Making the leap from individual contributor to manager counts among the most challenging transitions in a career. Even a very talented individual can stumble as she takes on a new identity and different responsibilities. But when her boss is one step ahead of her, guiding her progress, the transition can be a smooth one.

If you’re the manager of a new manager, what can you do to help her stride confidently into her new role? Focus on these three skills, says Linda A. Hill, the Wallace Brett Donham Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School:

1. Balancing multiple demands from multiple constituencies
“Among all the challenges facing new managers, the need to reconcile different constituencies’ expectations and interests is probably the most difficult,” says Hill. The demands that the new manager’s direct reports, his peers, his boss, and the company’s customers place on him inevitably will conflict at times.

The default position of a new manager is to focus on his direct reports to the exclusion of others. “If you’re supervising a first-time manager,” Hill says, “you’ll likely see him worrying most about his direct reports’ demands. Explain that he has to manage his other constituencies just as carefully.”

2. Influencing and persuading others
Managing the expectations of those other constituencies often requires that the new manager exercise influence and persuasion rather than formal authority. “Many new managers don’t realize that there are numerous sources of power besides formal authority, such as expertise, appealing personal qualities, position in key networks, and visibility,” says Hill. Those who manage new managers need to spell this out and help new managers identify individuals whose cooperation is essential to their team’s or department’s work.

Hill recommends posing the following questions to them:

• Whose cooperation do you need?
• Whose opposition would keep you from accomplishing your work?
• Who needs your cooperation?
• What sources of power do you have at your disposal to influence these people?

To help new managers develop sources of informal power, Hill offers these guidelines:

• Provide beginning managers with plenty of opportunities to regularly expand their expertise.
• Encourage them to “put themselves in others’ shoes” so as to gain a wider perspective on colleagues’ priorities and concerns.
• Focus their attention on the “big picture”—how things get done in the organization and who seems to “make things happen.”

Hill has seen a lot of new managers disdain “office politics.” Remind them that as managerial roles have become more complicated, workplace relationships more interdependent, and resources more scarce, political competence is a must in reconciling competing interests and winning support for their own initiatives.

3. Delegating wisely
Like many other managerial demands, delegating decision making involves complex judgment calls. Executives need to educate new managers on the alternatives and degrees of delegation that arise in the managerial role. Hill suggests coaching new managers to ask themselves these questions when weighing how much, if any, responsibility for a decision to delegate:

• Is this a decision you need to make alone?
• Should it be made by your team, within parameters that you specify?
• Will you make the decision with advice from team members?
• Will you and your team make the decision together, through consensus?

Hill adds: “Also watch for delegation mistakes new managers tend to make—such as delegating too much or too little, and failing to follow up after a task has been delegated.” Without follow-up, managers don’t get information on how their delegation approach worked out. They also miss the opportunity to give feedback to direct reports to whom they’ve delegated work.

- - - - -
In addition to coaching the new manager on these specific skills, Hill recommends creating “an environment of psychological safety.” In other words, “don’t overreact when a manager in her first year on the job makes the inevitable misstep. Coach her instead by talking about the judgment calls she needs to make in her new role. Give her enough autonomy to make mistakes, then support her in learning from those mistakes.”

And watch for new managers who aren’t asking for help. Chances are that insecurity rather than arrogance is to blame. Seek them out, and see if you can’t uncover one or two issues they’ve been struggling with alone.

This article appeared in the February 2008 issue of Harvard Management Update.

SIDEBAR:

Teaching the New Manager How to Learn

Though a new manager’s relationship with his boss can be an important source of learning, it shouldn’t be the only source he taps. His boss, in fact, has a responsibility to help him cultivate other sources and take charge of his own development. For instance, the boss should encourage him to build a range of developmental relationships—with current and previous peers, former bosses, and individuals outside the company who can serve as mentors, coaches, and sources of emotional support.

And remember that formal training can play an important role. It provides managers with insight into the company’s culture and established processes as well as opportunities to receive systematic feedback on their performance. Equally important, training enables new managers to “forge developmental relationships with peer managers” who are also attending the sessions, says Linda A. Hill. Making these connections can be the first step to cultivating a network of influence in the company.