So Now You’re a Manager: Embracing my first leadership role
I’ve thought about being in a formal leadership role for a long time. I even remember one of the first conversations I had with a team lead about what I wanted to do in my career.
He’d asked me, “So what do you think you want to do in a few years?”
“I want to be a manager!” I replied enthusiastically (if not naively).
“Why is that?” He asked
“Because I care for people and I love mentoring!”
Looking back on that conversation, I realized how I must have sounded to my team lead.
I had no concept of budgets, working collaboratively with other departments, or even what it looks like to have to fire someone (let alone place them on a PIP). All I knew is that I thought myself a pretty good mentor, cared about the folks I worked with, and that should suffice — I could pick up whatever else I needed to know (like budgeting, collaborating, and having hard conversations). Put simply, I had no idea what I was getting myself into.
It’s been a decade since I had that conversation and I’ve had a number of leaders and managers since then. Some bad, a few really great ones, and a whole host of them that fill in the spectrum between those two points.
As a new manager, the last thing I want is to have someone tell me “You’re pretty bad at this.” So my hope is that by chronicling my experience as a new manager, I can avoid having that happen.
I also want to use this space as a means of reflecting on my journey as a manager and use those reflections to hone this newfound craft of being a leader and apply those to my particular niche in tech: Supporting customers.
My hope is that you’ll join me as I learn how to be a leader and if nothing else, maybe learn from my mistakes.
Cheers,
Aaron
