Transitions are part of every aspect of your life

Now, I have the responsibility of managing others, and the performance is no longer about, me. It is about my ability to accomplish through others.

How should I go through these changes?

At birth, one comes to the world as both the youngest and oldest. By this I mean one is born at the end of life in the womb and at the beginning of life in the land of the living. At that moment of birth, you are the oldest of those who live in the land of the womb and yet the youngest in the world.

A year later, you are forced to give up the title infant, and become a child.

These transitions continue as you progress through childhood, adolescence, adulthood, middle age and eventually to old life and hopefully, death in dignity.

These transitions are both natural and expected and those who do not go through tend to regret their lack of transition as time passes. Consider the adult who lives his adolescence in his sixties and seventies.

What you describe in your professional life and career is very much in line with this process and reminds me of the life of thirteen and fourteen year old boys and girls who go to high school, embarking, for the first time, on life away from their parents.

Some would have been prefects and sports captains in their primary schools and would have enjoyed positions of power and influence.

In high school, they are the most junior and may be the subject of bullying by their senior colleagues, all without the care or support of the mothers to whom they had hitherto turned for protection. In addition, an explosion of hormonal activity sets in at this precise time as sexual maturation is in full gear!

Parents call the boy a man when convenient and call the same him a child when it suits their purposes to do so. To be fair, both the child and the parents are in a state of confusion as to what status to assign a thirteen-year-old.

You are in a very similar dilemma and we must help you get out of it as you seem ill-prepared for your new status. You, for example state that as an employee, you were judged on what you did, implying that as a manager you have somehow ceased to be an employee.

On this, you are misguided.

You seem to be making the same mistake often made by form high school students who think that once they are admitted into university, they are no longer students because they have become “adults”.

Both you and the managing director are employees of the same board and you will all be evaluated on the basis of what you do.

Evaluation mechanisms
Let me explain. If for example in your previous job you were evaluated by the number of new customers you introduced your company to, as a manager you might find yourself being evaluated not simply on the number of new clients but also on the volume of business that you bring in, as well as the rate at which you retain the clients.

Extending the same example, you might find that the evaluation of the managing director is based not only on these numbers but on the profits after tax that the company makes.

Depending on your level in the company, the tools used to evaluate you will be different and hopefully appropriate for your level. Good companies have methods of performance evaluation that are both fair and objective and do not depend simply on the whims and temperament of the senior managers.

Ideally, you and your boss should agree on the targets that you propose to achieve by the end of the year, and a quarterly review of progress should be agreed upon.

The coach has a very specific concern about you. You do not seem to be well-prepared for your new responsibility and you seem uncertain as to what is expected of you.

Though natural as we have seen of the child on his first day at school, or on first entry into high school, you strike me as not apprehending that a change of title to “manager” does not in itself overnight transform you into a new animal with a new set of skills and insights, not available to you the day before your assumption of the title.

In a sense, you are right in your apprehension that the hard work has just began. This is the time to gain new skills.

You will be judged by your employers and colleagues as the most junior manager, entitled to all the privileges that come with the tile of “most junior”.

Your seniors should be available to guide you at all times and on the other hand you must learn from them. You worry the coach when you expect to master “the basics functions of management – planning, staffing, organising, directing, and controlling”, the day after your appointment.