are greater and the people around you expect something different from you.Whatever the reason, there's a problem.Nobody really teaches you how to manage people.We often promote people because they're good at what they do. They're technically strong, commercially successful, experienced or ambitious.Then one day we give them responsibility for other people and expect them to know how to lead.But the skills that got you the job aren't necessarily the skills you need once you're in it.In this solo episode of Not Finished Yet, Mark Kennedy draws on more than 35 years of experience in business, management and leadership to explore what really happens when your level of responsibility changes.Because this isn't just a conversation for first-time managers.It's for anyone who's reached that point where doing the job yourself is no longer the job.Mark explores the mistakes managers and leaders make at every level: refusing to let go, becoming the bottleneck, believing your way is the only way, avoiding difficult conversations, confusing being busy with actually leading and feeling that, because you're now the boss, you're supposed to have all the answers.The episode explores:• Making the transition from doing to leading• Stepping into your first management position• Taking on a bigger management or leadership role• Becoming a business owner and employing people• Moving into senior management, director or C-suite leadership• Why being great at your old job doesn't automatically make you a great manager• Delegating without losing accountability• Why experienced managers can still become bottlenecks• Managing people who think and work differently from you• Having difficult conversations before problems become bigger• Creating people who make decisions rather than constantly asking permission• Why saying "I don't know" can make you a stronger leader• Building trust and accountability• Creating a culture where people are prepared to tell you the truth• Understanding that leadership changes as your responsibilities growAnd perhaps the biggest lesson of all:Every time you move up, your job changes.What made you successful as an employee may not make you successful as a manager.What made you successful managing five people may not work when you're managing fifty.And what made you a successful manager may not be what you need when you become a business owner, director or CEO.Mark finishes with the Not Finished Yet Test — five uncomfortable questions for anyone responsible for other people, including:What is it actually like to be managed by me?Whether you've just been promoted, started employing people, taken responsibility for a larger team or stepped into the C-suite, management isn't something you master once and then forget about.You have to keep learning.Because the higher you go, the less your success is about what you can do — and the more it becomes about what you enable other people to do.You're not finished yet.#managertips #managertips #managment
