Editor’s Note: This post is by Paul Slezak, Cofounder and CEO of RecruitLoop – the World’s largest marketplace of expert Recruiters and Sourcers available on-demand.
I will never forget when I was first promoted into a management role.
A memo (before the time of email!) went out to the entire company and everyone gathered in the Boardroom for a bit of a celebration.
My boss even took me out for a really nice lunch. I was on cloud nine!
And then it dawned on me and I came back down to earth with a thud. I was no longer “one of gang”. I wouldn’t just be able to have a laugh with all the team like I was used to. Suddenly I was their manager.
From that moment on I would walk into the office and some people would stop talking; I immediately felt like I was being left out of conversations and all the in jokes.
Sure I’d been told that I would now have additional responsibilities – in fact I had been craving that. But nobody had prepared me for the mental shift and the anxiety associated with managing a group of people that outside work had (up until that moment) all been my close friends.
Becoming a manager is never easy. Whether your first leadership challenge comes from an internal promotion (as mine did), or you are hired into your first management role in a new company (where you don’t know any of your team), you will be met with many challenges, daunting moments, panic and dare I say it plenty of self-doubt.
How to you find your own leadership style? Who do you go to for advice? Can you still be friends with members of your team? How do you best manage your own job responsibilities alongside your leadership responsibilities?
If you are looking for some answers, this awesome infographic from our friends at Acuity Training is a great place to start.
Author
Paul Slezak
With over two decades of experience in the recruitment and human capital industry, Paul Slezak has established himself as a transformative force in the realm of leadership and career coaching, group facilitation, and talent acquisition. His unique perspective, drawn from his early career as a leader in global recruitment firms and his entrepreneurial success with his own start-up, has enabled him to make a significant impact on leaders, teams, and organizations across the world. Paul's passion for helping others achieve success and high performance is evident in his commitment to transforming leaders and their teams at local, national, and international levels. He specializes in promoting the importance of human-centered intelligence, focusing on soft skills such as authenticity, transparency, and trust to complement business-centered acumen and drive better workplace outcomes. As an impartial facilitator, Paul brings his expertise to team offsites and strategy days, ensuring alignment on goals, values, and culture while keeping participants on task. His engaging and energetic presence, coupled with his unique "entertraining" and "edutaining" delivery style, enables him to connect with audiences both large and intimate, sharing personal and professional anecdotes that inspire and energize.
