Leadership Insights on Transitioning from Frontline Manager to Mid-Level Manager

Transitioning from a frontline manager to a mid-level manager requires strategies for settling into middle management. Learn what you can do to
ease the transition all the while imparting change, accountability, and developing others along the way.

Table of Contents
1. Video: Planning for Change (bs_ldcldp_37_enus_01)
2. Video: Accountability Raises Employee Performance (bs_ldcldp_37_enus_02)
3. Video: Set the Mood for Your Team (bs_ldcldp_37_enus_03)
4. Video: Break Down Big Goals (bs_ldcldp_37_enus_04)
5. Video: Working Backwards From a Win (bs_ldcldp_37_enus_05)
6. Video: On-the-Level Communication (bs_ldcldp_37_enus_06)
7. Video: Mutual Interest: The Power of Peer-to-Peer Coaching (bs_ldcldp_37_enus_07)
8. Video: Managing by Walking Behind Them (bs_ldcldp_37_enus_08)

1. Video: Planning for Change (bs_ldcldp_37_enus_01)

When you are planning for change, Anne Riches explains, you need to plan for resistance. A certain element is likely to resist, but you need to
maintain your focus on leading the majority who are willing to go forward with the change.

Objectives

Acquire insights on the need to plan for resistance when planning for change.
 There is no doubt, again, for me, that there comes a point in every organization’s lifecycle when you’re trying to become innovative, do new
things, change tack; that you have to look at the obstacles. I think it was John Kotter who talked about the obstacles some time ago, and I still
think that’s right.

My sense is there are fewer obstacles now, because there’s been so much restructuring over time that people realize that when there’s a change
in the offing they’re either on the bus or they’re likely to be off it. The challenge with not doing that well, of course, is the stench of it being done
badly that’s left behind. My sense is to understand that we have to plan for resistance to change, we have to anticipate it. One of the key
concepts that I am always talking to organizations about is to have a structured change management plan. Don’t leave the human side of change
to chance, because that’s the thing that’s going to unravel you.

One of the elements of that change management plan is to actually plan for resistance. In other words, anticipate where it might come from, why
it might come from those people, what are they resisting, is there something we can do about it, is it in fact the way we’re implementing the
change—not enough information, not getting them in the loop, not involving them, not explaining what’s in it for them, not doing the appropriate
training, not doing the recognition.

Once you’ve gone down all those tracks, and if you still end up with people who in the old models were called “laggards,” then my sense is yes you
do. You have to say, “Look, this is the direction that we’re going to go down, and these are the behaviors, and these are the changes that we
expect. Here’s the plan. If you can see no reason why you can’t do these, then I expect you to do these by a certain amount of time.”

I’m very keen on saying, “Is there any reason why you can’t do this?” That is how I find out what the reasons are, but by and large, once you’ve
done all the other steps, you come to that point and you say, “Is there any reason why you can’t do this?” And if they say no, I set a time frame and
say, “Okay, then by this time I expect you to perform by this standard.” And then it becomes if they’re not, they’re out.

There is a real challenge, and I think it comes from managers, aspiring leaders, who haven’t worked out where to focus their energy. And for
many people, focusing on the ones who are resisting—the really slow, not going to come ones—takes our energy, because it goes back to the
amygdala. If we don’t do that, in some way we feel that we’ve failed, that our reputation as a leader is under threat, because we haven’t brought
them with us.

But what, when you look around the organization, what do other people want you to do? They want you to focus on the critical mass, who are
moving forward, and that’s where your energy should be. So it takes a great deal of personal leadership skill, and strength and resilience, to say,
“I’ve done my best for that lot, and I’m sorry, but they’re not coming on the bus. These people, who are coming on the bus, they are the ones who
are worthy of my attention. Let us make that work. They will self-select or I will select.”

2. Video: Accountability Raises Employee Performance (bs_ldcldp_37_enus_02)

Objectives

Acquire insights on helping employees bring their best performance to work through accountability.

Holding people accountable is a challenge for a lot of people. And by holding people accountable, I want to be clear, I mean drawing out their
best performance. A lot of times, we think holding people accountable is simply slamming them when they've done something wrong and making
sure that they own their mistakes. That's fine, but that's not going to actually, in most cases, raise the level of their performance. And so the first
thing we have to do is make sure that we're raising the level of their performance. And then the second thing is, how do you do that.

How do you do that in a way that keeps ownership in their court and you're not doing their work for them, and at the same time you're holding
them accountable and their performing? And I have a number of steps that I use around that. And one of them, the first step, is clear
expectations. We miss that a lot of the time. Right? That someone is not accountable, and we think they should have known what they were
supposed to be doing, and they had a different idea of what that was. So to start off with making crystal clear the expectations.

And I think it's not childish to say, "Tell me what you understand the expectations to be." Right? Because you will know if they have the same
understanding that you do. The second piece is, ensuring clear capability. If the expectations are super clear, but they're not capable of executing
on it, then you're setting yourself up and them for failure, and for frustration. They need to make sure, and you need to help them make sure that
they have the capability to follow through on the expectations. Then we have clear measurement, which is, is it working or is it not working.

In what way is it working? Don't wait for the end to say this didn't work. We want to know is it working. We need ways of measuring the process
so that people know is the person's capability that they have and the expectations that they know moving them forward in the right direction.
The fourth thing they need is feedback, which is clarity of, "Am I moving forward?" We've measured it, we know, like, how is it going. Right?
What's working and what's not working, and then how is it going?

And we need the skill, as leaders, to be clear with people before things go wrong, you know, or even before they go right, to say, "Are we
tracking?" So clear expectations, clear capability, clear measurement, clear feedback. And then. finally, look at the outcome, and say, "Is it
working or is it not working?" And you either repeat that process or you give them some training to develop their capability, or ultimately if it
doesn't work, you let them go.
 But you need to make sure you've done those things so you have more certainty about, have you given them the right opportunities to succeed,
not just are they lazy, or did they not want to do a good job. Most people are not lazy and most people want to do a good job. So do they have the
tools that they need and the clarity of the expectations and the strong reflection of measurement and the good feedback so that they have every
opportunity to succeed? If they have all of those things and they're not succeeding, they're probably not a right fit for the role. If they are, then
they're accountable.

3. Video: Set the Mood for Your Team (bs_ldcldp_37_enus_03)

Leaders set the mood and atmosphere that either helps or hinders team members in achieving their goals.

Objectives

Acquire insights on how leaders set the mood and atmosphere that either helps or hinders team members in achieving their goals.

How would you act if you had a chance to speak in front of Jeff Bezos today? What about if you had a chance to speak in front of Oprah Winfrey?
Would you approach them in the same way? Most of us wouldn’t. And it shows how their leadership influences those around them. As leaders,
we decide how others act around us and we set the mood.

In the book Primal Leadership, the authors argue that great leadership works through the emotions, and that the fundamental task of a leader is
to prime good feelings in those they lead. How do you set that context? How do you prime good feelings in those you lead? Well, start by asking
yourself three questions. What’s the current mood of the team right now? What kind of mood do you want to set? And, are there any rifts that
the team needs to address?

By asking yourself these questions, you can decide what you need to do to help your team be most productive. If the team needs urgency, set the
tone by becoming urgent yourself, and starting work quickly, moving faster, and speaking directly. If the team is beset with analysis paralysis, cut
through with decisiveness and action. If the team is rushing and sacrificing quality, set the tone by being deliberate with your speaking, your
pace, and considerate in your listening. When you set context, team members will respond, especially when it helps them achieve their goals.
4. Video: Break Down Big Goals (bs_ldcldp_37_enus_04)

If you want to achieve a big goal, break it down into smaller goals first.

Objectives

Acquire insights on how you can achieve a big goal by breaking it down into smaller goals first.

As a leader, we often have to hit big goals that are often in the future. We need to ship a new product in two or three years that’s completely
different from what we’re offering today. We need to reach a sales goal in six months that’s a lot higher than what we’re doing at the moment.
How do we make sure to motivate our team when these big, diffuse, far-off goals often seem so far away that it’s hard to motivate short-term
action?

How do we break up these big things into smaller things that are more achievable? And it turns out, an interesting way to think about this is to
go back to the psychology of none other than rats. Many years ago, researchers were looking at what motivates rats. What makes them run
through a maze faster, for example, than they might run otherwise? And they found that putting something just a little bit ahead of them was
much more motivating than putting something far away. When something is far away, it feels so distant that we’re not as rushed to get there.

We’re not as motivated to work hard because we don’t necessarily think we’ll reach it. But if it’s close, we know we can reach it. And because we
know we can reach it, we work much harder to close the gap. If you’ve ever had a coffee loyalty card, for example, and you have one punch on
that card, versus 9 out of 10 punches, research shows you’re much more likely to go back to that coffee place quickly, when you have nine
punches rather than just one.

Because you think, “If I can just get that one more punch, I’m there, and I’ll get a free coffee.” And so we want to make people feel like they’re
almost at a new goal. They’ve almost reached something. And then once they’ve reached it, set a new goal. We need to break that big goal down
into a bunch of sub-goals that are smaller along the way, but seem a lot reachable. Whenever I take a spin class, for example, I have a favorite
instructor who does a great job of this.

She doesn’t sit us all down and say “Okay, great. We’re going to work hard for 45 minutes.” No one can work hard for 45 minutes. She says, “Okay,
now, for the next three minutes, we’re going to do this. You’re almost there. You’re almost there. Take two minutes of rest. Now, for the next five
minutes, we’re going to do this.
 You’re almost to the top of the hill. You’ve just gotten close. Okay, we’re done.” She breaks this big goal up into sub-goals that are concrete, that
are very reachable, and we do these quick short spurts that make us work hard, take a quick break, and do it again. By breaking that big goal up
into smaller ones, we work much harder in the short term and are more likely to reach that end goal on time.

5. Video: Working Backwards From a Win (bs_ldcldp_37_enus_05)

To capture a win, plan backwards from your goal.

Objectives

Acquire insights on planning ‘backwards from your goal’ to ensure a successful outcome.

Working backwards from a win. Why is it important to do that? A lot of the times, people are in a certain situation and they ask themselves the
question, “What could I do? Could I go here? Could I go there? Should I go there? Should I go here?” In some ways that sort of feels like the
right question, to be asking about your choices and examining them. But in another way, I think, it’s the absolute wrong question to be asking.

The right question to be asking is, “What must I do to win?” So what that does is set up, first of all, you got to understand what it is your trying to
accomplish. What is a win? And many times, people, I think, kind of live their professional lives without as clear a sense of purposefulness as
they could have.

So, defining the win is the first step. The first step is to say, “What would a win look like?” Can you describe a win? Can you envision it? Let’s be
specific about that. Is that “I want to get to 200 million in revenue in three years”? Or is it “I want to get to this market share in two years, I want
to have these features set”? So defining the win is a critical first step, and then the time frame.

It should be a stretch goal. It should be something that people will kind of look at that and go, “Really, you think we can do that?” But, once you
do that, then what happens is then you can work backwards from that. In sort of, a set of milestones that lead you to your present day. It’s very
much like, if you imagine you have a mountain.

A lot of the folks who are climbing in the Himalayas, they map a route out. A lot of the times, they map the route out backwards, because they
know you’ve got to get to Mount Everest, you’ve got to get to Lhotse pass; you’ve got to work backwards that way. So what you do is, if you
 define a win and it’s a stretch goal, then you say, “Okay, what needs to happen six months short of that? In time, what would the world look like?
What would we have accomplished six months short of that? What would it look like a year before?” So you kind of work backwards to where
you are.

Now, here is the interesting thing—when you do that, a bunch of very interesting things have happened to me. I’ll give you an example. We had
got acquired as an early technology company in one of my startups and we were now in this midsized company. We said our goal was to be from
number 30 in the market, which is what we were when we got acquired—we were nothing—to we want to be in the top three in three years. And
really, the team looked at that and said, “That’s impossible. How are we going to do that?

Number three, there are all these established players?” And all of that. Then we said, “Let’s just hang with me. We’ll figure it out.” Then we kind
of worked backwards, said, “Okay, a year short of, in two years we should be at this part. In one year we should be at this part.” And so on.

Then when we go to where we are now versus the next six months, we discovered two things. One is we were doing a bunch of things that we
didn’t need to do. They weren’t going to get us to the goal, and more importantly there were some things we were doing, which were critical to
getting to some of these milestones, that we had not even started yet. As an example, it will broaden your view of what you have to do. You will
say, “Oh, if I don’t do these things, I’m never going to get to the goal.” For some reason, people don’t—it’s not obvious when you’re just looking at
your immediate surroundings.

There are so many things that we added, back to my example, that we didn’t have as part of our program. We added an outreach to a whole
bunch in the PR realm, that we had not thought about. We had a bunch of geographical things we added. We had added a bunch of channel
programs that we had not thought about. Or, really kind of felt like that’s something in the future. Well, you won’t get there unless you start
now. So you start taking a bunch of steps that you should take. Then you start trimming out a bunch of the things you feel like that’s good, but
it’s not really pointing the arrow, it’s not putting wood behind that arrow in the direction we want to go.

So, working backwards from a win, I think, is a very, very effective way of, first of all, achieving a goal that seems unreachable. Clearly defining
what a win is, because, you know, that really motivates the team. In terms of getting people, now, kind of energized from thinking about what
could we do, to what we must do to win. Doing what you must do to win is a key part of getting to this working backwards from a win. It’s
worked for me many, many times, and it’s a great thing to do.

6. Video: On-the-Level Communication (bs_ldcldp_37_enus_06)

Objectives

Acquire insights on the ‘On-the-level’ approach to communication.

Communication is one of the most important processes in today’s business. It’s getting more important. And none of us can ever be totally
perfect at it. We’re always developing, always growing. I’ve been working in this area for four decades, and I still find myself learning more about
it, making mistakes, and trying to be better. So let me talk with you about on-the-level communication. What is it?

It’s communication that happens across boundaries, between managers and team members, between team members and each other, between
customers and suppliers. On-the-level communication is communication that has four important qualities.

One quality is it’s purposeful. And I’m talking about communication in the workplace. It has a purpose. Perhaps it’s to set goals. Perhaps it’s to
get some feedback. Perhaps it’s to deal with tough messages or solve a problem. On-the-level communication is also direct. It actually delivers
the message in as direct a way possible, but with the third quality, and that’s respect. Because on-the-level communication is always respectful
and takes into account the relationship between the two people that are involved.

And the fourth thing that’s critical in on-the-level communication is shared responsibility. Both people are responsible. In the old days we used
to think it was the boss’s job to manage communication, and everybody else listened, but not so. Everybody is a giver and everybody is a receiver
in any communication.

So let me talk with you about six critical skills that are important in giving and receiving. Three of those skills I would call responsive skills. And a
responsive skill is something where you’re mostly sort of taking in information. The first skill is observing. We’ve got to observe what’s
happening, observe behavior, observe consequences, observe what’s happening around when performance is occurring. Second receptive skill is
listening, listening from the point of view of the individual. And that leads us to the third critical skill, which is empathy. So observing, listening,
and empathizing, three very critical skills. Both the giver and the receiver need those.

And three expressive skills. The first expressive skill is questioning. We’ve got to be able to ask questions to get more information. Why isn’t that
a receptive skill? It’s because questions direct communication on a particular path. Secondly, we need to be able to describe. We’ve observed
 behavior. Now let’s describe it. What did we see? What did we see as the behavior, as the consequences? What did we see as the overall
environment impact?

And the third thing is concluding. We’ve observed. We’ve described. Now what are the conclusions? What patterns did we see? What are the
implications of all of this? So three skills that are expressive and three skills that are reflective in a communication that is direct, respectful,
shared responsibility, and on-the-level.

7. Video: Mutual Interest: The Power of Peer-to-Peer Coaching (bs_ldcldp_37_enus_07)

Peer-to-peer networks can help with leaders’ personal development. Setting up a coaching network can bring you many benefits. Discover how
you can set up a peer-to-peer coaching network.

Objectives

Acquire insights on how you can set up a peer-to-peer coaching network.

One of the trends that is a very positive one in leadership development, personal development at work, is peer-to-peer coaching. And a
question I often get is, how do you set one up, a peer-to-peer coaching exchange? There are many benefits to peer-to-peer coaching, including
the fact that people feel less lonely and disconnected when they’re working on important issues with people who were in similar circumstances,
and who have a mutual interest and commitment to finding new questions, better questions, and perhaps some new solutions for meeting the
challenges they are facing in their careers and in their lives as leaders, in all the different parts of their lives.

So, to set one up is not all that complicated. The key is to find people around you who you naturally want to talk to and who have some interest
in exploring the kinds of questions that one must explore to grow as a leader. It doesn’t have to be done in a formal structure. The key is to find
people that you feel you can talk with and to engage them in a process that is really pretty simple: “Here are the questions that I’d like to
address, because I think we could both benefit from providing both feedback to each other and accountability pressure.”

You can’t learn leadership on your own. You’ve got to have people surrounding you who provide you with a different perspective, and also to
help you to remain accountable for the goals that you establish for yourself at whatever stage you’re at in your life and career in terms of where
you want to go next.
 So, think about the people that you would like to talk to, and then develop a set of questions that you would like to be addressing together. And
then start with just an initial understanding of “Well, here—let’s just try this and see how it works, where I’m addressing questions that are
important to me and you’re addressing questions that are important to you, and we talk through how we can be most helpful to each other.”

And do that a couple of times for maybe a half hour, and then sit back and ask yourself and ask each other, “How’s this working? What could we
make changes in that would make it more useful for both of us?” and take it from there. Grow it naturally and organically as you discover what
works and what doesn’t.

8. Video: Managing by Walking Behind Them (bs_ldcldp_37_enus_08)

The best managers are those who create opportunities for those under them to succeed, says Stephen Harding. Here he explains how managers
function most effectively.

Objectives

Acquire insights on how managers can function effectively with a team by creating opportunities for them to succeed.

We spent a couple of years actually doing the research which led to the book, and what we ended up finding was something which in a way had
been written about even 2,000 years ago by a Chinese philosopher called Lao Tzu. What Lao Tzu said is, to lead people, walk behind them. And
what he meant by that is the kind of role that people are looking for from their manager is one where the manager is not micromanaging them,
he’s not actually managing them that much.

He’s certainly around to coach them, to nurture them, to develop them, but he’s not micromanaging them. So in a sense, using Lao Tzu’s
expression, is managing by walking behind, or another phrase we sometimes we use is managing offstage.

So, it’s that kind of role that people are looking for in their manager. People don’t want to be overly managed. They want to have a manager who
allows them to express themselves, who gives them the opportunity to be empowered, act autonomously, is certainly around to guide and advise
them and give them feedback, but ultimately allows them then to get on with the task at hand.
Now, we put forward in the book a model which has four particular elements, and we’ve got a chapter devoted to each of those, so one is called
“Executing Tasks,” which is about, as the name suggests, the way in which a manager helps work with an individual to set the particular
objectives they have. The second is about developing people. The third is delivering the deal. And the fourth is energizing change. So, all of these
are particular ways in which managers can use their role to essentially get the best possible out of employees.

Essentially, what we believe the manager’s role is fundamentally about is creating the environment where they maximize employee engagement
in their team, in the individuals who they are looking after. So that’s really what it’s about. It’s how can the manager in their role really create the
conditions which optimize the opportunity for people to do their very best within their organization.

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