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Hello Blind community! (Working at a smaller ~100 person startup now since about 1 Year) TLDR -- Promoted to managing the team I was part of in a year at current company. Teammates lack respect, and pushback often. How to deal with this? ------ I recently got promoted to a management position and given the responsibility of managing my own (previous) peer group and am reporting to the Director of Engineering. I see this as a good step forward in my career and wanted to go down the management route at some point. I manage a group of 4 in a primarily research-driven team. After having 1:1s with the members of my team I can sense some dissent, jealousy, and even a lack of respect from some of them. In 1:1s I've been given ideas on "how the team should be run" and been told by one team member "how did you even get this promotion?". I've also been told, "I respected previous manager (who is the Director) because he had a strong understanding of said domain, whereas you don't, so feel free to ask me for help in managing the team". I have noticed in stand-ups, the same members will try to override what I say, and on occasion go talk directly to the Director (or CEO) about work related matters. I was expecting some pushback, being made a manager early in my career with this company, and being in my mid-20s (same age group as team members), but just in the first couple of weeks seeing such great amounts of pushback alarms me. Any advice on how to deal with this situation and if you've been through something like this before, an action plan maybe? Thanks!
TLDR? Surprised you are in management and cannot be concise about the problem
You need to learn to get work done by other in adverse conditions. If you make it thats true management. People always push back - some to your face, some in the back. Just listen to their opinions- say that for the support and lay out your plan. Ask them to start working and reach out to you if they are stuck somewhere. Things will change gradually.
If you haven't, I suggest you start asap with "the first 90 days" and "the effective manager". What you list is completely natural, but you have to move fast to manage it. Asking the right questions, being assertive and identifying who will support you and who will have to leave.
Thanks I will definitely read these!
Good leaders create a vision with the team that each member is invested in and let's them decide how to get there. Your job after that is to mitigate risk and manager outside variables from stopping your team from achieving it's vision. Managers get it wrong when they think they are managing the individuals on their team and not managing people who will disrupt the teams mission. Maybe that is why you feel like there is pushback. There isn't a vision set in place and you are seeing yourself as their supervisor not their shield from shitty project managers etc.
In our case the shitty project manager is probably the CEO who comes directly to high performing engineers and tells them about a cool project he'd like them to undertake and disrupting the process/plans in place. Said engineers feel motivated to work on CEOs "cool project" vs things that need to be delivered against a deadline. This is not the same issue discussed in the original thread but curious if you have ideas on dealing with this
I think there needs to be professional boundaries established there. At small companies many times CEOs will roll in and fuck up everything and then wonder why they don't have a product at the end of the day. Not being afraid to have a 1:1 align vision is very important. Also many managers are afraid to hold c suit executives accountable for their commitments. Get the commitment for a project and hold leadership accountable. Also if you and the CEO are aligned then there won't be any surprises. If your CEO can't stick to a vision your company will fail anyway and you will have bigger problems to worry about
Run agile meetings. Don't let them see you sweat. Remind them who has the higher TC. 😂
What do you mean by "don't let them see you sweat"
I am in the same boat, here this is how i am managing- as soon as the management announced i am leading, i reached out to all of my peers for discussion. I set the expectations that all of us are still equal and our Primary goal is to deliver everything on time just like we used to do everything before. Now as a team we are stronger than ever because of one of us is going to represent our concerns directly to management. I actually doesn't believe in ranking system so ny teammates are quite open and i don't feel threatened when they override me because we now take consensus over every decision. In my opinion they feel much safer now and worry less about upsetting Supervisor. Its all about perspective and i strongly believe that you should not lead at all if you believe in hierarchy.
Thanks for sharing! I actually don't worry too much about heirarchy, I feel it's more an issue of they don't see me as their "representative" and thinks it's a better bet to go to someone else.
If it is skills then they should be going to someone else because product matters more than you and them and you have to be okay with it until you learn and start helping them in advance, but if it something else then have a group discussion and let them know that you want this team to act as one team . If some of them are still not convinced then have one on one and say out loud that you have given them equal respect and fair chance to grow and if they do not return the same then they should start looking outside or get in line asap.
Set goals for them to achieve and a vision to pursue. Don't sweat it, keep it friendly and professional. They'll learn to work with you hopefully. If they refuse, you can formulate a plan for them to improve their performance.
Maybe you don’t deserve respect. It’s always a possibility.
Start chopping heads. The inflection point is 2. The remaining will fall in line pretty quickly. Welcome to lovely land of capitalism
Don't think that'll fly, tbh.