Next Move, Best Move. Kimberly B. Cummings
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than developing talent.
Doing your job is what you have been hired to do; leading people is a form of art in the workplace. As a manager, it is my duty to ensure that the professionals who report to me execute their assignments at a high level and that I prepare them for their next role inside or outside the company. It is mismanagement to ignore that there is a next step for everyone on your team after their current role. Whether that person desires to be in their manager's role or another role at the company, it's important to prioritize his or her development and the day‐to‐day assignments he or she must complete.
When I spoke with my husband about adding this content to the book, he asked me if I have ever had a great manager. If I am brutally honest, the answer would be that I have only had one. I have had several bad managers, one or two good managers, but only one I would consider great. At that time, great meant that I felt protected in the workplace. The whole notion of needing protection in the workplace is an indication of a toxic work environment, but at the time, this particular manager advocated for fair practices for our team, stood up to senior leadership that constantly devalued the work of employees, brainstormed solutions to complex problems, and fostered an environment in which the team would be able to disagree openly but respecting other team members during tough conversations was always top of mind. My ideas of what a great manager is have continuously evolved since that role early in my career, but I define a great manager by the following behaviors:
Creating dedicated time on a weekly or biweekly basis to discuss my work, receive feedback, and remove roadblocks preventing me from executing at the highest level.
Advocating for me and my work when I am not in the room.
Regularly engaging in career development conversations (outside of weekly/biweekly check‐ins).
Providing consistent feedback on my work performance with specific examples to highlight where better decisions or a higher quality of work could have been produced.
Providing detailed, written feedback in mid‐year and end‐of‐year performance reviews.
Creating an environment that fosters collaboration and healthy competition among all team members.
Fostering a working relationship that allows for co‐creation of ideas, strategies, and joint execution, when possible.
Providing radical transparency, when possible.
Allowing me to shine brightly without reservations about my work potentially outshining theirs.
Some will look at this list and say that it is too much weight to put on a manager, but that is why I believe management is a privilege. People leaders need to be held to a higher standard due to the increased responsibility of managing a team. This alone has encouraged me to learn as much as possible about becoming a great manager to anyone who reports to me in the workplace and my company.
During my time in higher education, I always had a small but mighty team to execute various initiatives in the office. My teams consisted of work‐study students, graduate students, workforces for specific projects, part‐time employees, and full‐time employees. When working in an industry with notoriously small budgets, I quickly learned to do the most with the least, including managing small teams to get the work completed.
In one of my interview processes for a full‐time candidate, I vividly remember the day she walked into my office to have her one‐on‐one interview with me. I am known for having whiteboards in my office to map out upcoming projects or systems, and my whiteboard was covered in notes and a mockup of how I wanted my team to run. I was in an inaugural role, so it was crucial that I created a roadmap for my team so we had something to anchor ourselves toward. After interviewing several candidates, I had gotten used to people being immediately intimidated by my whiteboard. While my handwriting was neat, it was filled with ideas, processes, goals, and potential key performance indicators. It was a lot of information, but I knew I needed to get it out of my head to create a plan that was ready to execute once I had a team.
This candidate walked into my office, and she understood the method to my madness that I had mapped out on my whiteboard. After we went through a few of the traditional interview questions, I walked her through my vision on the whiteboard, and she jumped right into the conversation with excitement. Most importantly, I saw that she was excited about working on a team where we would co‐create new solutions to existing problems that had never been solved. She enjoyed working in a white space where the role had a lot of room to grow and evolve versus being contained to a job description that was a bit ambiguous in the first place because the work had never been done. After several rounds of interviews, she joined my team.
Looking back, I was never concerned in our professional relationship about her ability to do her job and execute on a high level. She took on every task thrown her way and improved upon it well past my expectations. We got to the point where she would solve problems without me having to ask. Since I was never concerned about the work, I turned my attention to her overall development as a professional in the workplace.
In speaking with her references toward the end of her interview process, they all confirmed that she was known for making herself indispensable to whatever team she worked on. You could tell that she took pride in not only the work her name was attached to but that she wanted to drive results in a meaningful way. Again, her performing well in her role was never an issue; in fact, I learned that I needed to proactively manage her workload to ensure that she did not take on too much work outside of the assignments she got directly from me or created for herself. I know that any manager reading this would agree that she was the dream employee.
However, what I did uncover is that I had an opportunity to work on her personal development as it related to her unique skill set in the workplace. When someone is known for driving execution in any arena, he or she can quickly become a generalist versus a specialist. Unless you are a project manager or chief of staff, this may not be a great trait to possess. A generalist can do just about anything, which can make it hard to brand yourself in the workplace for more senior‐level roles. As you grow in your career, it is important to have “a thing,” something you are known for doing well outside of task execution. Again, task execution is your job – it is the reason you get a paycheck each month! Becoming a specialist means there is a reason to hire you over another professional when there are two candidates for a role because you have an edge. You have something unique, a refined approach, a special experience that makes you uniquely qualified; you are not just another “hardworking employee” applying for a job.
During our weekly one‐on‐one sessions, I started asking more in‐depth career‐related questions to better understand where she wanted to go in her career. I asked questions like:
Are you interested in growing your career in higher education?
Is career services the only office you would like to work in?
Would you like to prepare for a role like mine?
What other industries are you curious about?
When are you generally ready to move on after being in a role for a certain amount of time?
When you think about your day‐to‐day work, what are you the most uncomfortable with?
What types of tasks and projects are you great at, but would prefer not to be responsible for?
What types of tasks and projects do you enjoy most (regardless of your level of proficiency)?
What skills do you feel like you need to build?
How do you envision I could assist you in getting to the next level in your career?
Is there anyone I can introduce you to in my network to assist with your career exploration or development?
As a manager, my goal was to create a safe environment for her to explore where she would like to go in the workplace while working on high‐visibility