Becoming a manager is a big leap in responsibility, both for you, and the people you’re managing. You need to be prepared — and you need to prove that you’re prepared if you want to be chosen for a managerial role.
How do you do this? The key is to be proactive. Instead of waiting to get noticed, commit to your goals and take action! Don’t worry if you’re not sure what to do; here are 6 tips for setting yourself apart as the top managerial candidate in your business:
1. Behave like a curious 5-year-old
True professionals never stop learning. Be willing to explore new ideas. Seek out challenges and understand that short-term difficulty is key to long-term improvement. It’s like riding a bike: it feels incredibly hard at first, but if you don’t give up, it’ll eventually become second nature.
It takes different skills to manage people than it does to work alongside them — so actively work on honing both those skill sets. To do this, you can read guides and take management courses. There are plenty out there, so do some research and make an informed decision.
You can also try coming up with fresh, practical solutions to problems in your workplace. Perhaps things have been done a certain way for quite some time, but you have a better idea. Even if it doesn’t work out for whatever reason, it will show that you’re making an effort and willing to think creatively.
How you actually go about it isn’t so important — as long as you can show your employer that you’re steadily improving across the board, you’ll set yourself apart as someone to watch.
2. Pitch your company vision
Being a manager isn’t just about sticking to the status quo, ensuring that boxes get ticked and basic tasks get done in a timely fashion. It’s also about having a clear vision of the company you’re a part of, and how you’d like to see it grow. Armed with a great plan and an inspiring work ethic, a manager can completely transform the team they manage.
Explain to your current boss what you hope to achieve in a year, and in five years. Having a compelling vision for the future will be a strong point in your favour — particularly if it fits with your boss’s current plan. If it doesn’t, it isn’t necessarily disastrous. If you can make a compelling case, you might be allowed to play a part in shaping progress.
Your vision might include:
- Ways to streamline your business, whether that’s adopting new software tools, reinventing internal processes, or outsourcing work to third parties.
- A new approach to recruitment; for example, taking on remote employees from overseas markets, which is possible through an employer of record (EOR) provider like Remote.
- Identifying and exploiting opportunities or gaps that exist within the market, which might include proposing new product innovations that meet emerging demand.
- Suggesting ways to enhance the customer experience, possibly by making improvements to the company website or app by introducing new technologies such as a chatbot like tidio.
3. Assist with training your colleagues
While you might like to hone your abilities independently, it might not be the best idea for a couple of reasons: firstly, you’re not in a good position to assess your own performance, and secondly, teaching others is one of the best ways to learn. When you explain something to someone else, you end up understanding it better yourself.
To that end, volunteer to help your colleagues develop their skills. You’ll need to be careful with how you go about this (you must not start presumptuously acting like a manager), but it’s important to establish strong relationships with your coworkers.
Don’t push too hard — just let everyone know that you’re happy to help whenever they have any problems, and keep a close eye on the rest of the business to look for any struggles. If you have team socials, then use that time to find out how you can help make your colleagues’ lives easier. If you do make it into management, they’ll already know that they can rely on your support.
Prove that you’re reliable
Say you’re a prodigious once-in-a-generation talent with all the tools to rise through the ranks and become the CEO one day… but you’re frequently late and call in sick a little too frequently. Are you going to be promoted to a managerial role? Probably not. It simply isn’t worth it to have an unreliable manager on the team.
The manager must set the example for the team, exemplifying not only the skills but also the attitude and commitment that company employees are expected to possess. A lazy manager breeds a lazy team, and why would any company want to invest in doing that? Be the person your boss contacts when he needs to get something done because he knows that when you’re entrusted with a task, it will be done well, whatever the odds.
Dress not for the role you have, but for the role you want. Businesses today might seem relaxed about their dress code, but don’t push it too much. The clothes you wear affect how you feel about yourself (a phenomenon known as enclothed cognition), and how you present yourself to the world. This is also why it’s worth dressing professionally even when working remotely. In the right attire, you’ll feel more capable, be more energetic, and come across as more confident.
5. Ask to shadow a manager
You should put in a request to spend some time shadowing a current manager. Following their work for a while will show that you respect your colleagues and are eager to learn from them. I did this several times early in my career, and it always helped me build a strong rapport with my seniors.
Even spending one afternoon every couple of weeks doing this will be extremely useful. You’ll get close-up experience of how a manager operates, build a stronger relationship with that manager (allowing them to serve as a mentor of sorts as you follow your career path), and send a clear message to the higher-ups that you’re committed to preparing for the role.
6. Understand your limitations
Great managers don’t just dictate unilaterally. They listen to the feedback presented to them, give it serious consideration, and reach reasonable conclusions. They recognize their flaws and work to alleviate them. This is so important to note because many people aspiring to be a manager will focus exclusively on performative elements: how well they fulfil their roles, how much work they get done, and how consistently they outperform their colleagues and competitors.
Being fantastic at your job won’t inevitably make you a good manager. In fact, some of the best workers make terrible managers — they’re often arrogant, ill-tempered, and demanding without being supportive. That’s why you must prove to your employers that you have some self-awareness, understand you always have room to grow, and know that you’re not always right.
Moving up to the management level isn’t something to be taken lightly, and the better the employer, the more careful they’ll be about selecting managerial candidates. Don’t settle for performing well in your current position and waiting to be picked. Do what it takes, and send a clear message that you’re the obvious choice!
