{"id":5090,"date":"2014-06-25T08:37:22","date_gmt":"2014-06-25T15:37:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/recruitloop.wpengine.com\/?p=5090"},"modified":"2023-05-15T10:41:09","modified_gmt":"2023-05-15T17:41:09","slug":"6-painful-management-lessons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.zippia.com\/employer\/6-painful-management-lessons\/","title":{"rendered":"6 Painful Management Lessons"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Tuesday, we posted Paul\u2019s top 8 \u201caha\u201d moments<\/a>. We figured that we\u2019d also give you a few more valuable lessons that I learned from my experiences as a new manager years ago. If you\u2019ve ever been a new manager, you can probably relate to some of these, too!<\/p>\n

If you haven\u2019t been a new manager, then I strongly encourage you to learn from my 6 lessons. Seriously. They were painful enough for one person!<\/p>\n

1. \u201cNo\u201d Is a Strong Word<\/h3>\n

When I first became a manager, I was in charge of a small IT department. The first thing I had to do was move a 125-person company into a new office space, complete with a new systems buildout. Shortly after accomplishing this, the HR Manager asked me to come into her office.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou need to not say \u2018no,\u2019\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

I was confused. People were asking the impossible and I couldn\u2019t say \u201cno\u201d? That made no sense, and I told her that.<\/p>\n

Her response? \u201cWell, maybe you shouldn\u2019t say it as firmly.\u201d<\/p>\n

From there, we worked on ways for me to say \u201cno\u201d without pissing people off. It\u2019s something that has helped me countless times in my career, and I\u2019m grateful that I learned it early.<\/p>\n

2. Show Some Humanity<\/h3>\n

My first employee (well, the one I didn\u2019t fire) had been working with me for a year when I mentioned that my husband and I were going out to dinner that night. And I mentioned my husband by name.<\/p>\n

He gave me a blank look.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s my husband,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n

\u201cOh, you\u2019ve never used his name before.\u201d<\/p>\n

And I realized I hadn\u2019t. I had worked very closely with this person for a year and had never used my husband\u2019s name. That was when I realized that I needed to talk about things other than work occasionally, and when I did, morale instantly lifted.<\/p>\n

Maybe it feels frivolous to show that \u201chuman\u201d side sometimes, but it\u2019s a key part of building a strong team.<\/p>\n

3. Asking Is Okay<\/h3>\n

When I first started as a manager, I never asked for anything from our Executive Director. I\u2019d never ask for anything for my team unless they pushed me really hard. And then I\u2019d complain about how my team got passed over for bonuses or I\u2019d wonder why I was always the first manager to lose headcount.<\/p>\n

I was complaining about this to one of my mentors when he turned to me and said, \u201cJenn, if you don\u2019t ask, you don\u2019t get.\u201d<\/p>\n

So I asked for headcount, bonuses, and budget. Guess what happened?<\/p>\n

4. The Extrovert\u2019s Curse<\/h3>\n

I am a pretty classic extrovert (as long as you don\u2019t count my hobbies of wine and science fiction). And, as such, I suffer from what I call the \u201cExtrovert\u2019s Curse.\u201d This is where things just fly out of your mouth without actually touching your brain. This definitely can get in the way of management.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve stuck my foot in my mouth in pretty much every way imaginable. Finally, I asked advice from my team about how they wanted me to deal with it when I said something dumb. Their unanimous response surprised me: own it. When I said something stupid, they wanted me to just admit to it and apologise. Not to try to justify it. Not to try to mitigate it.<\/p>\n

Since I haven\u2019t stopped regularly putting my foot in my mouth, learning to own the things I say has helped me through a lot of embarrassing moments.<\/p>\n

5. Be Very Careful with Assumptions<\/h3>\n

Although I was on the management team at my firm, I didn\u2019t always know about benefits and other policies that were about to come out. My firm put out a memo about new benefits and cost structure that really pissed off my staff, because the employee cost was going up. They all marched into my office to complain.<\/p>\n

After listening to their complaints about how evil the firm must be to raise healthcare costs for its employees, I said, \u201cI\u2019m sure the firm isn\u2019t explicitly screwing over employees. I\u2019ll bet they\u2019re paying more, too!\u201d And then I pulled up my computer and did the math right in front of them.<\/p>\n

And\u2026 the firm wasn\u2019t paying as much this year. It had quite explicitly passed more costs to employees. I was stunned speechless and had to slink into the HR Manager\u2019s office to explain that I\u2019d messed up in representing the firm to my staff.<\/p>\n

Oops. I check now before doing math in public!<\/p>\n

6. Play the \u201cGet out of Conversation Free\u201d Card<\/h3>\n

Underwear. Wedding nights. Sex lives. Skirt lengths. Rear (ahem) views. What do all of these have in common? They\u2019re all topics I NEVER wanted to discuss with my staff!<\/p>\n

When these would come up early in my career, I\u2019d stand there and turn purple. Or quickly try to change the subject. It got to the point that I felt like I couldn\u2019t even have a simple conversation with my staff without turning funny colors or wanting to crawl under the desk.<\/p>\n

Then I started using what I called the \u201cGet out of Conversation Free\u201d card. When things got awkward, I\u2019d say, \u201cI\u2019m playing the card now\u201d and walk into my office (and close the door if I needed to laugh myself silly). This was an easy way for me to get out of risky conversations while still having fun with my team.<\/p>\n

I still keep the card handy!<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

Paul & I can\u2019t be the only one with (somewhat) painful \u201cAha\u201d moments – what are yours?<\/deleted><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here are six valuable lessons that I learned from my experiences as a new manager years ago. If you\u2019ve ever been a new manager, you can probably relate to some of these!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":8992,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[147],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n6 Painful Management Lessons<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Here are six valuable lessons that I learned from my experiences as a new manager years ago. If you\u2019ve been a new manager, you'll relate to some of these!\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.zippia.com\/employer\/6-painful-management-lessons\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"6 Painful Management Lessons\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Here are six valuable lessons that I learned from my experiences as a new manager years ago. If you\u2019ve been a new manager, you'll relate to some of these!\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.zippia.com\/employer\/6-painful-management-lessons\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Zippia For Employers\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/Zippia\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2014-06-25T15:37:22+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2023-05-15T17:41:09+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.zippia.com\/employer\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/6-Painful-Management-Lessons.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"770\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"400\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Jenn Steele\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@ZippiaInc\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@ZippiaInc\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Jenn Steele\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.zippia.com\/employer\/6-painful-management-lessons\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.zippia.com\/employer\/6-painful-management-lessons\/\",\"name\":\"6 Painful Management Lessons\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.zippia.com\/employer\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2014-06-25T15:37:22+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2023-05-15T17:41:09+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.zippia.com\/employer\/#\/schema\/person\/08314e2cf14b589a12bb79c51e244414\"},\"description\":\"Here are six valuable lessons that I learned from my experiences as a new manager years ago. If you\u2019ve been a new manager, you'll relate to some of these!\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.zippia.com\/employer\/6-painful-management-lessons\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.zippia.com\/employer\/6-painful-management-lessons\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.zippia.com\/employer\/6-painful-management-lessons\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.zippia.com\/employer\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"6 Painful Management Lessons\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.zippia.com\/employer\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.zippia.com\/employer\/\",\"name\":\"Zippia For Employers\",\"description\":\"How to find the best employees.\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.zippia.com\/employer\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.zippia.com\/employer\/#\/schema\/person\/08314e2cf14b589a12bb79c51e244414\",\"name\":\"Jenn Steele\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.zippia.com\/employer\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/3e5ab6aee56e035953065cc1aee56054?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/3e5ab6aee56e035953065cc1aee56054?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Jenn Steele\"},\"description\":\"Jen Steele is a dynamic, results-driven leader with over two decades of experience in the technology and marketing industries. As the CEO of KissMetrics, Jen is responsible for driving the company's strategic direction, growth, and overall success.\",\"sameAs\":[\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/jennsteele\/\"],\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.zippia.com\/employer\/author\/jenn-steele\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"6 Painful Management Lessons","description":"Here are six valuable lessons that I learned from my experiences as a new manager years ago. If you\u2019ve been a new manager, you'll relate to some of these!","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.zippia.com\/employer\/6-painful-management-lessons\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"6 Painful Management Lessons","og_description":"Here are six valuable lessons that I learned from my experiences as a new manager years ago. If you\u2019ve been a new manager, you'll relate to some of these!","og_url":"https:\/\/www.zippia.com\/employer\/6-painful-management-lessons\/","og_site_name":"Zippia For Employers","article_publisher":"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/Zippia\/","article_published_time":"2014-06-25T15:37:22+00:00","article_modified_time":"2023-05-15T17:41:09+00:00","og_image":[{"width":770,"height":400,"url":"https:\/\/www.zippia.com\/employer\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/6-Painful-Management-Lessons.jpg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"author":"Jenn Steele","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_creator":"@ZippiaInc","twitter_site":"@ZippiaInc","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Jenn Steele","Est. reading time":"5 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.zippia.com\/employer\/6-painful-management-lessons\/","url":"https:\/\/www.zippia.com\/employer\/6-painful-management-lessons\/","name":"6 Painful Management Lessons","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.zippia.com\/employer\/#website"},"datePublished":"2014-06-25T15:37:22+00:00","dateModified":"2023-05-15T17:41:09+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.zippia.com\/employer\/#\/schema\/person\/08314e2cf14b589a12bb79c51e244414"},"description":"Here are six valuable lessons that I learned from my experiences as a new manager years ago. If you\u2019ve been a new manager, you'll relate to some of these!","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.zippia.com\/employer\/6-painful-management-lessons\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.zippia.com\/employer\/6-painful-management-lessons\/"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.zippia.com\/employer\/6-painful-management-lessons\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.zippia.com\/employer\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"6 Painful Management Lessons"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.zippia.com\/employer\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.zippia.com\/employer\/","name":"Zippia For Employers","description":"How to find the best employees.","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.zippia.com\/employer\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.zippia.com\/employer\/#\/schema\/person\/08314e2cf14b589a12bb79c51e244414","name":"Jenn Steele","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.zippia.com\/employer\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/3e5ab6aee56e035953065cc1aee56054?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/3e5ab6aee56e035953065cc1aee56054?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"Jenn Steele"},"description":"Jen Steele is a dynamic, results-driven leader with over two decades of experience in the technology and marketing industries. As the CEO of KissMetrics, Jen is responsible for driving the company's strategic direction, growth, and overall success.","sameAs":["https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/jennsteele\/"],"url":"https:\/\/www.zippia.com\/employer\/author\/jenn-steele\/"}]}},"articleguide":"","showTableContent":"","showFeaturedImage":"","pageCategoryL2":"","authorsExperts":"","featured_image_url":"https:\/\/www.zippia.com\/employer\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/6-Painful-Management-Lessons.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zippia.com\/employer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5090"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zippia.com\/employer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zippia.com\/employer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zippia.com\/employer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zippia.com\/employer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5090"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.zippia.com\/employer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5090\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zippia.com\/employer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8992"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zippia.com\/employer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5090"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zippia.com\/employer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5090"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zippia.com\/employer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5090"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}