As a mid-level manager, you are in one of your corporate career’s most challenging and complex phases. You are likely leading a team, assigned lofty business goals to achieve, and managing up to your manager, as well as other senior leaders and peer stakeholders. If you are managing a team for the first time or have expanded the size and scope of your team, you may be grappling with a towering learning curve, figuring out your manager style, learning your team’s paths, and how to support your group best.
A challenge you may be surprised by is if your manager is critical of how you manage your team. Indeed, there are numerous ways to manage a team, so how do you know when to accept the feedback as best practice versus supposing that it’s a matter of difference in style? Below are three possibilities for why your manager’s approach may be different from yours:
1. Your manager is managing managers, but you are managing individual contributors
Similarly, they manage senior employees, but you’re managing junior or entry-level employees. Different skill and experience levels require varied approaches; your manager might be oblivious to that difference. Your manager may comment that you are micromanaging or spending too much time training your team members.
If you receive this type of criticism, be open-minded; your manager may have heard from others that you tend to micromanage. If you are sure that is not the case and the comment is based on your working closely with junior members who require more help and guidance, gently point out this difference to your manager. Ask them about their experiences in managing ICs versus managers. It also helps to create opportunities for visibility of your team members to your manager (when they are ready and doing well!), so your manager has a better sense of the experience level of your team.
2. Your team’s micro-culture or personality is different
Types of differences include extraversion/introversion (of both you and your team members), levels of familiarity within the team members or with you, and how close or discrete the workstreams are amongst the team. For instance, if you are an introvert and manage introverted team members, you may be inclined to forgo large brainstorming meetings in favor of smaller discussion groups. This style of collaboration may differ from your manager if they are extroverts who prefer to hold large group meetings to exchange ideas.
If this is the cause of your manager’s criticism, you may hear comments about the cohesiveness of your team or suggestions for holding different types of meetings. If so, be confident that you know your group best, share your observations about your team with your manager without being defensive and share why you chose the style of management you do.
3. They are unhappy with the output of your team
And they are either indirect in sharing that feedback with you, or they think it’s because you need to manage your team better towards an output. If this is the case, you must better align your and your team’s scope and deliverables. Be direct in asking whether your manager does not think your group is meeting its business goals, and discuss whether the solution is better managing your team, making changes to your team, or being more clear to your team about what you need to achieve collectively.
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