Outstanding experts in a certain field and top professionals are quite often, on account of numerous competences and their success, promoted to managerial positions. The promotion paradox in these situations means that an experienced and capable employee was granted authority for which, in most cases, s(he) is not sufficiently competent, and occasionally not even motivated. If the company has great expectations from an employee, it is of the utmost importance that the company provides her/him with as simple and successful as possible transition to the job that is, in the opinion of many, one of the hardest – people and business processes management.
It often happens that companies throw their talented staff or successful experts in at the deep end; some of them sink, some manage to float, and only few of them manage to actually swim. The cost of this experimental throwing in at the deep end is much higher than meets the eye. Our advice: spare your new manager, members of her/his team and other colleagues from the unnecessary stress and conflict, and through the process of individual coaching ensure that (s)he remains or becomes motivated to manage people and business processes.
Some of the topics and goals within the framework of the individual coaching process:
• Increasing confidence
• Improving communication skills
• Bold decision-making
• Motivating co-workers
• Self-motivation
• Adequately handling the changes in relationships (“old” co-workers that were not promoted, new supervisors, new colleagues at the same position in the hierarchy)
• Stress management
• A balance between competitiveness and cooperativeness
• A balance between the professional and private life
• Defining the priorities and time management
• Successful conflict management and assertiveness
• Understanding and improving the team dynamics
• Successful delegation of work
• Becoming aware of own strengths and traits that need development
• Developing creativity and thinking “outside the box”