One of my challenges over the past 5 years has been helping stellar individual contributors (IC’s = people with no direct reports) become excellent people and business managers upon promotion. I found that exceptional ICs were often challenged with the transfer of their considerable skills to their new role as manager.  As a result,  I created- and continue to iterate –  the following Expectations of a Manager, which I share and periodically revisit with the front line managers in my business. It’s more of a hodge-podge than a primer or job description, to be sure.

Seasoned managers will already know/ be doing these things. But I will admit to pulling it out and using it on myself every now and then…

Now that we are in the throes of “Midyear Career Discussions” here, I recently pulled this out again.  I hope at least some of you find it useful. 

Three Main Expectations of a Manager:

1. Driving Business Results
2. Developing People
3. Developing Yourself as a Manager

1. Driving Business Results

Leverage your team:  the most valuable asset you will manage in your role as Sales Manager is your team.  My expectation is that you are constantly aware of the assets represented in your team, and that you will develop and execute a strategy to align those assets to drive business results.  This will mean making changes when necessary, even when those decisions are not easy.  In order to fully leverage your team, be prepared to answer the following questions:

-          Are the right people on my team?

-          Are the right people in the right roles? Am I managing my resources effectively?

-          Are my team members challenged?

-          Does my team have the training/tools it needs to do its job?

-          Does my team know what is expected of them and how it is measured?

-          Am I measuring performance effectively?

At any given time, your answers to one of more of these questions will be “not really.”  As a leader, one of your roles is to decide where to put your efforts to fully leverage your team.

Deliver Impact Across our team, the greater sales org, and the entire business.   As front line managers, you are called on to create an impact that extends beyond the leadership of your team and the achievement of your goals around revenue, customer satisfaction, and employee satisfaction.  I expect you all – as leaders – to work in a broader context to impact how we do business.  Examples of broader impact: developing key internal partnerships which benefit the larger org (e.g. sales, marketing, development); development of efficiency tools or best practices, development and implementation of new processes, sales templates, or deal structures. As leaders, you will deliver this impact via others in your team or v irtual teams.

Earn respect up/down/across the organization:  Trust and respect begin with negotiating conditions for success, then doing what you said you would.  You are best positioned to determine who those key partners are, and in which partnerships you should invest more/less time.  Obvious examples: your peers in this organization; your peers in sister organizations; me and my peers; key partners such as product, finance, and the enterprise partner group.  My manager and his peers.

Part of earning respect is to understand the vision, mission, and values of this team and the greater organization (in this case Microsoft Advertising).  As a leader, you are charged with representing greater organizational reality, and the decisions that make that reality. 

Lead Change:  As a leader, you will need to lead much of that change. At times, the change may come at/ from different levels: within your own team; within our team, or in one of the greater concentric orgs within which we sit.  At times, you may not be in initial agreement with the change, or may not even understand it.  It is important that you leverage 1:1s and management meetings to openly discuss reasons for and the process for change.  I will commit to providing you all with the appropriate forums for having a discussion around change, and for leading change with you all just as I expect you to lead change with your teams.  But your responsibility lies with getting what you need to understand and evangelize.  

 Setting and Managing to Clear Objectives: As a leader, it is your responsibility to set clear goals and objectives; to communicate how those results will be measured; and to consistent feedback on performance.  When we talk broadly about setting and managing to clear objectives, your directs should understand the objectives and measurements around:

-          Shareholder: e.g. revenue and other long-term value metrics

-          Employee: e.g. partnering with others, mentoring others; teamwork, account teaming, mutual respect for and support of others, contribution to team events/activities

-          Customer Satisfaction. Do we keep and grow customers? Is each customer “reference-able?”  Do they sing our praises?

2. Developing People

Play to the strengths/interests of your people:  understand their passion, interests, strengths, and goals.  As you align resources to business needs (1, above), it is important to balance the needs to develop your people as well.  This may mean providing someone with the right opportunity to speak on a panel, to lead a project, or to take on new customer or prospect challenges.  You may not always be able to play to those strengths – when you can’t, it is important to acknowledge it, to know why, and to communicate the reasons. 

Leverage individual development plan:  It is not your job to create a development plan for your directs – they control their destiny.  But it is your job to encourage, support, and assist in their creation.  As a front line manager, you will find that most of your people are at the beginning of their careers, and will need more direction and support from you. That support will pay off if your people understand how their current roles help them progress along the path you have helped them develop. Leverage these plans when you:

-          Discuss role changes

-          Provide positive/constructive feedback

-          Discuss reward/ recognition

-          Hold specific development conversations, such as Mid Year Career Discussions or performance improvement conversations.

Be available and responsive:  It is important that you stick to 1:1 schedules, and have mutual agreements regarding how missed 1:1’s will be made up, and how your directs can expect to engage with you outside of 1:1’s.  Responsiveness means that when your directs share a concern or an idea, they feel they are “heard.”  Even if you do not have an answer (or if the answer is not going to completely satisfy them, it is important that your team feels like their individual voices are being heard. 

Some of your directs may need to have doors opened to prospects – be available and responsive to help them with that. Others may need support in x-group skills.  Your teams will follow you anywhere if you are the ones opening doors for them.

Demonstrate empathy—caring for people:  We all have responsibility to build identity in our teams, and although those identities will differ, a culture of empathy/caring should be a consistent force throughout.  In a client service group, this is especially important – your team is likely to treat customers/partners as they are treated themselves.  This does not mean that you will always be a hero or friend to your direct reports, but it does mean that you demonstrate emotional intelligence while running a business and leading a team. 

Inspire and motivate your team:  you are all going to have different approaches to this – inspiration must be authentic.  There ways to motivate your team as one unit – through reward and recognition, through setting clear objectives, by defining the role their daily jobs play in MS strategy.  And there will be ways you need to motivate individuals – helping them cope with a specific business situation, providing a “light at the end of a tunnel” when the going gets rough, or sometimes, just by putting things into perspective.  Sometimes motivation is just helping to cut through the clutter/ambiguity of a role or a project.  At times, it may be motivational/inspirational to share part of your personal story. At others, that is the last thing you should do.  You should feel empowered to motivate and inspire in your own way.

Three things you should motivate/inspire people to do:

-          To deliver biz results

-          To develop themselves

-          To enable growing and learning

3. Developing Yourself as a Manager

At the risk of sounding trite: we are all on a path, and each of us are further than we were and hopefully not as far as we will be.  You should know your own development plan: your current role  should be a stepping stone to something else – do you know what that is?  Discuss it with me and let me know where you request my help or support.  My own experience is that self-development tends to take a back seat to everything else – for me, it has been a real challenge to find time to take  training (even when it is free), to get through my self-development reading list, to actively seek out all the right opportunities/ conversations/ mentors.   As part of developing yourselves as managers, I expect us all to challenge ourselves to:

-          Consider our strengths and opportunities

-          Have  one or more short term and long term career objectives

-          Have a development plan which you will execute to leverage Microsoft, its wealth of resources, and your experiences here to get you where you want to be.

-          Let me know how I can be of assistance

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