4 Essential Management and Leadership Skills for New Managers and Supervisors
As you’ve probably realised, there are many changes that occur when you move from being ‘one of the guys’ into a position of authority. And one of the biggest changes is that, while you may have grown accustomed to communicating ‘upwards’ with your own manager, you’re now in a ‘middle man’ position where you not only need to communicate up the organisational hierarchy to the board, but also down the hierarchy to your team. If you’re feeling unsure of your management skills, rest assured you’re not alone. Deloitte reports that only one third of new managers feel prepared for a leadership position.
The key to becoming a great leader - one that feels confident carrying out a board presentation and someone who employees admire - is to remember that the skills that got you ‘here’ won’t get you ‘there’. You need to ensure you have good management skills under your belt, but management and leadership skills for new managers and supervisors are quite different to the skills that are required by already established leaders. That’s because a new leader’s actions (or lack of them) will be visible - all eyes will be on you - so management and leadership skills for new managers and supervisors really need to have an impact.
So just what are the best management and leadership skills for new managers and supervisors, and how can these skills impress the board while nurturing the team?
- Trust Skills
To really get a team onboard with the organisational changes that are taking place, a new leader should show from the very start that team development is a priority. Sadly, it’s reported that just 40% of team members feel that their leaders understand the best ways to develop their skills within the role. What is typically seen is that new managers try to develop their team through constant supervision and an ‘always on’ approach.
However, Jaime Roca, HR practice leader at Gartner, notes that leaders who provide continuous feedback can reduce performance by as much as 8%. He states that ‘the always-on manager often provides misguided, irrelevant, or too much feedback’, hindering development. As a new leader, it’s important to understand when your team needs you to lead, and when they need you to let them get on with their own tasks. Performing a skill gap analysis is invaluable here.
- Coaching Skills
When moving into a managerial position, the infamous directive management style may be all you know. This style involves lots of command-type communication, such as ‘I need this by Friday’. However, directive skills can be detrimental to success, according to Forrester Principal Analyst Katy Tynan, who says that ‘many organisations spend either too little or no time at all teaching their leaders how to be good coaches’.
Tynan believes that adapting communications - for example, ‘why don’t you get me this by Friday?’ - is a key component in developing a strong coaching skill. This skill can help new managers to realise that their role isn’t to direct an employee, but rather to guide the overall employee experience in the right direction. The effects of leadership styles on team motivation and performance are well documented. Succeed in facilitating a two-way relationship and you will not only benefit the employee, but also yourself as a leader.
- Nurturing Skills
So far, the management and leadership skills for new managers and supervisors that we’ve looked at have been focused on getting employees to trust their new manager. However, these skills can also be instrumental in gaining the trust of the board. After all, having your employees agree with your approach is the secret to delivering impact, and what your superiors are looking to see from you is impact.
As a new manager, you may feel pressure to deliver impact through productivity; through solid, proven facts and figures that you can deliver to the board. You may be tempted to overlook aspects such as social chats, breaks, rest periods, and fun - they don’t deliver direct impact. But they do nurture; they do help you to build the type of team you’ve always envisioned, and show the board you’ve got a team that delivers.
Making a Successful Transition
Moving into a managerial role is rarely easy and stress-free. There are naturally many challenges that come with organisational restructuring and employee promotion.
However, taking the time to better understand the most effective management and leadership skills for new managers and supervisors can significantly increase the chance of success. According to research by McKinsey, leaders that successfully transition into their new roles generate a 90% greater chance that their teams will meet their 3-year performance goals. Being a new leader can be nerve wracking, but the truth is that you don’t need to face it alone. Leadership training can give you the skills and understanding you need to guide your team to success, and impress the C-suite executives.
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Jeroen Kraaijenbrink: How organizations can overcome the honesty gap
Senior leadership and boardroom teams invest heavily in commercial strategies to win market shares. Yet the most important and honest information driving strategy circulates in teams underneath, never making it to the table where decisions are made.Jeroen Kraaijenbrink, Executive Coach and Strategy Consultant at Kraaijenbrink Advisory, has spent years working on what he calls the honesty gap. We sat down with him to understand what the honesty gap actually is, where it lives in organizations, and why fixing it requires a leadership shift.How do you define the honesty gap?There's a narrow definition and a broad one. The broad one is: we have created organizations and systems where it's barely possible to be honest to yourself, about yourself, and honest to other people.Honesty isn't just lying. It's integrity, being authentically connected to other people and being aware of your own emotions and your own biases.The honesty gap, in a narrow sense, is the fact that truth and information don’t travel vertically upwards in a company. It's often hard to speak openly to your manager because it’s become rational not to. Many people have the experience: 'I've tried it once but then I was punished for it, or was ignored, so let it be, never mind.' That's the fascinating part: it's not good for people, it's not good for organizations and yet we somehow keep this system intact.Is it less about individual dishonesty and more about a collective culture?A lot of the most important information going through your company is between people and in conversations. You need to find a way to have an honest conversation, where the things that matter get on the meeting table, not just in the informal circuit. And I think that's pretty rare.A more systematic definition is that we're not using the collective intelligence of a company enough. We can radically improve it because we’ve made it rational to hide the truth and to keep things to yourself. A lot of it may not be intentional, but the very fact that someone is in a position above you automatically creates this tension: 'What do I show? What don't I show? Because my next performance appraisal is coming up.'Where does the honesty gap typically show up first, and who owns the problem?It starts with leaders. Solving it needs one leader at the top, the CEO at least, being open and reflective enough to admit that there is an honesty gap and that they are part of it. That's the self-reflection you need for any improvement and any change. Like in coaching: you need to be aware that there is stuff to improve. You don't need to be a perfect leader, but you need to be open enough to admit that there is an issue.You talk about the 'persona trap', what is that?You're stuck in a persona where you perform in a certain way within your company. You have a role, a position, a reputation, and that locks you into specific behaviors. The worse the match between who you are as a person and how you need to show up in your organization, the more inner conflict that’s created. Especially at the top, it’s a problem for many executives. They're supposed to be the people who know it all and be decisive. While if you're honest, you don't necessarily know everything, you’re uncertain and have anxieties.The inner core of the honesty gap is breaking the performance, breaking the acting you feel you must do. If you've put yourself in a role of being the strong, decisive, number-oriented leader, that's how you have to behave. But most people don't feel very comfortable in that kind of role because it's not who they are.Can you fix the honesty gap through individual coaching alone or does the system have to change?Part of it is a personal change, part of it is a system change. You can be on your own and be very authentic, but if the system doesn't change at all, you’ll struggle to break the honesty gap.What you need to do is work on the people, the culture, and the system. Ideally that has to include the top, because otherwise it stays at the level of the person being coached. If it's a team lead or a mid-manager, that person can partly create an island in the organization, a safe space for their team and their department. But still, the appraisal systems, objectives, and culture are company-wide. Why is this so hard to shift, even when leaders recognize the problem?We have normalized this idea that you have to be strategic in what you tell and what you show. You have to show up in a certain role at work. It's also the result of how we have separated work from life, which is a very unnatural thing. It's from the industrial age, because for any other species, work is life. But now there’s a split between work, with all the routines in companies, and then your private life. There's just one you, you're the same person at home as you are at work. The good news is that the honesty gap can be closed. While many companies have unintentionally created environments where people hesitate to speak openly, organizations prioritizing trust, authenticity, and psychological safety can unlock a competitive advantage. When employees feel safe to share concerns, ideas, and perspectives, collective intelligence grows, decision-making improves, and stronger relationships emerge across every level of the business.
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