AR TI CLEREPRI NTManagementUpdateWhat You Must Learn to Become a ManagerAn Interview with Linda HillNo. U9707CHARVARDHarvard Management Update SubscriptionsHarvard Management Update Custom ReprintsPermissionsFor a print or electronic catalog of our publications, please contact us:Harvard Management UpdateSubscription ServicePO Box 305Shrub Oak, NY 10588-0305Telephone: (800) 988-0886Fax: (914) 962-1338American Express, MasterCard, VISA accepted. Billing available.Please inquire about our custom service and quantity discounts. We will print your companys logo on thecover of reprints or collections in black and white or two-color. The process is easy, cost effective, and quick.Telephone: (617) 495-6198 or Fax: (617) 496-8866For permission to copy or republish please write or call:Permissions DepartmentHarvard Business School PublishingBox 230-460 Harvard WayBoston, MA 02163Telephone: (617) 495-6124Harvard Business School PublishingCustomer Service, Box 230-560 Harvard WayBoston, MA 02163Telephone: U.S. and Canada (800) 545-7685Outside U.S. and Canada: (617) 495-6117 or 495-6192Fax: (617) 495-6985Internet Address: www.hbsp.harvard.eduManagementUpdateA NE WS L E TTE R F ROM HARVARDBUS I NE S SS CHOOL P UBL I S HI NGHARVARD MANAGEMENT UPDATE HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW HBS CASES HBS PRESS HBS VIDEOS AND INTERACTIVE MEDIAH A R V A R D3N CONTRAST TO managementtreatises that concentrate on tasksand responsibilities, HarvardBusiness School professor Linda A.Hills book, Becoming a Manager:Mastery of a New Identity, describesthe profound psychological adjust-ment involved in morphing from starindividual performer to competentmanager. In a recent conversation withwriter Loren Gary, she elaborated onthe challenges one faces in makingthis transition.Whats involved in becoming a good manager,and how is your under-standing of the process distinctive?When I first started to investigate thistopic, I discovered theres a lot ofresearch about what managers need toknow, but very little about how peopleactually learn to lead and manage. So Idesigned a qualitative longitudinalstudy that would create opportunitiesfor new managers to speak for them-selves about their experience. Thestudy captured not simply the contentof what they were struggling with, buteven more importantly, how it felt. Becoming a manager means comingto terms with the difference betweenthe myth of management and the real-ity. When they first became managers,the people in my study were veryfocused on their formal authoritytherights and privileges associated withgetting the promotion. But they soondiscovered their new duties, obliga-tions, and interdependencies. Newmanagers soon learn that formalauthority is a very limited source ofpower; their subordinates wont neces-sarily listen to them. And peers andbosses, over whom new managershave no formal authority, play animportant role in whether or not man-agers succeed. Management has justas much, if not more, to do with nego-tiating interdependencies as it doeswith exercising formal authority. As a new manager, you have two setsof responsibilities to learn. One is tomanage your team. The other is tomanage the context within which yourteam resides. That means managingthe boundariesthe relationships ofyour team with other groups bothinside and outside the organization,and scanning whats going on in thecompetitive environment to make surethat the agenda you set for your teamis appropriate. New managers often narrow theirhorizons too much; they mistakenlythink they should just focus on theirteams per se. But, in fact, unless theylook up, and around, and manage thecontext, their teams are going to haveunrealistic or inappropriate expecta-tions placed upon them. Theyre alsonot going to have the resources neces-sary to do their jobs. And because ofwhats happening in business in gen-eral, context management is becominga much bigger and more complex jobthan it used to be.Basically, in addition to acquiringteam management competencies, youalso have to change yourself. You haveto adopt new attitudes, new values,and new world views if youre reallygoing to be successful. That change inprofessional identity is what peoplefind the most challenging. The feel-ings managers experience as theyadopt these new attitudes and viewshave a tremendous impact on the evo-lution of their professional identities.You describe this process as a psychological transfor-mation.Right, and its one that has two pieces.First, you go from being an individualcontributor, who is relatively indepen-dent, to being a network builder. Youalso go from being a person whosvery technically orientedfairly nar-rowly focusedto being someonewhos responsible for setting the agenda for the group. New managershave to start viewing themselves asresponsible for determining thegroups agenda. Now the capacity toactually come up with an agenda, tothink strategically, requires a lot oflearning. To set the direction for agroup is a much more complicatedprocess than people might think,particularly in flat, fast-moving organizations. Seeing yourself as a network builderand also as a leaderthese are funda-mentally different ways of looking atwho you are, as opposed to, say, theengineer whos working in the lab orthe consultant who is not yet a manag-ing partner in the firm. Becoming amanager means learning to frameproblems in ways that are muchbroader, more holistic, more long-term. Understanding what your role is, how you can intervene, and howyou can have impact, is a continuouslearning process.Thats the conceptual element of the transforma-tional task. What aboutthe emotional element? Instead of feeling free, smart, and in control, new managers feel con-strained, not so smart, and out ofcontrol in the first months, if not thefirst year. They feel stretched. Theirtechnical competence can becomeobsolete, so then what do they have tofeel expert about? They feel out oftheir comfort zone in terms of theirCopyright 1997 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. All rights reserved.What You Must Learn to Become a ManagerAn Interview with Linda Hillc onver s at i onal wi s domIQQQHARVARDMANAGE ME NT UP DAT E J ULY19974people skills. And there can be lots of stresses associated with leadingothers. Some of those stresses stem from thefact that, like individuals, organiza-tions are not perfectno matter howmuch you restructure them or revisetheir policies and practices. Managersare essentially paid for dealing withthe reality that you cant get every-thing exactly right; they are the peoplewho have to deal with the trade-offsthat come from not having enoughresources, or time, or an imperfectorganizational structure or incentiveprogram. Adjusting to this aspect ofthe managerial role is a major part ofthe transformation.Another piece has to do with how youget satisfaction from your work. Howdo you get your kicks when youre amanager or leader as opposed to whenyou had a doer role? As a manageryou may be many steps removed fromthe outcome; your relationship to theoutcome is often more ambiguous,and you rarely have the same instantgratification you get when the out-come is a technical one that dependssolely on you. So in order to feel sat-isfied in your new responsibilities,you must learn new ways of definingsuccess. You must learn to like seeingother people succeed, to like helpingthem succeed.You think people can actually learn how to getsatisfaction from these new ways of operating?They can learn, and they also can discover. In my research I found thatpeople had lots of surprises when they became managers, some pleasantand some not so pleasant. Things theythought would be satisfying werent,and other things turned out to bethrilling. Some people hadnt realizeduntil they became managers that theyreally enjoyed coaching, seeing some-one else succeedand that, in fact,they enjoyed it more than solving the problems on their own. I dontknow if Id call this learning. Its discovering new things about the self.The other thing that happens is that asyou get better at your new responsibil-ities, you get more of the results youwant, and that can be quite satisfying.So in that sense I think there is indeedlearning; there can be some changes inthe way you actually get satisfactionfrom your work experiences.Another major point inyour book is that peoplelearn how to be good managers through experiencerather than through training.I dont think you can teach anyone tolead. I think you can help people learnhow to teach themselves to lead andmanage. You do this by providingthem with some of the tools thattheyll need to capitalize on their on-the-job experiences, for instance,frameworks that attune them to thekey issues in a situation. We have allkinds of experiences from which welearn nothing, or from which we learnthe wrong lessons, because we dontknow how to make sense of thoseexperiences. You can also help people be more self-aware. For managers to figure outthe implications of their style on agiven situation, they need feedbacknot simply about what theyve done,but also about how theyve done it. Tothe extent that you can provide peoplewith this kind of feedback, you helpthem figure out cause-and-effect rela-tionships. You help make the linkbetween their intent and their actualimpact. From this, they learn to bemore strategic about their day-to-dayactivities, modulating their behavior to produce the desired outcome.Moreover, they learn to be morestrategic about their careers, choosingthe work experiences most likely tobring about the growth and develop-ment theyd like to achieve.Along with developing their intro-spection skills, you can help peoplelearn to act in ways that make otherswant to give them feedback. Sendingthe signal that theyre willing to hearwhat others have to say will get man-agers the information they need tomake on-the-job corrections. Man-agers who are relatively open tofeedback and dont become defensivefind that others will want to mentorand coach them. Interestingmost of whatyou read about this topicdeals with finding a mentor.And to me its completely the wrongway to think about it. People oftenhave very unrealistic notions aboutwhat mentors are supposed to do forthem. The models we use for mentor-ing, such as the parent/child model, orthe professor/student model, are inap-propriatebecause in fact the peopleyou learn the most from are yourpeers.In that crucial first year ofbeing a manager, what aresome of the flashpoints orwatersheds that people should beon the lookout for?One thing is having the appropriateexpectations of what is going to, infact, occur. We all know that there arecertain mistakes that a person whosnew is going to make, but most com-panies dont know how to acknowl-edge that. Its as if when youre new,youre supposed to do just as good ajob as a very experienced manager.Delegation, for exampleits a verytricky set of judgment calls. Often youBecoming a Manager . . .QQQQInstead of feeling free, smart, and in control, new managersfeel constrained, not so smart, and out of control in the first few months.HARVARDMANAGE ME NT UP DAT E J ULY19975read that new managers have troublewith delegation because theyre con-trol freaks. But actually thats a verysmall piece of it. For one thing, youare still negotiating the identityissuegetting out of the role of thedoer and into the role of the agenda-setter. You are also trying to learn howto assess trustworthiness. To delegateeffectively, you need to be able tomake judgment calls about who youcan trust.Still another big mistakenew managers make is in thinking thatgetting the relationship right with eachsubordinate, one-on-one, is the sameas having an excellent team. The col-lective is very different from the sumof the individual relationships.Delegating, agenda-setting, managingthe team versus the individuals on theteam: Companies need to acknowl-edge that these are predictable troublespots for new managers. Only then can companies start thinking aboutwhat kind of coaching would be helpful. People are quite impoverished in mostorganizations with regard to feedbackand coaching. This is really a shame,because as they go through a majortransition theyre most open to newlearning. Those are moments when asupervisors intervention can reallymake a difference.What makes for goodcoaching?Theres no magic to it; rather, its usually a question of whether some-one is available to do it. A good coachprovides supportive autonomy. Whatsvery important, if youre the boss of a new manager, is not to punish mis-takes that are fairly predictable. Itsnot that you shouldnt hold the newmanager accountableyou shouldbut you should adopt a joint problem-solving approach to the mistake. What lessons can be learned so that itdoesnt happen again? A good coachalso inquires about the kind of feed-back the new manager is getting. What is the nature of the feedback andhow is it coming to the new manager?Answers to these questions give acoach a sense of where the new man-agers blind spots arewhere hes notpicking up important cues, where hesnot asking for help. Thats a very subtle thing:People have such differentfeelings about asking forhelp.Sure, and some people know how todo it more constructively than others.This goes back to what I said earlierabout being a good protg. If youre a high-achievement kind of person,you may be just the kind of personwho likes to solve problems on yourown, who has difficulty admittingtheres something you cant do. Anumber of the new managers in mystudy talked about their reluctance toask for help. If youre the boss, youresupposedly the expert. And if yourethe expert, why do you need help? From this psychological standpoint,its very easy to understand an ambi-tious new managers reluctance to ask for help. The same holds true from an organizational standpoint:Subordinates dont want to hear thatthe new person running their unit isfeeling out of control, and doesntknow what hes doing. Im not sug-gesting that new managers should runaround admitting to everyone how outof control they feel. But they do needsafe places where they can talk aboutthese often overwhelming negativeemotions. The issues of safety arehuge. Asking for help has costs asso-ciated with it. Often new managerswill be as reluctant to ask a humanresources person for help as they willtheir boss. HR people tend to be quiteconnected across the organization, somanagers worry that letting the HRpeople know about their difficultiesgetting up to speed might hurt theirchances for a future promotion.What is it that organizations can learnfrom people who are in the process of becoming new managers?New managers are like beginninganthropologists: Theyre desperatelycollecting any information that seemsrelevant to their new responsibilities.As a result, they can bring a fresh per-spective on things, they can ask thequestion that really gets to the core ofthe matter.One of the things that people in mystudy said about going to new-man-ager training was that they got a muchbetter feel for what the values of thecompany actually were by readingbetween the lines of what happenedduring the training. When I shared thenew managers insights about thecompanies values with senior man-agers, they were shockedeitherbecause the new managers impres-sions, unpleasant as they may havebeen, were dead-on, or because seniormanagement had inadvertently trans-mitted the wrong signals. Because theyre searching, new man-agers are very sensitive to the mixedmessages that a company gives. Com-panies would benefit from knowinghow new managers are reading thosemessages. It creates a positive feed-back loop: If an organization under-stands how its messages and valuesare being misinterpreted, it can makeconstructive changes. IIf you want to learn more . . .Becoming a Manager by Linda A. Hill(1992, Harvard Business School Press,331 pp., $24.95, Tel. 800-988-0886 or 617-496-1449)High Performance Management(CD-ROM, 1995, Harvard BusinessSchool Publishing, Tel. 800-795-5200 or 617-496-6521)I Reprint # U9707CBecoming a Manager . . .QQQ