Red Green Repeat Adventures of a Spec Driven Junkie

Transitioning from a Team Member to Manager of the Team

When I joined my current company, my role was a senior individual contributor, a team member. Not even six months after joining, there was an opportunity to manage the team.

I immediately leapt at the opportunity to manage the team. Why??

  • I have been building towards this after my first job.
  • I didn’t want an “outsider” to manage the team.

The support for me to manage the team was there. Not only from my manager’s manager, the manager’s-manager’s manager, and from the manager’s peers too. My teammates supported this move as well.

I thought: managing the team would be easy.

The change from being “a team member” to “manager of the team” is anything but easy! I believe this transition is harder than just being a manager from the start and I feel I finally transitioned.

Mindset Shift

In relation to my work, the change in what I did for work is dramatic. Going from applying my effort to the work to getting the team to do the work. Essentially, trust the team to your work. I was contributing for about six months, so I was not attached to a large body of work.

Representing the Company

As an individual contributor, the “company” was something my manager represented. I could be myself and if I was not aligned with the company’s mandate - I can express it with little repercussions.

This changed as a manager because I represented the company to my team and they would look to me to represent the company. In this situation, I was a team member before, my ‘former teammates’ would also look to me to be honest about my feelings about the company like before, not a “company shill”.

Things I could say as a coworker about the company would not be cool as a manager. :-/

Enforcing Rules

As an individual contributor, I could pick and choose which rules of my manager to enforce. I usually enforced rules I felt passionate about or understand in a deeper level.

As a manager, as much as I want to please everyone, I had to enforce rules consistently. This consists of rules I believe in, my manager’s rules, and company’s rules too.

Probably the hardest is carrying out policies and delivering bad news

Honestly, enforcing rules against former coworkers is still one of the toughest ones to execute.

Conclusion

Transitioning from being part of the team to managing the team is one of the toughest work challenges I have. Once you become a manager, everything changes, yet you hold on to old feelings for team members.

These feelings for coworkers make the transition hard in enforcing rules, representing the company, and your approach to work with former coworkers.

I am glad I am a manager now. I wish I knew about this transition earlier!