“These Three Things” is an advice-based series from Offscript. It’s designed to offer straightforward, actionable tips for navigating complicated, complex, or just plain tricky professional situations. The column is geared towards career pivoters, freelancers, and anyone who’s trying to plot a course through uncharted professional waters.

 

If it’s your first time people managing and you’re struggling with it, These Three Things might help:

1. The relationship between manager and direct report feels weird because it is weird.

Managing people can be tough, and a lot of that toughness is down to the fundamental weirdness of the relationship. It’s bizarre to be in a situation for the first time (or any time) where you’re expected to work with someone directly, mentor them, and have a hand in directing their professional fate. You can be the most approachable, warm, transparent, good-willed, supportive, objective manager on the planet, but you’re also still in the position to fire someone, put them on probation, poorly review them, or otherwise impact their progression, and that’s just plain tricky to navigate.

And it’s extra tricky when you’re managing someone who’s really good at their job. Because, let’s be real, it’s not always the manager who has all the power in this situation. Good employees who regularly add value to their teams and organisations have leverage, and it’s up to them whether and how they decide to use it.

And let’s not forget about poor performers. They can throw the balance off, too. Managing someone who isn’t working well is really, really hard. You might feel responsible for their success or failure (and to some extent, you are, or at least it’s often the case that you are in the eyes of the business), you might feel concerned that their poor performance will reflect poorly on you, or you might be in a situation where that person is wildly popular despite their poor performance, and you risk becoming wildly unpopular if you do the right thing and address it.

Ultimately, as a manager, you may manage the members of a single team completely differently, and that feels strange, because it feels intrinsically unfair, even if it’s not.

Managing people is hard. And it’s weird. It’s emotionally taxing and it’s mentally demanding, and anyone who tells you differently has probably never done it very well.

Managing people is hard. And it’s weird. It’s emotionally taxing and it’s mentally demanding, and anyone who tells you differently has probably never done it very well.

My advice? Acknowledge the weirdness. Don’t pretend like it doesn’t exist. If you’re finding managing a team to be hard, that’s because it is. Ask a mentor for support, and find ways to navigate the relationship that allow for flexibility – people management can’t be rigid, because, well . . . people. You’ll strike your balance, eventually (or you won’t, and that’s OK, too. More about that later).

2. You are a manager. You are also an employee. Leverage that.

It’s really easy (like, really absurdly easy) to get sucked into what I call the ‘responsibility trap.’ This is when you get a promotion at work and then – through a series of universal behavioural phenomena which defy logic and explanation – you suddenly stop seeking help in the way you always have. I’ve seen it a dozen times (and heard of it many more): a person becomes a manager, and instantly they feel and act as though the learning and development and progression of everyone on their team is their burden – and only their burden – to bear. 

This manifests in other ways, too, like feeling the pressure to have all the answers, all the time. Or feeling like you have to be in charge of or involved in every possible thing, just because you’re The Boss.

But, guess what? 

Just because you’re a manager, and just because you do have some additional responsibilities for the people and projects around you, absolutely DOES NOT mean that you should stop seeking the support you need. 

You are still an employee. Presumably you report into an organisational structure chock full of folks who are being paid to help you. Let them. 

The responsibility trap is very real, and it can easily make your professional existence feel overwhelming and unnecessarily draining. Becoming a manager changes some things, but it doesn’t change the fact that you are entitled to support, and to your own opportunities for learning and development.

3. People management might not be for you (and that’s fine)

I’ll keep this one short and sweet. 

Becoming a manager – and choosing to stay in that role as you progress through your career – is not for everyone, and it doesn’t have to determine your success as a professional person.

In my experience, some of the most valued people in any business are individual contributors or consultants, and they don’t manage anyone. They may offer support, guidance, advice, and mentorship, but they’re not involved in traditional team management, and they’re doing just fine.

If you find that people management isn’t for you, you don’t have to do it forever, and your career won’t die because of it.  

So, if you find that people management isn’t for you, you don’t have to do it forever, and your career won’t die because of it.

You can find other professional pathways that work better for your skills, ambitions, and emotional thresholds. They’re out there, and they’re great. I promise.