The first time manager. Pt.1

Welcome to Leadership Sovereignty. I'm your host Terry Baylor along with Ralph Owens. Today, we'll answer questions for the first time manager. How to move from an individual contributor to a manager, embracing the journey, understanding time management and creating guard realms, leading your peers, and how becoming a manager requires being authentic. Enjoy the show.

All right, Terry, we back.

Hello world. I like that. Hello world. I

know it. I know it. I know it. So we have a great topic lined up for you guys today. It's one that's near and dear to me and Terry's heart because we definitely walk through this and live through this.

It's called the the first time leader. Right? Moving from being that individual contributor to being responsible for a group of people and what they do. Terri, what comes to mind for you when you hear about that first time manager?

You know, it's funny, right? My wife and I were just talking about that and you know what man, I think my wife is one of our biggest fans. She's always chiming in on the show. I'm like, I didn't know, I didn't know. I think it's the, I'll just say just the growth opportunity that being a first time manager is gonna give And I would just say, just embrace the journey of it.

Embrace the journey of it. You're not gonna get it all on that first go round. Right. So, and really, I think the first thing I would say is I know what my biggest challenge was, now you're leading your friends.

Oh, that's a great dynamic to talk about. It's a great dynamic to talk about.

So how did you deal with that? How did you deal with that when you went from because of essentially you got rewarded because of your wins,

Right. Right. Yeah.

And your ability to kinda communicate as well. That's that's generally what happens. Right? Because we're we were super duper like zeros and ones. We were super duper technical guys.

So how did

you how did you deal with that?

It was tough, man. It was tough. Nobody I guess the biggest first lesson is nobody tells you what it takes to be successful as a leader. Right? They typically promote you because you were so good at what you did individually as an individual contributor that they feel like you have good leadership qualities.

So they put you into this leadership role and it's kind of like just throwing you out the nest and just see what you're gonna do. I laugh, man, because I remember just something as simple as time management. When I was an individual contributor, right? People come to me, they want help, they want this, they want that, they want this, they want that. That pretty much would rule my day.

And then, you know, I had a little time at the end where I catch up on my stuff. But when I started leading and I had responsibilities, I remember, you know, Terry, you remember this. So Terry and I worked at the same place and we had to take a bus, as we mentioned before on the earlier podcast, to the office. Probably took about forty five minutes to get there. And when we transitioned into being managers, I can remember being at work.

So people would fill up my calendar. I need you to be in this meeting. Need you to in this meeting. I need this. Need that.

I need this. And I can never get my work done. Right? Because out of every meeting you take some task, some follow-up or task or whatever the case may be. So I remember every day watching everybody walk out the door and it'd be 05:30 and I'll still be there.

We're like, man, finally I can get my work done. Then I remember one day it got so bad that I had missed the last bus because they don't run all night. No. I missed the last bus. Had to catch a Uber.

That was pretty late because the last bus was like around like 08:45

or like that. Yeah. Yeah. It was And what I found myself doing was trying to manage my time like I did as an individual contributor.

That's

I'll never forget one of the leaders we had, she told me, she said, either you learn how to manage your time or somebody else will. That spoke volumes to me. And basically what that told me was you need to learn how to put guardrails around your time. You can't be everything to everybody. You have to learn how to say set instead of saying no, I'll say set proper expectation.

Right? Hey, you know, I so so I what I would start doing is coming in and blocking off certain hours of the day for myself to get my work done so that I can have a healthy work balance and then leave room for all the other meetings and things of that nature. And that was like one of the first lessons I learned moving into leadership is that it's not like when your individual contributor and they invite you to a couple of meetings and then you got the whole rest of the deity to do your work and that kind of stuff. Completely different animal when you start getting into management. That was probably one of the first ones that came to mind for me.

What about

Yeah, I'll chime in on that too. So my first managerial opportunity was back in St. Louis. And so I remember, it was a small team, as a matter of fact, you left me back there but it's all good. But you pulled me forward too, so I But appreciate it was a small team and I remember very distinctly feeling some kind of way about leading the guys now that I used to stand shoulder to shoulder with.

And I remember calling a buddy who had been in leadership for a little while and this is really, I don't know if I really called him as a mentor, but I know he had been in leadership for a while and I was really calling him to get some advice. And it was simply that, I was on this team, now I've been promoted to, I think it was manager of technical services. And the people I was having to lead, they were an eclectic group. But they were great guys. I think we had a few young ladies on that team as well.

And the advice that he gave me was, Tee, just lead, lead like you always have. There's nothing different about this. Be matter of fact, like you always have been, be decisive like you always have been, be good to people like you always have been. The reason I say that is you don't become someone else just because you are a manager. I've seen people become managers and I'm like, who is that?

That's right. They're like, I finally got them.

Exactly, I'm like, this person is I don't even know this person now. Yeah. Yeah, Becoming a leader does not mean you get outside of the core essence of who you are. I'll phrase it like this. I was listening to someone who I like to listen to for spiritual guidance and teaching.

And man, he said this so perfect. He said, look, when God saves you, he doesn't change who you are, he just saves who you are.

That's good. That's good.

So here's the deal, right? When you become a manager, it doesn't change who you You don't morph into some other being, like you go into a closet and come out with a suit with a big M on your chest, I'm manager now. No, you basically still are that same person. You just now have an opportunity to really more widely share who you are. I think that's, I would say that would be the biggest single piece of advice I'd give for the new manager.

Really hone in and I'm gonna really probably stay on this topic, man, probably for the duration of this show. You have to know who you are.

Yes, absolutely.

Because if you don't, it's not to say that you don't develop and grow and become better, but who are you as a person? What are your convictions? What are your core values? These things have to be defined. Take some time to write it down.

What are my core values?

That's right.

What do I think about leadership? How do I feel about people? Where do You'll hear this and Rafa, I definitely wanna hear your take on this. Is technology does not supersede people.

That's right.

Brother, they say it's people, process and Absolutely. Technology,

That's right. Can throw technology and money at a problem all you want. But if you don't have the right people in the right process, all you're gonna be doing is just wasting, you know, wasting money. Yeah. No.

That's that's that's that's, that's a that's a great segue. I was, so we have some book recommendations for you, this this show. And I think we will probably start doing this a lot more. Two of the books well, least, let me start with one of the books that I recommend. I kinda mentioned before, it's by an author of her name is Carly Harris.

And the name of her book is called Leading to Win. I'm sorry, Lead to Win. Not not leading, Lead to Win. And I'm actually still going through this book now, but she said some things that I took note of that I wanted to talk about tonight. It kind of ties into what you were saying, Teri.

She says the eight things that a leader must have. The very first thing was you have to be authentic. You have to be able to bring yourself to the table. And I love her breakdown of that and the reason why is you bring a unique set of experiences and perspective. That's what diversity is about.

So many people think that because they get a title that that defines who they are. No, that's what you do. Who you are to Terry's point is who you determine you're gonna be every day.

Thank you for being with us today on Leadership Sovereignty. Stay connected with us on X, formerly known as Twitter, and on Instagram by searching for Leadership Sovereignty. And just like this podcast, let's all collectively grow as we go. God bless.