The most challenging time for leaders is often in the early days of leading and managing others. The biggest shift is from being a manager of self to a manager of others. The shift from only having to manage yourself to having to manage other people around you can be challenging, especially for young, inexperienced leaders. Once the initial leadership skills have been learnt, the progression to manager of managers and leader of leaders becomes much easier.

First-time managers need to learn how to reallocate their time so that they not only complete their assigned work but also help others perform effectively. They must shift from doing work to getting work done through others. This is especially difficult for first-time managers. Part of the problem is that they still prefer to spend time on their old work, even as they take charge of a group. Yet the pressure to spend less time on individual work and more time on managing will increase at each passage. If people don’t start making changes in how they allocate their time from the beginning, they’re bound to become liabilities as they move up. It’s a major reason why pipelines clog and leaders fail.

United Gulf’s Talent Management team provides the resources and insights to the new managers to prepare a plan, which will include formulating goals, priorities and checkpoints, and a timescale for learning, establishing credibility, forming good working relationships quickly and securing some early wins. It is too easy to fall into old patterns of working, patterns which made the new leader successful in their previous role but not necessarily in the new one. This is where our talent management programme  provides significant support.