From Manager to Director: Guide to Managing Managers

Episode Overview

• This episode explores the challenging transition from a manager to a director, emphasizing that it's a change in role, not just a promotion.
• Guest Mike Seavers shares a personal failure story about neglecting peer relationships, highlighting the critical shift from an internal team focus to an external, organizational focus.
• The conversation outlines four essential skills for new directors: mastering management fundamentals, effective delegation and coaching, intentional communication, and giving candid feedback.
• A key theme is that a director's primary responsibility is to enable and develop their managers, which requires letting go of previous hands-on tasks.

Key Concepts

• Manager vs. Director: A manager focuses inward on their team's execution, while a director must focus outward on organizational alignment, strategy, and building relationships with peers.
• The Outward-Facing Role: A director's primary team becomes the leadership group they are a part of. Success hinges on collaborating with other directors to align their department's work with broader company goals.
• Enabling Managers: New directors must transition from doing the work to coaching their managers. This involves true delegation, which means allowing managers to learn from their own experiences and mistakes.
• Leadership as Communication: Directors are "cultural beacons" who are always communicating the organization's values through their actions, behaviors, and words, whether intentional or not.
• Candid Feedback as a Tool: Servant leadership does not mean avoiding difficult conversations. Providing direct, honest feedback is a core responsibility and one of the most powerful tools a director has to help their team succeed.
• Healthy Motivation: The best motivation for seeking a director role is a desire to enable others and have a broader impact through servant leadership, rather than a desire for more control or a better title.

Quotes

• At 4:32 - "You have to remember that you have managers that are doing those things that you used to be doing. And so if you try to continue to do those things, you know, at best you might disempower the managers that you have." - Mike explaining the necessity of delegating and letting go of a manager's day-to-day tasks.
• At 8:38 - "The feedback that I had gotten was that the people around me, my peers, the other directors in the organization, didn't have a relationship with me. They didn't know what I was up to." - Mike detailing the core reason for his negative performance review, which was his failure to focus on cross-departmental relationships.
• At 26:08 - "Leaders are always communicating, whether you think you are or not." - Highlighting that communication isn't just verbal; it includes behavior, actions, and even non-actions, all of which shape the culture.
• At 26:45 - "...you're kind of a cultural beacon...you're signaling to the organization and to your organization what the culture is like." - Describing the amplified influence a director has on shaping and communicating team and company culture.
• At 27:52 - "Servant leadership doesn't mean anything goes. Servant leadership means doing...and being there to help the team be successful, and sometimes that means being direct." - Clarifying that effective, supportive leadership includes the responsibility to deliver difficult but necessary feedback.

Takeaways

• A new director's primary team is their peers; focus on building those cross-functional relationships to ensure organizational alignment.
• Your job is no longer to be the best individual contributor or manager, but to develop your managers into effective leaders.
• Recognize that as a director, your influence is amplified, and your actions are constantly signaling cultural values to your entire organization.
• Embrace giving direct and candid feedback as a crucial act of servant leadership that is necessary for your team's growth and success.