It is often the case within organisations, that strong
contributors get promoted to team leaders or managers. There is
this assumption that if someone has strong technical competencies
and is performing above average, then such
individuals would naturally progress to manage others and that they would be
equally good at it.
The reality is that managing people requires its own set of
skills and a number of first-time managers struggle to juggle the
new facets that such a role brings with it. One's time
management needs to suddenly factor in the deliverables of others,
answering their queries, while ensuring there are no bottlenecks.
One's own deliverables are often being side-tracked to answer
questions, handle escalated matters, recruiting new team members or
sitting down with a new team member to provide training. If that
weren't enough, personalities of team members are often
varied requiring one to adjust communication from one person to the
next.
