Leadership for Managers

Challenges

Lia Garvin’s excellent guide for effective leadership and management features straightforward, solid advice that will support anyone in a position of authority.

She empathizes knowingly with managers who face pressure from numerous demand points. As she recounts, your team members rely on you for all the answers, even in an atmosphere of continual change. You live with constant pressure from your superiors to produce results – and sooner rather than later. Your team often must collaborate with other teams whose members may be busy with their own priorities and struggling to meet deadlines. You must satisfy customers and stakeholders who are pursuing their own interests.

No one is a bad manager on purpose. The reality is, we simply don’t always think about all the things that go into being a good manager.Lia Garvin

This unceasing variety of demands can easily overwhelm new managers. Some people want to manage; they enjoy working with others, leading them, and helping them succeed. But new managers, no matter their motivation, soon realize that the job requires training and comes with its own challenges, such as providing potentially sensitive feedback, counseling dissatisfied employees, and dealing with conflict. 

Managers must motivate their employees to maximize their potential and meet their organization’s expectations. Rookie managers may wrongly assume their staff members will respect and listen to them. Then, when they realize no one is paying attention, new managers may panic, overextend their authority, come down too hard on inattentive team members, and risk alienating their people. Amid the onslaught, Garvin explains how to build a solid relationship with your team – the foundation you need to meet all your other challenges.

Team relationships

Your relationship with your team members depends on your trustworthiness. Employees burned by managerial turnover or previous managers’ broken promises may be skeptical when you say you intend to help them attain their team goals and their career objectives. The way to earn each team member’s trust is to act reliably over the long run. The people on your team will come to trust you when they see that you maintain a steady hand and keep your word. That enables mutual understanding to grow as you and your team work together to create a productive, psychologically safe workplace.

We need trust to delegate effectively, to be comfortable putting our team members up for growth opportunities, to be able to give feedback.Lia Garvin

Your employees should feel comfortable making suggestions or approaching you with their concerns. Employees who know they are working in a secure environment where they can rely on your support won’t be afraid to take chances, try new ideas, or express disagreement.

A results-based approach

Everyone wants to be liked. Managers often avoid difficult conversations with employees because they fear jeopardizing their friendships. Even in such situations, it’s important to provide honest feedback. Feedback can be scary for employees and managers. Begin by emphasizing the positive, and state any negatives tactfully. Always connect your feedback to the team’s goals and expectations and the good of the overall organization. Remember that a lack of candid communication can lead to a toxic environment and undermine the trust you’ve worked so hard to establish.

Garvin confirms that getting to know people well requires spending time with them. Schedule 30-minute meetings weekly or every two weeks. Provide any updates or course corrections. When you first sit down one-on-one, set a casual tone. Learn about each employee’s long-term ambitions and expectations. Help people find growth opportunities within your team or company.

Share information with your staffers before any formal review. Regular feedback before a major review enables people to understand what they do well and where they need to improve. If you maintain regular, productive update meetings, then nothing you have to say in a performance review should shock an employee. 

Managers who fail to set realistic expectations typically end up micro-managing, which is counter-productive. Be alert for employees who might need extra time or repeated information, for example, those who are neurodivergent. If your team includes someone with ADHD or dyslexia, for example, adapt your discussions and your one-on-ones to make sure everyone understands your input and feels like an intrinsic part of the team.

Employees who feel recognized and appreciated become better workers, but the recognition and appreciation you offer must be authentic, heartfelt, and specific. Citing examples of their peers’ accomplishments encourages employees to replicate behavior that has earned your praise.

Delegate

Managers often complain about not having enough time to cover their responsibilities, but they may not be using their time effectively. Too many managers become overly involved with specifics, get caught up in the details of a particular issue, and fail to delegate or coach their employees so they learn to solve their own issues. Managers instinctively want to fix problems. But doing everything yourself deprives your people of opportunities to learn, even as you pile your desk with work and inch closer to burnout.

Managers regularly complain that their meetings and commitments interfere with spending time with their teams or tending to their workload, but they also find delegation challenging. Garvin reassures managers that turning a job over to a team member doesn’t mean you’re abdicating your responsibilities. Instead, you’re leading and teaching. Evaluate each step of a project and determine which jobs – or steps – you can delegate.

Mitigating conflict

From new administrators to experienced managers, every leader wants to avoid conflict, and most hesitate to deal with it. Managers need a careful sense of timing so they don’t become involved in a staff dispute prematurely or mistakenly keep their distance when they should intervene.

We don’t automatically know how to manage just because we’re humans living on planet Earth and have talked to other humans before.Lia Garvin

Learn to approach conflict professionally. Remain impartial as you gather information and seek to understand all facets of the problem and each person’s point of view. If team members fail to internalize your conflict solutions, their recalcitrance is their problem, not yours. Focus your energies on those who want to move beyond a conflict, care about their goals, and demonstrate a willingness to grow and improve.

For New Managers

Lia Garvin’s information is logical, easily accessible, and applicable to the situations new managers face daily. She offers wisdom and reassurance for managers who may feel overwhelmed by a multitude of new responsibilities. An experienced author, Garvin offers a comprehensive overview of the potential difficulties managers can encounter and writes in alignment with her advice. For instance, she advises that a warm, personal, straightforward tone is best for employee communication — and she writes in that tone. Garvin presents her guidance as simple common sense, boosting both its accessibility and her readers’ confidence. And though Garvin aims her manual at new managers, experienced managers will regard her advice as a welcome refresher course.