Developing senior manager behaviours: what should I stop and start doing?
I'm a principal consultant with a background in data and analytics, CRM, strategy and operations. I built and led a team before before moving into a strategy role where I found myself running programmes, which is beyond my expected accountabilities. I'm about to move to a new company in a senior manager / engagement-lead role where I own the problem, the client relationship and a portfolio.
I've been the swiss army knife who gets handed any ambiguous brief, so I ended up leading and doing at the same time. In my experience those are two different altitudes and they don't work together. The work got done, but only because I carried it, which isn't a model that scales.
The feedback I keep getting from mentors and managers going into this new role is consistent: the thinking and communication are there, but the risk is that I don't yet act like a senior manager. I absorb ambiguity and gaps myself instead of escalating, re-staffing or re-scoping.
I also have less experience running several projects at once and owning margin and scope properly.
If you've made this jump:
- What behaviours separated the people who made it from the ones who stayed in the doing, and what did you stop doing early on?
- How did you learn when to step in and when to stay out?
- Beyond agreeing objectives with your manager, what did you align on in the first month that mattered most: with your team, other leads, finance, clients?
This is a really exciting opportunity, and I'm treating the nervousness as a sign of the growth to come. I'd like to go in as prepared I can to and make the best possible start.