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Leadership Guide: Everything First Time Managers Need to Know
A promotion to a management position is a big step in your career.
While this is an exciting time, it’s also full of uncertainties and nerves.
But, before you get too overwhelmed by new processes and more responsibilities, take a step back and check out this complete management guide.
In this guide, I provide you with everything you need to know to excel in your new management position.
I recommend that you save this article so that you can reference it throughout your management journey for quick, expert tips to help you navigate your new position.
You’ll learn everything a high-performing team leader needs to know.
This article will cover:
Table of Contents:
A Manager's Guide to Emotional Intelligence
Expertise in emotional intelligence enables leaders to understand better and motivate people who follow them.
Emotional intelligence can do wonders for the productivity, performance, and management of team members and profitability for the business overall.
When we think about emotional intelligence (EQ), we think of sensitivity, likeability, sympathy, or sociability. But emotional intelligence is much broader than that.
According to Daniel Goleman, emotional intelligence comprises of five components including, empathy, internal motivation, self-awareness, sociability, and self-regulation.
Empathy is having the ability to identify and relate with others while understanding the position they’re coming from. It allows you to understand the challenges and motivations your employees face.
Internal motivation is the drive to achieve goals for personal reasons instead of external rewards. It’s an essential factor as it fuels curiosity and self-improvement.
Self-awareness is merely understanding yourself, which is critical in achieving high EQ because you must first understand yourself to understand others.
Sociability relates to your social skills and your ability to manage professional relationships successfully. Having high sociability contributes to high EQ as this skill allows you to cooperate and communicate effectively in a group setting.
The last component of emotional intelligence is self-regulation, which is your ability to process your emotions and control your response. Having control over your emotions is a crucial component of EQ because it allows you to handle even the most stressful situations calmly.
There are three steps you can take to improving emotional intelligence:
1. Recognize and Name Your Emotions
A critical complement to effective EQ is understanding emotions, which starts with understanding your own. Allow yourself time to reflect on how you feel in various scenarios. Self-reflection will give you a better handle on the emotions you feel and how to handle them.
2. Ask For Feedback
EQ isn’t just about how you see yourself; it’s about how others see you too. Those with high EQ know exactly how they present themselves in social contacts, and the best way to learn this skill is to ask.
Start by asking family and friends how they perceive you and note where the gaps are between how you mean to come across and how others see you. Slowly work towards having an equal self and outward perception of yourself.
3. Read Literature With Complex Characters
Empathy is a central element of EQ, and it requires an understanding of others' experiences. When you read stories about other people’s perspectives, you gain insight into others’ thoughts, motivations, and feelings, which improves your overall social awareness.
Understanding the importance of emotional intelligence and how to improve it is critical to becoming a high-performing manager as it is the key component of great leadership.
Daniel Goleman found that of the three abilities of technical, cognitive, and emotional intelligence, emotional intelligence proved to be 2x more important than any other skill for successful leadership.
To learn more about the importance of emotional intelligence in quality leadership, check out my article, A Manager’s Guide to Improving Emotional Intelligence at Work.
Understanding and Managing Different Personalities in the Workplace
Understanding and managing different personalities at work is a vital skill to creating a high-performing team.
By understanding your team's different personalities, you will learn how to work effectively with each of the individuals, mastering how to energize and communicate with them and bring them together as a high-performing team.
The best way to understand your team’s various personalities is through using the DISC personality tool.
DISC creates a categorical understanding of typical patterns of behaviours and emotions of individuals.
It will help you recognize behaviour patterns in each of your teammates, helping you communicate and interact with them more effectively.
It’s important to remember that DISC is a tool to help you communicate better with your team members. IT IS NOT a measure of intelligence, skills, experience, education, or a values indicator.
Under the DISC model, you’ll see four different personality types, dominant, influential, steady, and conscientiousness.
While people are a combination of various aspects of each dimension, they have one dominant dimension that distinguishes them and their interactions.
Ds are fast-paced individuals who like to get things done. They’re good at thinking outside of the box and are recognized for their outgoing nature.
It’s best to give Ds freedom to set their own goals to give them a sense of control.
Is love people and are energetic, enthusiastic, and friendly individuals. They’re often the team cheerleaders and are naturally creative problem solvers.
Is react best to managers who are positive, upbeat, and enthusiastic in their communication.
Ss are dependable and great team players. They thrive in a harmonious and cooperative environment and are most productive with a regular schedule.
Cs are systematic and precise. They’re good planners and tend to provide reality checks for the team.
When working with Cs, always provide them detailed instructions and give them as much time as you can to complete their task.
To learn more about communicating and interacting with the different DISC personalities, check out my article, Four Employee Personality Types: Understanding and Managing Different Personalities in the Workplace.
How to Deal With Difficult Employees
Dealing with problematic teammates is no easy task, but the best way to deal with them is to learn how to effectively coach them.
Here is a list of the four types of difficult employees you’ll run into in the workplace and how to coach them effectively.
1. Coaching the Argumentative Employee
We all know that person who loves to argue just for the sake of it.
However, most often, an argumentative person is just someone’s defense mechanism to a negative environment.
The best way to coach an argumentative employee is to remember not to take things personally and not get caught up in an argument with them.
Argumentative people are not acting that way because of something you’ve done. They’re just using their anger as an expression of frustration and unhappiness.
Have a one-on-one session with this employee to get to the bottom of what’s going on.
Sit down and listen to their side of the story, but whenever you see a debate brewing try to steer the conversation in a different direction.
Listen to their perspective and let them provide feedback as this will allow them to feel heard.
2. Coaching An Immature Employee
As a professional, it can be overly difficult to deal with an immature individual. All you want to do is tell them to ‘grow-up,’ but this will only cause more problems.
Instead, I recommend that you develop a professional process for dealing with immaturity in the workplace.
Start by setting clear boundaries. Encourage mature behaviour and punish immature behaviour. For example, if an employee makes an immature joke in a meeting, tell them so.
When an employee is acting immaturely, don’t be afraid to call them out on it. Show them how their actions impact the business. For example, if they goof off around clients, you may lose sales.
Always reinforce excellence and demand accountability. When employees have high expectations of themselves, they’re less likely to waste time. You can work on raising your team’s standards by rewarding excellence.
Finally, allow an immature employee to develop. Start by slowly increasing the employee’s responsibilities and encourage them throughout the process.
3. Coaching a Disengaged Employee
Disengaged employees often feel disconnected from their work and the business. They feel they have no impact, and their work makes no difference.
The best way to actively engage team members is to ensure they have meaningful goals at work, encourage them to solve problems, and set clear and attainable work goals.
Remind your employees that their work matters by giving them tangible examples of the difference their work has made to the organization, and be sure to thank your employees for their hard work.
4. Coaching a Negative Employee
Negative team members can be incredibly hard to work with because they tend to drain the joy and positivity out of everything you do.
Create a one-on-one meeting with this employee and try to get to the root of the problem. Sometimes something personal will bring people down at work. Make sure to offer your support if this is the case.
Help the employee understand that their mood affects others. Share with them an example of when they were negative and how it affected the team’s morale and help them see what an alternative silver lining would have looked like.
To learn more coaching conversations you can have with your employees and other tips and tricks for dealing with difficult individuals, read my article, How to Deal with Difficult Employees as A New Manager.
The Right Way to Fire Someone
Whether you’re firing or getting fired, the process sucks for both parties.
However, by remaining professional and leading with emotional intelligence (EQ) throughout the entire process, you’ll make these difficult conversations move along much more smoothly.
To lead with EQ when firing someone, you must remain understanding and compassionate. Be open to feedback and prepared to listen.
Remaining professional means remembering the legal considerations when firing someone. For example:
❌ Don't let them take company property.
✅ Do ensure they no longer have access to business systems.
❌ Don't allow the employee access to the former office area or coworker.
✅ Do have prepared documentation at the meeting.
Then, once the firing process is over, be efficient in informing your team of the decision.
You’ll want to be direct and straight-forward with your team being sure to leave all personal details aside to avoid the creation of water-cooler gossip.
Finally, focus on the future after employee termination.
Starting fresh with a new employee will be an exciting time for your team, so use the momentum to keep moving forward in a positive direction.
For more information on how to properly fire someone, I recommend reading my full article, The Right Way to Fire Someone.
Now that you have mastered how to manage conflict - what is your plan of action for making an impact with your team?
Now that you have mastered how to create an environment of empowerment via the 3-P's - what is your plan of action for making an impact with your team?
Developing Your Communication, Empathy and Emotional Intelligence skills is start. What is your plan of action for implementing your learnings within your your team?
Now that you understand the differences in these titles - what is your plan of action for what you learned?
Assessing your team's behaviors is a start - but do you have a plan of action for the results?
Now that you have mastered the art of decision making - what is your plan of action for making an impact with your team?
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A DISC Behavior Assessment is the best way to understand your team's personalities.
Each DISC Assessment includes a Self Assessment and DISC Style evaluation worksheet
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