I have had conversations with lots of people, who say that they have been offered higher positions in their work and they have refused it because the responsibilities are far too much, and they did not take it. I tell you; you are simply playing small and will never grow and will continue to miss opportunities. There is no way we can help ourselves when we refuse to take on challenges and put our abilities to test.
Heavy lies the head that wears the Crown, no doubt. From rising from one position to a higher one, to making more income, becoming more famous or impacting a lot more people, the higher you go harder it becomes for you to put yourself together and manage the things that happens around you, but it is always worthwhile in the long term.
I remember when I was a part of the team and moving on as a manager within that same team and that was one of the hardest things that I ever had to face; from wondering how I wanted to put my conversations together with my peers whom I was then managing, to how I wanted to run instructions within the team, or how I had to do supervisions and generally putting the team together for everyone to be on the same page and wondering if I was stepping on toes or not. All of these meanderings going on in your head, I just could say to myself, “what am I doing here?!”, I could have given up, but I stuck to it and dealt with it.
You will always have something challenging to learn, to help your growth as a new manager before you master being an effective leader. I always say this to people when I am privileged to work with them when they are in similar situations.
A lot of people will face challenges when moving from being a member of the team to advancing as a manager of the same team. One of my clients some time ago, was always being bullied by a member of the team who would just not listen to her because they were on the same level before she moved on as a manager. My client told me how nasty this team member became, and this made her lose confidence in herself and was doubting her abilities and what she was doing wrong, but we got past that, working together and understanding human dynamics in different situations.
When you reach that stage of management where your colleagues just throw things at you and you feel lonely in your space, except of course if you have a particularly good supporting senior teams around you and you have people you can go to talk to, then, your problems may be half solved but where that is not available, you must deal with it yourself. You must find a way to support yourself by understanding that it is your responsibility to keep the team together in progress as well as keep yourself sane and keep performance levels higher.
So, how do you cope with the loneliness that your higher responsibilities bring? I am going to be sharing with you five ways to tackle loneliness as a new manager.
Please find your five useful tips here.
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