This article details how to develop your team as a new manager by shifting from technical execution to people development. It uses mathematical ROI to prove the value of coaching and provides a framework for safe learning environments. The guide emphasizes personal leadership as the necessary foundation for long-term team engagement.
Continue readingThis article contrasts political games with genuine impact as a strategy for promotion. It highlights the Power Paradox and the Peter Principle for new managers. Four concrete tips provide a path for sustainable growth through personal development and feedback.
Everyone wants to move up. You just became a manager and you are already looking at the next step. VP. Director. Climbing the ladder. That is normal. Ambition is fuel. However, there are two ways to get faster promotions for new manager. One works in the short term but leaves you empty. The other might take a bit longer, but it makes you a better leader.
You know them. The managers who know exactly when the director walks by. Who are always in the right meetings. Who slime their way up by saying exactly what the boss wants to hear. Corporate politics. Visibility over impact. Talking about results instead of actually achieving them. Does it work? Yes, sometimes. You can become a VP that way. Maybe even quickly. And then? Then you have a title. But no respect. No team that truly has your back. No feeling that you are building something meaningful. You wake up as a VP and feel empty. Because deep down you know: you didn’t make the impact you were capable of. You just played the game better.
Psychologist Dacher Keltner discovered something interesting. People often rise to power through traits like empathy, collaboration, and helping others. But once they have that power, they lose those exact traits. They become more selfish. Less empathetic. More focused on themselves. And then they start losing that power. That is the paradox. The qualities that get you to the top are not the same ones you use once you are there. Unless you pay attention to it, for example through leadership coaching.
Here is another way to get ahead. Become obsessively good in your current role. Don’t play politics. Ask yourself this question instead: what positive impact can I make on the people around me? On your team. On other departments. On your boss. On clients. If you get promoted? Great. Bigger role, bigger impact. If it takes longer? You are already doing work that matters. You are building something. You are developing people. You are making things better. This approach might feel slower. But in the end, you go further. With more respect, more impact, and a team that actually supports you.
You can take the fast route. Play politics. Be visible. Slime up. Or you can focus on impact. On meaningful work. On helping people grow. Both can get you a promotion. Only one lets you wake up with the feeling that you are building something that matters. Getting faster promotions for new manager starts with the question: do you want a title, or do you want to be a leader people want to follow?
Interested or curious? Let’s chat! Plan your free introduction here. Zero obligation.
This article guides new managers on how to influence without authority as an early-career manager. It covers practical strategies like tuning into WIIFM, building relationships before needing them, and asking questions instead of making demands. The text emphasizes moving beyond formal titles to achieve organizational impact through psychological insight.
You need Marketing to prioritize your feature. You need your team member to actually follow through on that task. You need Engineering to fix that bug.
Having a title doesn’t mean people automatically do what you ask. Not even your own team.
Your team can ignore your advice. Other departments definitely will. When you ask for help, you get “we’ll see what we can do” which means “probably not.”
This is one of the hardest parts of being a new manager: getting things done through influence, not authority. It is often the first hurdle we tackle in leadership coaching.
Sure, your team technically reports to you. But if you lead by just pulling rank, you lose.
People do the minimum when you force them. They get creative when you inspire them.
And for everyone outside your team? You have zero authority. They have their own priorities, managers, and deadlines.
Most starting managers try what worked before: being helpful, working hard, hoping people notice. That’s not enough anymore. Standard management training often skips this political reality, but you must learn to navigate it.+1
Everyone is listening to the same station: WIIFM. What’s In It For Me.
When you ask for help, they’re thinking: “How does this help me? What do I lose if I say yes?”
Most new managers pitch what they need. “I need you to review this by Friday.” “Can you prioritize our request?” “Can you take this on?”
That’s all about you. Not them.
Figure out what they care about and frame your request around that.
People don’t care about your problems. Show them how helping you solves theirs.
What doesn’t work: ignoring someone for three months, then showing up when you need something.
This applies to your own team too. If you only talk to people in one-on-ones or when you need something, you’re transactional. They feel it.
Invest in relationships when you don’t need anything. Coffee chats. Quick check-ins. Asking about their projects or what they’re learning.
This feels inefficient when you’re already overwhelmed. But when you actually need something, you’re not a stranger making a demand. You’re someone they know and want to help.
Want people to help you? Help them first.
Make them look good to the people who matter to them.
When you make someone else successful, they remember.
Starting managers often feel like they need to prove themselves, so they grab credit. That’s short-term thinking. Your currency is relationships. Spend it making others look good.
You don’t have real authority. Even with your team. So stop trying to use authority you don’t have.
To your team: Instead of: “You need to do X.” Try: “What would it take to get X done this week?”
To other departments: Instead of: “Can you prioritize this?” Try: “What would it take to move this up?”
Instead of: “We need this by Friday.” Try: “Friday is our ideal timeline. What’s realistic on your end?”
Questions get you information. You learn about constraints you didn’t know about. And they create buy-in. When someone helps solve the problem, they own the solution.
Even with your own team, questions work better than orders. “How do you think we should approach this?” gets more commitment than “Here’s what we’re doing.”
People tune out when you talk about your project’s timeline. They pay attention when you talk about what actually matters.
Connect what you need to what the company cares about.
To your team: Instead of: “We need to hit this deadline.” Try: “Leadership is watching this project. Delivering on time shows we can execute.”
To other departments: Instead of: “We need to launch this feature next quarter.” Try: “Leadership wants to break into enterprise. This feature is what enterprise customers keep asking for.”
People want to work on things that matter. Show them why your thing matters. This works on your team and outside of it.
Pick one person you need something from this month (could be on your team or outside it). Before you ask:
Learning how to influence without authority as an early-career manager takes practice. But the managers who figure this out get things done with their team and across the company, even when nobody has to listen to them.
Interested or curious? Let’s chat! Plan your free introduction here. Zero obligation.
This article addresses the overwhelming pressure of dealing with unrealistic expectations as a first-time manager. It helps new leaders distinguish between unfair demands and their own learning curves. Practical scripts for managing up and negotiating priorities are provided.
Three months into your first management role, you are drowning.
Your boss wants results yesterday. Your team needs help. You are still figuring out what good management even looks like. And somewhere in there, you are supposed to be doing your actual job too.
Nobody told you it would feel like learning to swim while someone is yelling at you to win the race. Dealing with unrealistic expectations as a first-time manager is often the first real crisis you face.
Here is what most starting leaders don’t hear enough: this feeling is normal.
You got promoted because you were good at your old job. Now you have a completely different job. Where being helpful doesn’t mean doing the work yourself. Where your success depends on other people’s performance.
And while you are still figuring out this new role, your boss is expecting you to deliver like you have been doing this for years.
Early-career managers get squeezed from both sides.
Your team needs you present and helpful. They have questions. They need decisions. They are watching to see if you are actually going to be a good manager.
Your boss needs results. They want progress, good news, proof that promoting you was the right call. Often, companies skip essential in-company management training, assuming you will just “figure it out.”
And you? You are just trying to figure out what a one-on-one should look like. How to give feedback. Whether you should be in all these meetings. Nobody is giving you space to learn. Everyone assumes you already know.
Sometimes you can’t tell if the expectations are actually unrealistic or if you are just overwhelmed because everything is new.
It might be unrealistic if:
It might be a learning curve if:
Both can be true at the same time. The expectations can be aggressive AND you can still be learning.
This is the conversation new managers avoid. You don’t want to admit you are struggling. You don’t want to look like you are making excuses.
But staying silent doesn’t help either. Start with what you are learning, not what you are failing at.
The Script: “I want to talk about priorities. I’m three months in and learning a ton about what it takes to manage well. I also want to make sure I’m focused on what matters most to you. Can we talk about what success looks like for me this quarter?”
You are not saying “this is too hard.” You are saying “I want to do this well, help me understand what that means.”
Then get specific about constraints: “Right now I’m juggling [list 3-4 big things]. If the priority is X, I want to make sure I have what I need to deliver. That might mean pushing Y back or getting support on Z. What makes sense?”
You are showing you understand tradeoffs. You are managing up, not complaining.
Pick your battles when dealing with unrealistic expectations as a first-time manager.
Don’t negotiate on:
Do negotiate on:
Sometimes the expectations aren’t unrealistic. You are just not managing well yet.
Signs this might be the case:
If this sounds familiar, the answer isn’t to push back on expectations. Get better at managing. This is where leadership coaching becomes essential. You need to learn to delegate and have those uncomfortable conversations.
This is hard to admit. But it is fixable.
You are not doing your old job poorly. You are learning a completely new one.
That takes time. It takes mistakes. It takes asking for help even when it feels uncomfortable.
The managers who make it through this phase aren’t the ones who never struggled. They are the ones who figured out how to ask for what they needed and keep learning even when it was hard.
This week:
You aren’t supposed to have it all figured out yet. You are supposed to be figuring it out.
Schedule a free introduction call. Just to see if there’s a click and where you might need help.
This article guides new leaders on managing a negative employee as a first-time manager. It distinguishes between temporary frustration and toxic patterns that harm team culture. Practical steps are provided for curiosity-based conversations and setting necessary boundaries.
Someone on your team is negative. Every meeting, they’ve got a complaint. Every decision gets an eye roll. Every new initiative gets a “yeah, but…”
Do you say something? Ignore it? You don’t want to shut people down, but you also can’t pretend this isn’t happening. Managing a negative employee as a first-time manager is one of the toughest early tests you will face.
Most new managers see negativity and do nothing. You worry about making it worse. You worry they’ll get defensive. You worry you’ll look like you can’t handle feedback.
So you wait. And hope it gets better.
It won’t.
I’ve seen this multiple times. A negative employee starts complaining. At first, it’s just them. Then someone else joins in. Before you know it, half your team is focused on what’s wrong.
Negativity spreads like an oil stain. Team meetings become complaint sessions. Good ideas get shot down. People who were positive start wondering if they’re missing something.
But managing a negative employee as a first-time manager doesn’t mean crushing all complaints. Sometimes negativity is useful feedback wrapped in frustration. Your job is figuring out which one you’re dealing with.
Watch for a bit. Is this person having a rough week, or is this who they are every day?
One bad day doesn’t make someone negative. Even a bad week doesn’t. People get frustrated. That’s normal.
But if it’s been three weeks and every conversation is negative, that’s a pattern. Patterns don’t fix themselves. The longer you wait, the harder the conversation gets.
Address it when:
Let it go when:
The difference? “This process is broken because X” is feedback. “Everything here is terrible” is negativity.
Start gentle. Be curious, not confrontational. This is a skill we often refine in leadership coaching, because the tone makes all the difference.
Pull them aside privately. Just a casual one-on-one.
“Hey, I’ve noticed you seem frustrated lately. Is everything okay? Is there something I can help with?”
No accusations. No “you’re being negative.” Just curiosity.
Most of the time, this opens things up. Maybe there’s something you didn’t know about. Listen. Really listen. Don’t defend or explain. Just hear them out.
If there’s a real issue underneath, work on fixing it together. “What would make this better?” Now you’re solving a problem, not managing an attitude.
Sometimes the gentle approach doesn’t work. They seemed better for a day. Now they’re back to the same pattern.
This is when you set boundaries.
“We talked last week, and I thought we’d made progress. But I’m still hearing a lot of negativity in meetings. I need to be direct: this is affecting the team. When you [specific example], it makes it harder for everyone to stay focused.”
Be specific. Not “you’re always negative” but “in yesterday’s meeting, when Sarah suggested the new process, you immediately said it wouldn’t work without hearing her out.”
Then: “I want to support you, but I also need this to change. What do you need from me to make that happen?”
You’re still supportive. But you’re making it clear this can’t continue.
Your team is watching how you handle this. This is often a key topic in in-company management training: preserving the team culture.
If you let negativity run wild, they learn that complaining is fine. If you shut down all complaints, they learn to never speak up.
Managing a negative employee as a first-time manager is actually managing the culture of your whole team. Handle it well and everyone benefits. Avoid it and everyone suffers.
If you’ve got someone who’s consistently negative:
Your team needs someone who’s willing to have uncomfortable conversations when it matters.
Schedule a free introduction call. Just to see if there’s a click and where you might need help.
This article addresses the common struggle of setting boundaries for early-career managers. It explains why saying “yes” to everything hurts both the manager and the team’s development. Practical techniques, including the “Yes, And” method, are provided to help managers reclaim their time.
You just got promoted to manager. Congrats. Now everyone wants something from you.
Your inbox won’t stop. Your calendar is packed. Someone asks for “just a quick minute” for the third time today. You say yes to everything because that’s what good managers do, right?
But when you can’t master setting boundaries for early-career managers, you end up drowning in other people’s urgent stuff while your actual job gets ignored.
Most new managers struggle with setting boundaries because they want to be liked. This is a recurring theme in my leadership coaching; the fear of becoming the “bad guy.”
You remember the managers who got weird after their promotion. Distant. Hard to reach. You told yourself you’d be different. The approachable one. The one with a real open door policy.
So you say yes to everything. Every meeting. Every question. Every problem your team could probably solve themselves. And then you wonder why you’re exhausted.
When you are always saying yes, here is what doesn’t get done:
You think boundaries will make you look bad. But here is what actually goes wrong when you can’t set them.
Your team learns they need you for everything. You are creating people who can’t solve problems on their own. This is exactly why organizations invest in in-company management training: to prevent managers from becoming the bottleneck that slows down the entire department.
Your boss thinks you are only good at small tasks because you never have time for the bigger strategic work. You get tired and annoyed. People can tell. The work that would actually help your team get better never happens.
Here is a simple technique that helps with setting boundaries for early-career managers without sounding like a jerk.
In improv, performers use “yes, and” to accept what someone says and then add to it. You can use the same thing to acknowledge requests without automatically doing them.
The “Yes, And” in practice:
This works because you acknowledge the person. They don’t feel blown off. But you still protect your time.
Here are some boundaries you can start using today.
Around time:
For what you will do:
About decisions:
These boundaries don’t just protect your time. They help your team get better at their jobs.
Pick one thing that keeps pulling you away from important work. Figure out a “yes, and” response that redirects it. Use that response three times this week.
You will feel weird about it. That is normal. Someone might push back a little.
But you will also have time to actually plan. To think. To help your team grow instead of just answering questions all day. Setting boundaries for early-career managers means you can finally do the parts of the job that matter. Planning. Developing people. Making real decisions.
Your team doesn’t need you available every second. They need you clear-headed and focused.
Interested how you can apply this in your work? Schedule a free introduction here.
Detailed guide for starting managers facing the “Veteran Wall” of giving feedback to senior employees. Explains the application of DISC colors to mitigate status-threat responses. Positions personal leadership and internal validation as the core for effective feedback.
You sit in the meeting room. Your palms are sweating. Across from you sits the person who built this department. They have twenty years on the clock. You have six months in your seat. You need to tell them their behavior is toxic. The silence feels heavy. You feel like an imposter.
The “Veteran Wall” is the invisible barrier of seniority. It is built from years of service and institutional knowledge. Most new managers try to climb it with politeness. This fails every time. You cannot “nice” your way into respect.
You are the manager for a reason. Tenure does not grant immunity from feedback. High turnover often starts with one untouchable expert. Your team looks at you. They want to see if you have a spine.
Do not hide behind your job title. That is corporate theater. Speak to the person. Address the behavior directly. When an expert is allowed to underperform, the culture rots. Your high-performers will leave first. They are waiting for you to lead.
The DISC model helps you build a real connection. Everyone communicates through a specific color preference. A Red personality wants the bottom line fast. They respect strength and brevity. Do not apologize for the feedback.
Yellow types need to feel heard. They fear social exclusion. Frame the feedback as a way to reconnect with the team.
Green seeks safety and a steady pace. They hate sudden change. Use a calm tone and offer clear steps forward.
Blue demands facts and logic. Show them the data. Prove why the current behavior fails.
Speak their language to lower their guard. This is about removing friction. It has nothing to do with manipulation. It is about recognizing the human on the other side.
Many young leaders suffer from “approval addiction”. You want the veteran to like you. You want them to say you are doing a good job. This is a dangerous trap.
If you need their validation, you cannot lead them. Neuroscience shows that status threats trigger a fight-or-flight response. When you challenge a senior expert, you trigger this response. They will push back. Your job is to stay grounded. Do not take their defense personally.
Real leadership coaching starts with looking in the mirror. Stop seeking validation from the senior experts. Your authority comes from your internal values.
Acknowledge the tension. Tell them you respect their history. Then tell them why the current path fails. This is how you build a real connection. True leadership is being the same person regardless of who is in front of you.
Schedule a free introduction call to discuss the possibilities for your situation here.
Summary: This article analyzes Gallup’s data on management talent and the impact of AI on leadership requirements. It argues that while technical management skills are becoming automated, human-centric coaching and communication skills are becoming the primary value drivers. The content advocates for leadership training for new managers as a strategic necessity for organizational relevance.
Gallup studied 2.5 million teams. The conclusion was shocking. Only 10% of managers naturally possess the talent to lead well. The other 90% require deliberate development to succeed.
Most companies ignore this. They take their best individual contributor, hand them a new title, and hope for the best. This is what is causing the huge global drop in workplace engagemement: untrained and disengaged managers. Train them, Gallup says, and we can unlock close to 10 trillion USD (!) in productivity.
When a promotion happens without leadership training for new managers, the team pays the price. You see it in the data. Performance slips. People stop speaking up in meetings. Eventually, your best talent leaves.
The pain is felt most by HR. You are left putting out fires caused by leaders who do not know how to lead. You deal with high absenteeism and the cost of high employee turnover.
The transition from peer to manager is not a step up a ladder. It is a complete change in craft. The technical skills that made them a top performer are now secondary.
The rise of AI is rapidly devaluing technical expertise as a management cornerstone. When machines can handle data analysis, scheduling, and technical optimization, the demand for managers with purely hard skills will decrease. Conversely, the demand for strong communication and coaching skills will increase.
In an automated world, the only remaining competitive advantage for a leader is the ability to connect, inspire, and develop others. This shift makes leadership training even more important for companies and leaders that want to stay relevant. If you cannot coach, you will become obsolete.
Management is not about controlling others. It starts with personal leadership. A manager who cannot regulate their own stress or own their calendar will never build a high-performance team.
We often see “corporate theater” where managers pretend to have control while drowning in role ambiguity. Without a grounded philosophical approach to their new responsibility, they default to micromanagement or total avoidance.
To fix the engagement crisis, leadership must be treated as a clinical skill.
Leadership is not a reward for past performance. It is a service to the future of the organization. If your managers are struggling to delegate or fear giving feedback, they are not failing you. The system failed them by leaving them untrained.
Schedule a free introduction call here to discuss the possibilities for your company..
Summary: This article explores the “Help-Trap,” where leaders inadvertently hinder their team’s growth by providing all the answers. It explains how shifting focus to increasing team ownership and resourcefulness reduces manager burnout and builds long-term capability. By prioritizing independent thinking over short-term popularity, managers can transform from an “answering machine” into a catalyst for growth.
Many managers have some sense of what success looks like: generating output X or hitting a growth percentage Y. But they are often confused as to how to actually achieve that. They channel their energy towards short-term solutions and struggle with their team’s dramatically low sense of accountability and ownership.
When the team comes to them with a problem, the manager gives the answer. Problem solved. These are good intentions, but they are channeled incorrectly. It is short-term thinking. Well-intended, but ineffective long-term. Our ego’s love it though. I’ve been there many times. Nothing beats giving a smart answer and feeling useful.
But this newsletter is for the Next Level Manager (NLM), the type of manager that works intentionally. They don’t just “do” management; they think deeply about what effective leadership actually is and how to help their team achieve their long-term goals.
They realize that in order to achieve those business goals, the development of their team’s capabilities is critical. Because they are the people that have to deliver those results. Help them become 20% more capable, and results can increase by 20%.
An essential driver behind that process is the amount of ownership and resourcefulness a team possesses. This is a dynamic metric, not a static one. You have influence over it. If you make increasing team ownership your objective, you will approach questions from your team differently.
This requires sacrifice. You might have to disappoint your team. You might even have to leave them hanging. You have to accept short-term hits to your popularity because you need to move away from giving them the answers to every question they bring you.
Every time you offer an answer, you create a little more dependency. They see you as a little bit more important, and you are slowly setting yourself up for long-term failure. This is the Help-Trap. I have been on both sides: the trapper’s side and the trapée’s side. Both feel good short-term, but keep you stuck long-term. The more answers you give, the more questions will come your way, and the busier you will be. Many leaders who burn out are caught in this trap.
With the rise of AI, individual knowledge becomes less valuable. If you cling to being the person with all the answers, your position devalues over time. Instead, become a catalyst for your team’s learning. Instead of giving the answer, express your trust in their capabilities to find it themselves: “I know what you’re capable of, I’ve seen you do it before. See what solutions you can come up with.”
It is important to distinguish between questions your team cannot know or solve on their own (budget, leave dates, etc.) and questions they can solve (internal conflicts, client problems). As we all use AI more, we are becoming worse at creative thinking. This makes this an uphill battle, but it is one worth fighting. Tell your team: “Anytime you come to me with a problem, tell me what solutions you have already considered.”
To make this practical, the NLM facilitates monthly sessions where team members show the rest of the group the process they followed to find a creative solution. The focus is not on the actual solution; it is on the steps they took to get there. During these sessions, use public recognition for the team members who showed the most resourcefulness. By highlighting someone who solved a problem without waiting for an answer, you signal to the rest of the team that you value independent thinking over simply “checking in.”
Think of it this way: if they are lost in the forest, do you give them direct instructions to get out? Or do you teach them to read a map and use a compass? I’ll zoom in on the process, and importance, of teaching new skills to your team, in a future edition of this newsletter. How to teach them to ‘read a compass’. But before we get there, we must let go of the tendency to give our team all the answers.
This shift is a vital part of leadership coaching. The leaders I work with transform their definitions of success, in ways that helps them, and their careers.
If you are ready to stop being the “answering machine” and start building a high-ownership team, schedule your free introduction call to discuss the possibilities for your specific situation.
Summary: This article defines the fundamental responsibilities of a first-time manager by addressing the “Player-Coach Trap.” It argues that primary duties shift from technical output to human-centric leadership and providing team perspective. The core responsibility highlighted is the development of an inner compass through reflection to lead others effectively.
I am David. I want to help you find some breathing room in your own to-do list.
In my coaching work, I see the same pattern over and over. I call it the “Player-Coach Trap.” It happens when you think your value still comes from the technical tasks you used to do: the code, the deals, or the designs.
It does not.
Moving to the next level means your priority has to change. You are not responsible for the work anymore; you are responsible for the people.
This requires a different kind of growth. It is not about learning a new software, but about developing the maturity to handle the human side of business. This is where “perspective” comes in. To bring it, move from giving the answer to asking deepening questions:
The source of these questions must be your own deep sense of what you and your team’s mission is, and why. If you have that inner compass, you will naturally sense when the team deviates from the course. You’ll get it through reflection. Quiet, focused, thinking-time. Even 5 minutes a day is enough.
You can ask yourself: achieving what 3 objectives will make you score your year a 100/100 at the end? That’s where your compass is pointing.
You cannot give your team clarity if you do not have it yourself.
From this position of clarity, you can help your team gain perspective. Through questioning. By asking these questions, you don’t “fix” the problem for them; you help them see the path back to the track themselves. Giving someone the answer is like scrolling their social media feed for them: it’s forgotten the next minute. But helping them find new answers themselves, is what actually helps them grow, comparable to making their own social media post. That’s what they’ll remember.
Leave the hero role behind. Your job is no longer to be the most productive person in the room, but to be the one who brings the most perspective to it. When you make that shift, you will feel it immediately. You’ll have achieved a different, more relaxed state. And from that, you can start making a much bigger impact.
The next level is not a promotion. It is a decision to lead from the inside out. It starts with you.
