If organisations historically over-indexed in favour of experience, today there is definitely a great focus on growing younger talent. With start-ups and corporates giving growth opportunities to younger talent, there is a growing base of 1 particular cohort in every organisation – the cohort of The First Time Managers.
While young employees are being promoted to First Time Managers, it’s often noticed that they lack the skills necessary to lead their teams effectively. In a recent survey, nearly 20% of workers encountered sleep-related challenges when supervised by a first-time manager (this percentage surged to 50% for women respondents with 40% of them sharing a heightened inclination to consider leaving their jobs!)
As employees ascend from individual contributor roles to managerial positions, they face a unique set of challenges that demand a shift in mindset and skill set. The ability to effectively communicate, make informed decisions, and foster collaborative team dynamics becomes paramount.
In the final edition of The Leaders’ Cafe for 2023, we were joined by a special guest speaker, Yuvaraj Srivastava, CHRO, Make My Trip to talk about, “Why Nurturing First-Time Managers is Key for Business Success.”
Here are some key ideas that were discussed in this conversation:
- It’s critical to have managerial support for new people who come into the organisation as well as those who rise in their journey to become first-time managers. There has to be an effort from the organisation side and from people side to hand-hold in their journey
- First-time managers or the managerial group are like the neck or spine of organisation which connects the top and bottom to make it an efficient machinery to operate. Often there is greater focus on the base frontline which is larger in number or the top level which is the leadership cadre with the assumption that there’s prior knowledge and information available with the individual. but it is this segment of managers that holds the organisation together.
- It’s not important to groom talent within your system. You can also hire talent which is groomed in a similar environment elsewhere in the talent market. Now, you need to hire well. Hire people who can fit into your system. Focus on building cultural context, talent with functional skills is available.
- What kind of leaders do the new-age employees look for as their role models – there can be 3 kinds of power that leaders drive – 1. The position they hold 2. Personality or Charisma that they exude 3. The knowledge that they own. New Age employees look up most to leaders who have the knowledge – who can mentor, solve and guide their teams
- In the world of triple complexity (age-old problem of untrained managers, new-age millennial workforce and hybrid work) – important to drive learnings around trust and accountability, While leaders should trust, their teams must also demonstrate accountability
- Five I-Model to focus on while training first-time managers:
- INFORM – share the functional brief and the cultural context
- INITIATE – thinking, conversations and shedding hesitations
- INVOLVE – involve them in the decision-making, view their perspectives very closely and be inclusive
- INDULGE – take care of them, take them out for a coffee, engage in banter, build a personal human connection
- IGNITE – passion for the organisation, zeal to succeed in the organisation and their own careers
Here are excerpts from the full conversation
Gatik Chaujer: Thank you for making time for this, Yuvaraj. You and I were talking a couple of weeks back, it’s interesting that you picked up this topic because it’s not a new problem. For organisations, it’s been a “known”, I wouldn’t even say “problem”. It’s been a known reality known challenge for a decade or two decades. But yet, it continues to be a persistent problem or persistent reality. A survey conducted earlier this year found that nearly 1 in 5 employees lost sleep over a first-time manager. More than 1/3rd cited anxiety, lack of motivation, sleeplessness and other effects of unprepared rookie managers as a reason for wanting to quit. So, despite all of this happening, and the fact that this problem has been known, why do you think this continues to be a persistent challenge for many organisations? What are your views on this problem or this reality?
Yuvaraj Srivatava: So I think even if I don’t completely concur with the study, I think that I would not rule out the basic assumption they take, first-time manager or other managerial capability is something which has been spoken for many, many years. And somewhere we do hear that you know, people leave their managers, not the company. And that’s how that’s how it all works. So first thing is, it’s critical to have managerial support for people who come into the organisation. Because, you know, organisation hires, they’re a certain team, which gets people into the system. And then what happens I always call it as a “Kanyadaan”, sort of a thing done by HR of a newcomer coming into the organisation and getting handed over to the departments to groom take care, and also work with that individual right. And, you know, what happens, if the person does well, credit goes to the department or the function for grooming that person? Well, if the person is not done, well, perhaps it said that was not the right hire sort of a thing. But who should work with that individual when the person joins the organisation, I’m taking it as a generic term for first-time managers as well as managers.
What has happened is I think many times organisation bandwidth is limited. And certain sections of people are taken for if not granted, rather, they are assumed to be knowing what they are supposed to be doing in the organisational culture. Most of the time, that famous principle, Gatik, says that, you know, people rise to their level of incompetence, you promote people, because they have done well in their current role, and you assume the person will also do better better job in the next role. While you keep in mind that principle you forget, if that’s the reality, there has to be an effort from the organisation side and from people side to ensure that fellow’s hand is held while the journey has been completed. And I also look at it why it is important is that, you know, if you look at take a simile of an hourglass – it has two bulbs on both sides. It has a thin neck in between, and the neck is one which basically allows sand to pass from one side to the other side, I always feel that first time managers or managers for that matter are the neck of the organisation or a spine of organisation or the midriff of the organisation, which basically connects the top and bottom to make it an efficient machinery to operate. And why we take these folks for granted, most of the time is that we assume that, you know, there’s a prior knowledge and information which is available with an individual. We also feel that you know, I think we can take care of these folks late later. Let’s first focus on the base frontline, which is larger number, the top level, which is a leadership, leadership, cadre – if you train these top and below, I think rest everything will fall into place. But my feeling is that this mid level, the midriff, or a spine or a neck, whatever you want to call it, is the one which holds the organisation together. If that sense starts getting into the minds of people, people will start creating leaders at that level, because they have a resonance both sides. And in the milieu of so many things happening we forget to take care of them. And interestingly, you’ll see that they also it’s one thing which I have observed. Most of the guys who are deployed at that type of rolling field away from the headquarters get still slightly neglected. You know, if you are in a large corporate office, when you get promoted as a first time manager, you still have lots of people to interact and work with. But imagine the guys were in the region, the sales workflows, Business Development workflows, and I think that if they get promoted, out of sight out of mind many times happens in most organisations.
So as I said, bringing this together, if you feel they are important element they are the ones who pass current on both sides and organisation top and down. They need to be worked with a principle that they have done well in their current role. The next role they need to be handheld, I think will make a lot of difference to the organisation, if that mindset basically sets in. And I to end my thought here on this, that there are 30, almost 25 to 30% people sit in that level, almost 35 to 30% people who are the first time managers or the mid level managers, early managers. And if that part of the engine is not working properly or is tentative, then perhaps it has its own effect on the entire organisational culture learning, performance, productivity.
Gatik Chaujer: That’s interesting. And thanks for thanks for opening up this dialogue, Yuvaraj and I have already taken away a few things. So one, “Kanyadaan”- I’m never going to forget that J. And I love the analogy that you portrayed about the hourglass and the connection between the top and the bottom. That’s critical. And it’s what’s interesting is that’s perhaps the most sensitive part of the hourglass as well and I connect with that about prioritisation because limited bandwidth of organisation, focusing on succession planning and this kind of go into that assume thing that they will figure it out, they will learn it. And this is a mistake many of us have made. I’m curious to get your views on this, this space of because if you go back 20 years, and I’m sure you’ve seen that if you go back 20 years, 25 years, and most corporates other than a few that were really forward-looking organisations for anybody twenty-five years back, even succession planning would often be an afterthought, right. And you know, even things like developing a leadership pipeline was something that people would start doing once it was almost too late when you’re in a crisis. So I think the problem has been more about in my view, at least has been more about being reactive rather than proactive. And now 20 years down the line, it seems to me that many organisations have become proactive. At the top level, many organisations at least the organisations we work with, I think they have shifted from being reactive to proactive in the last 1015 years. But with managers, they continue to be reactive. So do you feel that it’s just a natural progression of time? Are we waiting for it to happen? Or I think the more important question that our viewers would love to hear your perspective on is, because some of our viewers are bound to be learning managers, HR managers. I’m sure, they’re curious about this question how can we become proactive in the way we are developing first-time managers in our organisations? Are there any tips? Are there any suggestions? What are your thoughts there?
Yuvaraj Srivatava: It’s interesting question. I think that let me first react to your first thought what you said that – 2025 years back people were far more planned, right? I think it should be the other way around that. And I believe in that, why I say this, go back 25-30 years Gatik, you will see that organisations were very conscious about their own work culture. And they wanted to really train and groom people within their own culture. And they wanted to have people coming from the ranks to also fill up senior positions. And also availability of talent on those specific skills used to be at times a challenge, you’ll see most of the bigger organisations will always have a plan that whether they should have succession planning or not, I think in today’s world, it’s not important that you need to groom talent within your own system. You can also hire talent which is already groomed in a sort of a similar environment elsewhere in the in the in the market, in the talent market. If you look at ecommerce companies, there are many startups in more or less work with a similar sort of thought process that agility is important, speed to the customer is important, done is better than perfect. I think many organisations follow those principles and also the number of organisations which have come up and working with a similar sort of principles and policies are far in number as compared to earlier one right so now, it’s important for you to do hire well. Hire people who can really fit into your system skills you will Till get in the market. Earlier it used to be a combination of skills as well as cultural fit, currently I think if you can look at the culture fit, hire a person, skills, I think a person has developed elsewhere doesn’t matter. So, now the world is a global platform, organisations are flat, everywhere organisation seamlessly enters into other organisations domain. So, planning on a succession succession today has become slightly become easier than the past. So, I think that is interesting and I think in light of that we should develop people and when it comes to first time manager, then I don’t think that you need to focus on functional skills. So, you need to focus on developing these managers to teach them that what works in the organisation, please go back and teach your team members that what how to succeed in the organisation, what are the success mantras in the organisation? What are the do’s and don’ts of the organisation rather than really telling a person that you know, how do you need to operate and do your work – people are coming with those those skills. So that is that is point number one. And other thing what you said is that what are the tips?
In fact, I was thinking and I don’t think that I can take the credit of what I’m going to talk about it’s something which I thought today in the morning. So I looked at the role of a first time manager and why I’m telling you this is any organisation which is training first time managers should ensure that these five basic commandments or elements are imbibed into that individual and what does he do if you look at five A’s as an alphabet – inform, initiate, involve indulge and ignite. When I run a session, I say that hey as a first time manager, these are five things what you need to do – 1. Inform means in case somebody is coming new into your system, please help the person know the organisation, inform him who’s what, inform who to really work with in what manner, what are the vulnerable areas in the organisation, what are the cultural ethos, also when you become a first time manager, first go and tell your people about yourself how you like to operate. So role of information is important. 2. INITIATE – initiate people to succeed, initiate people to think, initiate people into conversation, initiate people to really come out of their hesitations, I think how do you really initiate them and get them off the running block to take on into the track involved is basically 3. INVOLVE – involve them in the decision-making, involve in the conversations, view their perspectives very closely and ensure that you are inclusive in your behaviour. 4. INDULGE – indulge means take care, take them out for a coffee, take them out for a drink, indulge in the sense do some friendly banter, pull leg at times, show your side of humour, talk about their family, talk about what works, what doesn’t work, show your own personal vulnerabilities/human side. And last one is which is what I said 5. IGNITE – ignite that passion for the organisation ignite, that zeal to work, ignite that, we envision about one’s own career. So if you as a first time manager, as an organisation, you teach people let go and do these five, don’t do anything else you are a manager, you are responsible for set of 3,4,5,6 people, inform them, initiate them, involve them and ignite them for taking higher heights. Also as I said earlier it’s not important always to look for ROI, every time when you try to look at training as a function. I keep talking about ROI, ROI. What is the ROI? I don’t think in life everything is governed by ROI. In life, everything is not about being objective. At times, it’s also important to feel good, and make people feel good. It’s equally important than really putting everything in numbers. Organisations might not be spending much of time on first time managers training because they may question the ROI. But I don’t think the day you start looking at ROI very intently, you become very sceptical, whether you achieve it or not, if you just focus on developing good human beings, and good Samaritans and organisation, who are your champions and ambassadors, I think you would have done a great job in terms of developing etc.
Gatik Chaujer: No, I love that. I love that. I think, especially going back to a couple of things that you said that I picked up. One, I loved what you said that when you’re talking about proactive versus reactive building, and I think the first one that I picked from you is that don’t worry too much about building functional stuff or not even, you didn’t even talk about the past or the soft skills, you said, really what first time managers need to learn. And what we need to be supporting them with is how do they succeed in this organisation? And how can they help others succeed in the organisation? And how can we get that? And to me, that’s very contextual development. And that’s the point that you’re bringing in. But you know, first time managers need to be developed contextually, how do you succeed in this organisation skills are cut across now pick up the skills and all it’s really about how you can context. I also love the Five I model – its broad, and it’s really about developing them –inform, initiate, involve, indulge and ignite, I’d like to add a sixth one to that, which is, you know is part of our brief at TransforMe that everything begins with I. And, you know, I will call it maybe INTROSPECT, because I feel one of the things that we’ve seen, helping a lot of managers and first time managers, managers, leaders, is really the ability to develop their level of self-awareness. Because I think one of the unique challenges that first-time managers face and I don’t think much is done about it is you know, how you stand up from your peers. And when you become a first time manager, the complexity, it’s quite interesting, because you’re now suddenly managing in that world, managing people who are your friends, and who your colleagues and for that, that level of maturity, some level of emotional maturity, awareness becomes super critical.
And one of the other things that we hear a lot of our clients talk to us about, and I’d love to get your views on it, because I know some people are solving for it quite beautifully. And some people are, you know, we’ve seen both sides and realities are different. But I was having a chat with this. One of the business leaders, again, in an ecommerce company, interestingly, the nature of ecommerce company is really fast paced, fast moving changes by an hour, by the day – lot of bias for action, lateral movement, and so on and so forth. And we were building our first time management journey for them. And they said, you know, given the complexity has tripled. I said, What do you mean, they said, it’s triple complexity. I said, What do you mean by triple? You have to understand, he said, number one, he said, I’ll tell you the triple number one is that first time managers is the age old problem. Right? So it’s, it’s since time immemorial, so to say, right, but you also acknowledge number two, the workforce has changed. So while the problem is old, now the workforce is new. So, millennials coming in. And the realities are also different. We’ve got hybrid working and stuff like that happening. Number one, number two new realities with millennials and hybrid working. And number three, the pace of work is like never before. So he said, This is what I’m calling the triple complexity, age-old problem, new realities, we support increasing. So and also creates its own dynamics, right, because we’ve heard a lot of people talk about today, first time managers lack role models. Because in a hybrid environment, it’s very difficult for them to find role models and role models also have become far and few between for variety of reasons. So all of those complexities. I’m curious to understand how, you know, what is your view or how MakeMyTrip has tried to solve for it or what how you’re trying to solve for it? What are your views on the structural complexity? What can people do to kind of navigate through this?
Yuvaraj Srivatava: Again, I think, interesting, let me attempt to maybe a bit disjointed, but I’m sure at the end of it, something should really come out of what we discuss, on this question.
I earlier said I think that you need to get people into the system who are culturally aligned, because functional skills can really get developed anywhere, right? One thing which has changed in the current context of those triple complexity is that gone are the days when the millennials and new people would always look at the role models. They look for somebody who they can learn from. And why, because they feel – Knowledge is power. In today’s world charisma of a leader is a thing of past or maybe in certain functions, it will work. But currently, it’s more important for a leader to have functional competence, and if the person is functionally competent, he generates followership, because millennials, new age, new age employees, or let’s not say New Age employees, or the current set of people would mostly look at guidance on the functional areas. And there are three rules how you really derive you know, power, one is a position power, I make you see you an MD, you will have power. Another one is personality power, when you have a charisma and third one is a knowledge power. At some point of time, position and charisma used to work charisma can still work in some of the function. But in today’s knowledge world, the power, which basically works is knowledge. People look for leaders who can solve for them, who can guide them, who can mentor them, who can tell them what needs to be done, rather than saying go and find out your answer. Because you must have heard nowadays, a lot of people say my team is smarter than me, it’s a way of saying that I’m working with the folks who are who are very capable, right, they can challenge me, they can ask me questions, and it shows that they are not going to get affected by your great speech, they are going to get affected in case you can tell them three ways of solving a problem. I think other another important element is that when you are working on complexities, you have to first ensure that you drive learnings around trust and accountability, I’ll connect this with your thought of you know, hybrid, working fast is if you continue to operate with the mindset that I need to monitor everything. If I need to really review everything, I need to be very sure of anything that goes off out of my functional department, unless I’ve seen it, then what you’re doing, you are not having trust on people. And you are not in position to lead people to do what they need to do and also at times, fail and then learn you are still operating with that mindset of earlier control driven leadership or managerial skills rather than really empowering and delegating. Empowering and delegating are skills, which are relevant in this context of typical complexity, you have to trust people to let them do what they are. Third element is which is connected with trust itself. Trust cannot really build unless you build accountability in the rank and file. When you are working in a hybrid, you can tell me, Yuvaraj, I’m your manager, partner, you go and do these things. I can’t come and tell the team after three days, I couldn’t really do it. I’m accountable for that. So I need to be far more prompt in sharing the daily progress. And that’s accountability, how you really keep people informed that what’s happening. So while Gatik is trusting me that I’m working at home and I’m away in a remote location, Yuvaraj is also behaving in a very accountable manner of keeping him informed. So this connection of trust and accountability is again an element of really being driven as a cultural fabric in the organisation or the individuals ways of working. While leaders should have trust the, manager should have trust people under them should also start having demonstrating more accountability. This triple complexity gets fixed by ensuring that you’re working with the leaders who have strong functional skills, because in complex work, you have to solve issues, you drive trust and accountability wherever it is needed. And then let the let the speed of work continue. That will not really affect much but I think if you continue to operate from the earlier mindset will not be in position to operate as a manager in the current environment. That’s how I look at it.
