CHAPTER 27

Conversations for Managers of Managers

I have yet to find the man, however exalted his station, who did not do better work and put forth greater effort under a spirit of approval than under a spirit of criticism.

—CHARLES SCHWAB

If you are a midlevel manager, you manage other managers rather than production work. You may have succeeded in earlier positions without engaging the leadership mindset and growing your leadership capabilities, but that will no longer work. Manage your people through delegation and assist them in growing as well. You may also be managing high potentials who work at remote sites, which is an additional challenge. Furthermore, you now report to an executive leader who has broad responsibilities and expects you to meet your goals and resolve issues with minimal assistance.

The Manager of Manager’s Role

Your job as a manager of managers is a fairly equal split of management (getting things done on time and on budget) and leadership (motivating people to produce and grow). Your span of control may be larger, but now you have only indirect influence over operations. In addition, for the first time you will be immersed in strategic planning, and your decisions must be guided by the strategic plan. In fact, you may be assigned specific strategic goals to achieve. One unique challenge you will face is getting first-line managers to put aside their technical skills and produce results by operating in a management, not a technical, mindset. Mentor first-line managers to ensure that their high potentials also realize their full potential.

Conversations by Managers of Managers with Their Boss

As a manager of managers, you will spend much of your time in conversations with your boss and other executive leaders; anticipate the questions they might ask. The conversations will be broader and of higher impact than in any previous position you have held. Demonstrate that you can apply your leadership skills to motivate managers to perform at their peak. Sharpen your leadership mindset and begin to define a leadership brand that will carry you to success at higher levels.

• Building relationships. The broad scope of your responsibilities and your role in strategic planning will place you in conversations with executive leaders other than your boss. Use those conversations to develop transactional relationships. It is also possible that one of them could become a mentor. Because your boss will have the biggest say in your next promotion, you must not only produce results but also prove that you have the leadership and management skills required to succeed at that level. Your relationships with multiple executive leaders will be essential for your future success; make them a priority.
• Developing others. Conversations with executive leaders will push you to develop your leadership mindset as well as sharpen your management mindset. Speak up when you have a strategic idea that will help the organization. To grow as a leader, identify areas in which you will ask your boss for mentoring. You also may want to seek external sources of coaching. Share with your boss the steps you are taking to develop your people and discuss how well they are responding. Tout your people’s capabilities and accomplishments whenever possible and appropriate.
• Making decisions. Ask your boss to teach you the process she uses to make decisions. Determine the extent to which she wants to participate in pivotal decisions you will make. Be careful in presenting definitive decisions to your boss, as her preference may be to discuss strategic issues in general early in the planning process. Show that you understand the strategic context and have considered the people side in your decisions. Make timely decisions; do not let issues fester while you ponder what to do.
• Taking action. Ensure that your actions align with your boss’s priorities and with the strategic plan. Share with your boss how you assign your team members to strategic tasks, how you allocate resources, and how you measure results. Be prepared to describe how your first-line managers work together to achieve their goals. Provide succinct and timely reports about the results you are achieving, the issues you are addressing, and where you may need assistance.

Conversations by Managers of Managers with Their Peers

In all likelihood, you and your peers are reaching for the same thing: your boss’s job or one like it. So the challenge is to cooperate and compete at the same time. If your boss asked your peers to rate you on your readiness to be an executive leader, would the peers praise your leadership strengths or your management strengths? Conversations with peers are an excellent opportunity to develop your leadership mindset.

• Building relationships. Meet regularly with your peers to exchange ideas and discuss possibilities—not just when one of you needs something. Be open to sharing resources with your peers to ensure that everyone succeeds. Do not let your competitive spirit cloud your relationships; find ways to unite with your peers to make your organization the best in your industry.
• Developing others. To what extent are you willing to share people and training resources with your peers in order to achieve peak overall performance? If they asked for help, would you loan them your best, your average, or your lowest performers? Do you and your peers mentor and coach each other, or does everyone hide quietly on the sidelines when one of you has an issue? Start to demonstrate your leadership mindset horizontally.
• Making decisions. You and your peers have an opportunity to assist each other in making important decisions. Do you regularly tap into your peers’ experience as a decision-making resource? Are you open to similar requests from them? Do you have conversations about the issues you face and what you might do differently if additional resources were to become available?
• Taking action. Do you routinely coordinate actions with your peers? When you agree to assist a peer, do exactly what you have committed to do—every time. After you finish a joint action, have a conversation with your peers to determine how you can work together even more effectively next time.

Conversations by Managers of Managers with Their High Potentials

The first-line managers who work for you reach their goals through others. For some, especially those who possessed extraordinary skills as individual contributors, directing others will be more challenging than doing the work themselves. You are familiar with this challenge because you have faced it. When you guide first-line managers through this major transition, shift their perspective from a technical to a management mindset. Their jobs entail mostly management tasks, such as organizing, scheduling, and evaluating work, with a sprinkling of leadership tasks. Coach them to balance the two. Notice that personally performing production work is not on either of your priority lists.

• Building relationships. Some first-line managers who work for you may have been your peers in the past. Have you held a baseline conversation with them to explain your expectations and hear their concerns? Coach them to reinvent and strengthen their relationships with you and to cooperate with other managers. Expect to spend a lot of time mentoring them to recognize differences between management and leadership mindsets and to develop both.
• Developing others. Developing the managers who report to you is essential for your next promotion; it deserves priority attention. New first-line managers are likely to need assistance in dividing projects into tasks, defining completion criteria, and providing useful feedback. Cultivate their management mindset by challenging them to resist the temptation to do production work. Also show them how to motivate and train their people—the leadership portion of their job.
• Making decisions. Resist the temptation to participate in day-to-day production decisions. Instead of answering the questions first-line managers ask, ask them what they recommend and why. Unless you are absolutely certain their ideas will not work, let them implement them to ensure that they learn from both successes and failures. Encourage them to engage their people’s knowledge and experience in the decision-making process. Allowing first-line managers to make decisions and learn from the results is an effective way to develop their judgment gene and enhance their decision-making skills.
• Taking action. To reach your objectives, get your first-line managers to work together effectively. Coach them to share resources and to ask for more when necessary. Encourage them to continuously look for ways to streamline their business processes and to use new tools and technologies in creative ways.

Your ability to meet the challenges and answer the questions we have posed in conversations with your boss, peers, and high potentials will be evaluated when you take the online leadership assessment. As a manager of managers, you are not expected to know everything there is to know about leadership or management. After you take the assessment, you will receive feedback that identifies areas where you are performing at or above the manager-of-managers level, and areas you may want to improve. Using the results, you will be able to prepare an online personal action plan that will accelerate your future success.