Congrats on Your Promotion! ...Now What?
If you're taking your first role as a manager, this post is for you. It's a collection of observations and thoughts to help you navigate this awesome transition. Your promotion is a big career win, but it can be a little bit fraught - let's talk about what you need to have in your pocket.
Full Disclosure: I’m not a manager
It might feel a little disingenuous for me to give opinions... but here's why I think I should:
As a manager, the dynamic between you and your team changes instantly. I have watched it be absolutely jarring to first-time managers, and I want to provide some honesty and encouragement. So my playbook is about staying grounded - you'll feel pressures to change, but most of your team wishes that you were still one of them! These are the reminders that will keep you connected to your team.
The First-Time Manager Trapdoors
Let's rip the bandage off: what are some things that are going to mess with your brain as you make the change?
You can’t “just do it yourself” anymore. When you were one of us in the Individual Contributor (IC) community, your instincts were to jump in and get stuff done. “It’s faster if I just fix it.”
As a manager, though, doing that will steal growth from your team! You developed those instincts from time on the front lines - you need to consciously allow your team to have that experience-building time rather than jumping in to save the day.
You’re now judged on team outcomes, not personal output. I'm not telling you anything you don't know, but I've seen lots of managers struggle without the occasional reminder:
Your performance review is suddenly about other people’s work.
You win when they win. Plan accordingly.
The job is now mostly… conversation. You're not being left alone to build the next big whiz-bang feature... your focus has changed. Instead of living in your code editor, you're doing...
- 1:1s
- Alignment meetings
- Negotiation
- Coaching
Managing people is a completely different set of skills. What got you here isn't going to get you there.
You're now the emotional shock absorber. Get ready for the fun...
Team fear, frustration, burnout, conflict? They bring it to you now. You have to stay calm even when you don’t feel calm... because your team will feed off your energy. I've seen an angry manager wreck the whole team's day... just by doing the perfectly natural thing and expressing themselves. As a manager, you provide the poise.
Things Nobody Tells You (But You Really Need to Know)
You must create clarity that doesn’t exist.
Managers often assume “leadership tells me what to do”. Because as ICs, we've all been used to that. Think about it though: unless your leadership is a bunch of micromanagers (and we surely hope they aren't, that's the worst!), the higher you go, the fuzzier the directions. "Add a save-and-reload feature to the main menu" becomes "Encourage more signups". Your job as a manager is to translate between the two levels of detail... your team is relying on you to set tone and align them to the big lofty organizational fluff they hear in the all-hands meeting.
You can’t keep all your IC work.
You've been the guy with hands-on-keyboard. You've probably even been really good at it... you attracted enough attention to get promoted. You'll immediately feel the pull to keep some technical work alongside your new managerial responsibilities. If you try to juggle both, the result is just "doing two jobs poorly".
If you've been in a super-technical role, and if you're managing a group of super-technical folks, it's wise to keep some technical work in mind though! You need to keep your skills... well, maybe not razor-sharp, but at least with an edge and polished! I'd suggest letting your technical work take the form of "side projects": build something in your free time. Nothing that touches "production".
Feedback is a skill, not an instinct
Humans on the whole tend to prefer a low-conflict environment, especially when there's a lot of "new" involved. So you can imagine that a new manager is likely to be particularly avoidant.
But Feedback is Conflict.
We don't learn from things that go perfectly; we learn when they go 'bump'. And that 'bump'... can be uncomfortable! Missed communication, unrealized expectations... many of the 'bump' causes are sources of conflict. We need to learn to be comfortable with addressing conflict and resolving it well.
You are now a multiplier—or a bottleneck
As the manager, decisions and approvals flow through you... and what you choose to do determines whether they flow right on past or you stop them. What do you pick?
Your habits will directly shape the culture of your team. Are you a little nervous? They're going to learn to bring everything to you before executing on it. Are you confident and calm? They'll derive a sense of security from you and get stuff done.
The Quiet Superpowers That Make Great First-Time Managers
Deep curiosity.
Being the kind of person who wants to know (without interfering) encourages good communication from your team and gives you the tools to run interference with higher management while your team does their magic.
It's important to realize that this isn't only about technical knowledge - when you take time to understand motivations behind the actions, you'll be able to make faster decisions of your own... because you'll understand what you're really trying to accomplish.
Listening without fixing.
This one's tough for ex-ICs: sometimes your team just wants to be heard rather than getting you to solve the problem for them. But you're used to wearing the FIX-IT-NOW hat, and you'll jump right into problem-solving mode.
Step back, take a breath. Ask them whether they need you to help fix it or if they're just sharing... and respect their answer.
Shielding your team from chaos.
And friend... there will be chaos. Competing priorities, unexpected problems... chaos in technology abounds, and your job is to chart a course through it. As we discussed earlier, the team is going to take cultural cues from you; if you handle the chaos with poise, the team will follow you through it. If you get rattled by it, though, it's going to rattle them, too.
Making invisible work visible.
In most organizations (maybe all of them!), senior leadership doesn't actually understand when heroics occur. They just assume that because the project was delivered under budget / on time, everything is running smoothly. They don't see the folks who work the long/late hours, who sacrifice time and comfort to deliver that project.
Your role is to bubble that up. When they see a success, you celebrate it differently: by recognizing the folks who went above and beyond.
Similarly when they see a failure, senior leadership may be tempted to assign blame... their plan was good, but the team wasn't capable of executing it. Help them see otherwise - show them the gaps, the missed design elements, the systemic reasons for the shortfall.
A Simple Starter Kit for New Managers
Here's a checklist you can put on your desk for your first few months:
Block regular 1:1s and never cancel them. Your team deserves this, it's how you build their respect. Are you telling them that you're too busy for them, or that they're important to you?
Define your “top 3 responsibilities” and drop everything else that doesn’t fit. The easiest thing in the world is overcommitting... "biting off more than you can chew". You need to be ruthless about prioritization; if you are, your team will pick up that habit too!
Ask each team member how they prefer feedback. Don't make any assumptions. You'll want to shortcut it... resist the urge. Customizing your approach to each team member (and to your new boss) will help you build relationship quickly.
Practice giving small, frequent, low-stakes feedback. Following up that last point, practice makes perfect. Find ways to give feedback when it doesn't matter so much, learn what works and what doesn't, and you'll be ready when the chips are down.
Establish clear decision boundaries. By this I mean showing the team when it's the right call to assert themselves... (“I decide,” “we decide,” “you decide”). Just like with the feedback, this is about empowering your team during the calm everyday routine so that when decisions become urgent and high-stakes, your team will be used to making the right call.
Wrapping Up
Think of this less as a "promotion" than a "career change". As you shift from IC to manager, your focus is shifting... at first it might feel subtle but it's going to catch up with you fast.
Just remember: You're not there for hands-on-keyboard heroics anymore, you're there to keep the heroes ready for action. Your team's success is the new measure of your own. Good luck!
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