The best first-time manager tips are to lead fairly, learn from your mistakes, work to create an inclusive environment, be a good listener, find a mentor, use your team’s strengths, handle conflict calmly, avoid micromanaging, focus on “we” rather than “I,” and always be patient with yourself.
Becoming a first-time manager can feel challenging, especially if you find yourself managing former colleagues or employees with more experience. For more advice, you can also explore our New Manager Training Guides.
1. Treat All Employees Equally and Fairly
As a first-time manager, you will either be:
- Someone who has been promoted within a company (i.e., you have risen through the ranks)
- Moving to a new job and into a company where you are new to their work culture and employees
If you are new to the company, then treating all employees that you will manage equally is not going to be such a problem, because you will not be familiar with any of the staff.
If you are promoted from within the ranks, then it does get more difficult as you try to balance existing friendships with colleagues whom you will now manage.
Avoiding showing favoritism to some employees becomes a challenge!
It is essential to start from the very beginning as a manager to treat every employee you manage equally!
Recommendation
One way to develop a working relationship with colleagues whom you do not already know so well is to use one-to-one meetings to get to know each employee better.
In addition to assessing their own personal career development goals, find out about their hobbies and interests, and their skill set.
Try to find something that you have in common with colleagues you still need to build a rapport with, so that you can relate to each employee on some level.
You might find the Unconscious Bias training materials also useful.
2. Be Open to Making Mistakes and Learning
As a first-time manager, you just have to accept that you will make some mistakes.
Do NOT beat yourself up if you make a mistake, and do not be afraid to try new things in your management style.
As a first-time manager, you are bound to make mistakes, and the key is to make sure that these mistakes at least make you a better manager and leader in the long term.
Your staff will often see you as a stronger leader if you are honest and fair. So do not be afraid to own up to mistakes you make as a new manager, but learn from them.
As you grow into your management role, you may find it helpful to revisit some of the training suggestions we mentioned earlier, especially on topics like coaching, delegation, emotional intelligence, and conflict resolution.
For an overview, see our 7 essential training topics for first-time managers.
These areas are key to building confidence as a leader and avoiding common new manager pitfalls.
Learn to grow, develop, and take advice.
As you evolve, you’ll find that different employees and situations may require different management styles, a concept known as situational leadership, an approach that involves adapting to accommodate each team member’s needs.
3. Build an Inclusive Work Environment for Your Team
Inclusive Leadership is something I have written about in other posts, and it is extremely important as a manager (see the post on what workplace inclusion is).
You need to make an effort to make everyone in your team feel included. Each and every employee should have an equal opportunity. They should not experience any type of disadvantage.
Every employee should feel that they:
- feel confident to speak openly, and that they have a voice
- have the same access to information and help as colleagues in the same role
- have the same opportunities as others (regardless of age, culture, disability, or other causes of workplace discrimination)
Recommendation
As a new manager, unless you have previously had training in Inclusive Leadership and Management, I would recommend taking a course of this type.
Alternatively, if there is training that your Human Resources Department offers in this topic area, get them to sign you up for the course.
See the Inclusive Leadership training materials for trainers to provide workplace training.
For US managers, the EEOC also provides guidance on managers’ responsibilities under federal employment discrimination laws.
4. Learn How to Be a Good Listener
Being a great listener is an absolutely vital skill that you really need to master if you want to be a great manager.
While it might seem obvious that we must listen, many managers are poor listeners and tend to enjoy talking more than they should.
Developing strong listening skills is something you can fairly easily master once you have an understanding of some of the reasons why we often fail to listen enough, and once you learn some of the main techniques used in active listening.
By learning to be an effective listener, you will:
- come across as being more empathetic by taking the time to hear what others wish to say, helping you build rapport with your team
- more easily learn about any issues that your employees have and that exist in the team
- be seen as a better leader
5. Have a Management Mentor
Just like any other employee, having a mentor who understands the exact situations, issues, and experiences you will come across and need to deal with can be absolutely invaluable.
Reaching out to other managers is one of the best resources you will have as a new manager.
If there are management meetings that other managers attend, do not be afraid to tap into their knowledge and benefit from their experience.
The skill, of course, is to maintain trust in your own team by keeping a sense of confidentiality in terms of what you mention to other managers, while learning from your peers (more experienced managers).
There is nothing to stop you from picking the brains of other managers.
Ideally, if possible, having one specific manager (it might be your own boss, i.e., a senior manager) to turn to can be a great option.
As a first-time manager, you, just like all employees, are on a learning curve, and you need to be open to learning from others.
6. Use Your Employees’ Skills Effectively
It is amazing how skills are wasted in the workplace because employees have skills and experience that go unnoticed and untapped.
As a new manager, it can be worth the time to really get to know your employees, in particular, to ascertain what skills and expertise they have both in and out of work.
An employee’s job role may not reflect their full expertise and skill set, and, very often, employees will appreciate the fact that you value their expertise.
Techniques for learning more about each employee you will manage include:
- Holding a one-to-one meeting with each employee. In addition to learning a few things about them, which gives you a personal connection to them (i.e., they love to do yoga or watch motor racing), you can use this meeting to ask about their skills and what they are good at.
- Emailing the employees you manage and asking them to send you a list of any skills and expertise that they have both in and out of work, and giving them some examples.
Case Study: You chat with Margaret, who comes across as a fairly quiet and reserved lady who just gets on with her job and does it well, and seems to get on fine with her colleagues.
You discover that outside of work, Margaret is a dedicated volunteer for a local community center, and she manages a team of 6 other volunteers.
She is also trained in first aid. You have been looking for someone who could act as a backup and realize that Margaret could be the person.
You might also consider seeing if, as a team, you can do a fundraising event that helps Margaret’s community center.
In part, being a good manager is, in a sense, about winning hearts and minds and being seen to care about those people you manage.
Delegating well allows your team members to grow. Learn about the top benefits of developing delegation skills to manage more effectively and reduce your own workload.
7. Learn How to Deal with Conflict and Difficult People
One of the hardest things as a new manager can be dealing with conflict between colleagues and dealing with difficult people.
These people can sometimes even be your previous colleagues who now treat you differently because you are their manager.
It is inevitable that you will need to deal with these awkward situations from time to time.
There are techniques for dealing with conflict, and training in a topic such as ‘Conflict Management’ can be very worthwhile.
Likewise, knowing how to identify and manage narcissism in the workplace can also be worth learning about.
I recommend asking your HR department if they provide such training.
Likewise, training in ‘Dealing with Difficult People’ can be a great way to understand how to manage these situations when they occur.
Conflict is just one of many hurdles you’ll face as a new manager. Our guide on the 35 biggest new manager challenges can help you navigate these situations with confidence.
View the Dealing with Difficult People PowerPoint slides for Trainers
8. Avoid Micromanaging
One of the biggest mistakes many new first-time managers make is to start micromanaging.
It’s understandable, in a sense, that as a new manager, you want to make an impression, have everything under control, and make sure everything is in place.
So many new managers, because they do not know their team that well, fail to give employees the trust to get on with their own roles.
I tend to feel that you are best off first giving the employee a chance to prove themselves and then adjusting the tasks and workloads, etc., once you see there is a need to.
In other words, start off by giving trust and confidence to each employee.
Do not micromanage!
9. Understand the Difference Between “We” and “I” in a Team
Many first-time managers who are looking to prove themselves go in quite a heavy-handed way and have a ‘them’ and ‘me’ style approach.
It is essential, though, that you focus on the “we” and not the “I”.
For example, avoid always stating that “I want you to do this” or “I need you to do that”.
Put the emphasis on the team, on the collective.
Constantly using the word “we” to push the concept of togetherness and teamwork is very powerful when building teams.
Let me give you an example:
“I need you all to work harder so that I can meet the company’s sales target for this month.”
changed to
“We need to work harder as a team to achieve our sales target for this month.”
The second sentence that uses the “we” is all about achieving something as a team, i.e., it will be an achievement for everyone involved, rather than everyone working hard just to make you, as a manager, look good.
You might notice, when seeing players interviewed at the end of a match (for a team game), how they are trained to talk about the team’s achievement rather than their own skill at scoring a goal, for example.
The best results are most often achieved when teams work well together, and it is up to you as their new manager to instill this team ethic in them.
Promoting teamwork and good team dynamics can also be supported through creative training. These fun leadership activities and games offer team-building ideas that can strengthen collaboration.
10. Be Patient with Yourself
Do not be too tough on yourself, as it WILL take time to develop as a manager.
Every manager learns on the job, especially during the early days.
Don’t beat yourself up over setbacks. Instead, focus on developing a managerial mindset that embraces learning, self-reflection, and steady growth.
This mindset will help you become more confident and resilient over time.
Overall, be confident in your own ability and be willing to learn and keep learning as you develop into a great manager.
If you are wondering what type of manager you should aim to be, you might want to think of the managers that you yourself have had in the past and write down what was good about each manager and what was bad.
Why not write down or draw a mental map of the type of manager that you want to be?
Visual Recap: 10 Tips for First-Time Managers
Next Steps for New Managers
If you’re responsible for training first-time managers in-house, you can also use our ready-to-deliver materials to support their development throughout the first year.
Train First-Time Managers In-House With the New Manager Year-One Toolkit
Save preparation time with 10 editable, trainer-led training kits designed for HR teams, L&D professionals, trainers, and facilitators developing new managers.
- 10 editable, trainer-led training kits
- PowerPoint slides, trainer notes, participant materials, and activities
- Designed to support first-time managers throughout their first year
