Senior manager skills

[LiarLiarKnickersAblaze]

Shamelessly posting here for traffic.

My boss goes on paternity leave in a couple of months for 8-12 weeks. He’s asked me to step into his role while he’s off and is currently upskilling me in both the skills required for the role and the personal skills needed for senior management. This will include management of three people.

He plans to move on fully from the role by the end of this year and has said that he will support me applying for the role.

I’m both excited and nervous. He says my confidence and resilience needs to improve as well as getting used to regularly being in uncomfortable situations or discussions.

But something I wanted to ask here is what qualities do you have, value or expect to see at senior management. I don’t think I come across as either a senior manager or senior manager material. What are your top tips for adopting that mindset and improving communication? Has anything helped you?

Thank you in advance.

Consider stakeholders interests, needs and prior knowledge - especially when its senior colleagues. They probably need less detail than you expect, so that means you need to distill the message & draw out the really important points.

You need to be able to make tough decisions calmly. Eg you can't just ignore a people management issue.

You need to be able to prioritise your work ruthlessly and expectation manage.

Senior management but of just three people? That sounds odd and not very senior.

Partly depends on the industry especially as it doesn’t sound as if much people management is needed.

What industry?

Yes it’s a senior manager role within the organisation and the teams can be small when it’s a subject matter expert role. Some senior managers and heads of have hundred, some thirty, some three.

Financial services

Decision making. Senior managers know what questions to ask, what concerns their immediate superiors will have, and they can make a strong decision on the basis of the information available.

Confidence. “Fake it til you make it” is a horrible phrase but there is a good amount of truth in it! Come across and confident and other people will have confidence in you.

Agree with PP, senior managers would usually lead a lot more people in my experience. But to your point - confidence in articulating your points, good at guiding others in meetings/discussions/email chains to come to conclusions, thinking about bigger picture and strategy not just day to day, and a genuine interest in and care for staff.

Also good for you OP, go for it!

Firm professional boundaries

Do not be reactive ( particular important in managing strong personalities )

Be approachable - but not so much so that you are burdened with thinking for others.

Be clear on your expectations.

Don't expect your staff to excell at the same things - value their strengths and utilise them.

I work in financial services alongside subject matter experts and some of the teams are tiny so the senior managers may only manage a few people. The senior manager may have 1 or 2 managers below them and then an executive.

Managers don’t always manage people, they manage products and services or processes.

I do struggle to make points clearly. Either I’m too blunt or I go on a bit.

Hard to say that in this forum as I’ll get roasted for it but any tips on communicating succinctly much appreciated.

Have people managed previously but more junior roles.

Definitely a skill that you need to work on. You need to be able to express yourself clearly without waffling for both written and verbal communication.

Don’t expect people to know what you want if you don’t tell them.

Sorry to be cynical but do you trust him? Will you be getting extra pay for the extra responsibility while you keep his seat warm? If you're doing it 'for free' he can dress it up to be to your advantage whilst it's mostly to the advantage of the business. Him saying he's going to move on soon sounds like carrot dangling.

Fair question. Without going into specifics he will want to go back to the area he specialises in. He’s getting experience in this role. Other, more experienced, people will interview for his role, there’s no guarantees. Also, I need to chalk up the experience to apply for those level roles somehow.

Practice refining down to key points and doing so quickly eg get a friend or partner to ask you a difficult question that might need a lengthy response and practice your argument. Ask for feedback then try again. What high level message are you trying to get across? Use as few words as you can whilst being clear. Think about what the audience cares about and needs to know. Use the 'brick in the wall' technique to pace your speech in meetings (speak then imagine laying a brick in a wall before speaking again).

Senior management but of just three people? That sounds odd and not very senior.

Not odd at all. I've found the more senior I get the fewer people I'm expected to manage.

My top tips are:
Communication. People hate feeling like they are being kept in the dark.
You can't always tell staff everything that's going on but being honest and transparent is always appreciated.

Be authentic and yourself. Understand your own strengths and weaknesses and utilise the strengths of your team.

Give praise when it's due. If a member of your team is performing well then tell them and tell others.

my confidence and resilience needs to improve as well as getting used to regularly being in uncomfortable situations or discussions.

You can never have too much of this. In a different department in my place, there was a manager for a while who could do none of this.
Small team too, 5/6 people.
She was walked all over.

Any time she needed to address a problem within the team, she looked like she wanted the ground to swallow her up. While its obviously more than ok to cry, she cried a lot at work and was often on the verge of tears during difficult conversations.
People took the piss because they knew she wasn't confident enough to keep pulling them up on things. She would then get it in the neck from the CEO and cry again.

Be outcome driven. Try to find the common interests in outcomes for all stakeholders, and be positive but don’t shy away from making tough decisions.
People often think I’m nice - I’m not, I’m kind and have empathy, but I’m still outcome driven and I just engage with people on different levels to make sure that things happen. I’m in quite a nuanced role, senior but I only manage 2 people - I wish I had more, but I have support from across the business due to my reputation and approach.

From a comms perspective there’s a piece around why it’s important, how and what. But I can’t remember the details! Hopefully someone can chip in.

I’ve found this online which is helpful: https://www.yourthoughtpartner.com/blog/bid/53902/the-5-ws-and-an-h-to-communicate-virtually-anything