Five Essential Skills for Accidental Managers

Did you know that 82% of managers who enter management positions have not had any formal management or leadership training according to the CMI/YouGov study in 23?

The term accidental manager popped up as a buzzword in the last few years to describe those managers who found themselves in people management roles by accident and quickly having to figure out a whole new set of skills. There are lots of reasons people find themselves in this scenario;

• Perhaps they were good at their ‘craft’ and the leaders of the business thought, lets make the most of their confidence and competence and give them more responsibility /a team to manage
• A re-organisation which called for more managerial roles
• A business frightened of losing their talent, assumed that by promoting them would be enough incentive to keep them
• Maybe someone left the business and there was an immediate need for someone to step in

Regardless of the situation, the term accidental manager refers largely to the ‘accidental’ conditions that these fortunate or unfortunate individuals find themselves having to navigate.

Accidental implies a shock, something sudden, unexpected, unpredicted. Which also of course, implies a period of adjustment.

• The shift from being one of the team to overseeing the team
• The shift from being (most often) really good at my job, to not having a foggy clue what’s expected of me
• The shift from feeling relatively comfortable and confident to feeling completely incompetent
• The shift from being one of us, to one of them
• The shift from getting shit done to making sure everyone else gets shit done
• The shift from receiving team briefings to delivering team briefing

It’s quite a transition to make and often in my opinion left relatively unsupported.

Beyond a bit of ‘wise-advice’, accidental managers are often left to figure it all out alone.

Essential skills required for accidental managers

There are of course some key skills new managers can learn that help ease these transitions. And these can be sought out by training programmes or supported through 121 coaching or mentoring.

1. Mindset – Switching your mindset from being liked to being respected will serve you well. Being liked needs to become a cherry on the cake in terms of your impact. Being respected is now your primary goal. This will help to prioritise doing the right thing for your team and not being too swayed by powerful individuals and their own needs and asks of you. You will need to cultivate resilience, boundary management, and confidence.
2. Team first – your primary objective is to serve the needs of your team, not the individuals in it. Learning how to organise yourself around a team purpose and team goals which align to the company future vision. Cultivating competence and confidence to work with teams and group dynamics rather than individual dynamics. How do you set a team purpose, vision and goals that your people will align and commit to?
3. Performance management – probably the biggest aspect, is learning how to be alongside others in a way that encourages and supports them to do their best work. How do you set clear objectives and expectations for people? Learning to delegate. Confidence to handle tricky or performance conversations. What to do about people dramas and inter-team dynamics? How to be with someone struggling with their wellbeing? When to get support in or refer on? How to spot the difference between a role and individual that’s working versus one that isn’t (and then what to do about it). I would strongly recommend employee law training in this space alongside the navigating human dynamics.
4. Managing your stakeholders – suddenly stakeholder management becomes a much bigger part of your life. You’re accountable for several people now not just yourself. Understanding what good performance expectations the wider business/your stakeholders have of you and your team is essential. Then learning how to communicate. Often in this transition the shift is from detailed to high level communication. Learning how to report, communicate and engage with your stakeholders so they largely leave you to get on with your job, whilst simultaneously making sure they are reassured about the direction and performance you’re pursuing.
5. Your wellbeing – perhaps the most important aspect. Manager wellbeing. Middle managers by far report the most amount of burnout across all organisations. Largely due to their position in the sandwich – smack in the middle. They can feel like they’re pulled in all directions, everyone wants a piece of them, no way of keeping everyone happy. As such learning to identify triggers, putting healthy work boundaries in place, cultivating resilience for self and team and getting some alongside support to prevent rather than rectify a burnout are essential.

So there you have it. Five essential skills every accidental manager needs to get in their toolkit and fast.

We have a team of coaches who can be implemented on a 121 basis to support the first 90 days of an accidental managers journey to help them hit the ground running, put the basics in place, take care of the essentials, cultivate a healthy team and possibly just possibly thrive in the process.

Do the right thing by your people and give them the best shot of being successful.

I’ll leave you with this fabulous observation from Ann Franck, CEO of the CMI, “rather than cutting training budgets, organisations should view them as a means to secure their future, foster a culture of growth and maintain a competitive advantage in the ever evolving landscape”.