Four Common Mistakes by New Managers

I've moved the AEC Insight blog to a new address. www.aecinsight.com. Please check it out (and reset any feeds, if you will.)I'm still working on coordinating my own feeds.ThanksJerry

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2010 Offer: $1500 Fast-Track Business Development and Marketing Audit

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Four Common Mistakes by New Managers

Posted on September 16, 2009 by johnkreiss

Many education programs for aspiring design professionals do a disservice to their students in my opinion. While many of these programs place a strong emphasis on the creative and technical parts of the profession, they fail to provide their students with the business skills that will be required in the workplace. As a result, many Architects and Engineers are not prepared when it comes time to move into the management ranks and often struggle when in these roles. Some common mistakes made by inexperienced managers include:

Failure to Delegate.

The best technical people are often the first promoted. As a result, these new managers are reluctant to delegate design tasks because they don’t believe that anyone can do these tasks as well as they can. Even if that’s true, managers who fail to delegate will eventually fail.

Focus on Weaknesses instead of Strengths.

Too many new managers spend too much time trying to correct weaknesses instead of identifying the strengths of their people and putting them into positions that will take advantage of those strengths.

Poor interpersonal communication.

Give some people positions of authority and see them turn into evil dictators Nobody wins when this happens. Employees often become demotivated and resistant and the dictators often become frustrated and even depressed in some cases

Micro-Management.

It’s common for insecure new managers to want to be involved with every task that their employees are asked to do, but it’s not a good way to lead. Good managers and leaders understand that people need to be trusted through empowerment.

There are some people who seem to be born with people skills and have a natural ability to get people to rally behind them and avoid many of the mistakes above. Not everyone, however, are born with these abilities and have to work on developing interpersonal relationship skills. Fortunately, there are a number of resources that are available including Daniel Goleman’s book, Emotional Intelligence, and Robert Bolton’s book, People Skills.

Interested in a management audit? Call me.

John P. Kreiss