Management would be easy if you didn’t have to deal with people

To succeed in this fourth phase requires the manager to transition from a do-it-my-way approach to the “people management business.” For the majority of managers, this is a difficult assignment, especially if they started out on their own or with a very small group.

People management does not come easy to these managers. They like the day-to-day activities as long as they can do them on their own. The very idea of spending lots of time “hand holding” others may be very uncomfortable and quite different from the managers’ original vision, which held only them, and their ideas, at its focal point. Many times, of course, these folks simply haven’t been trained to be a manager, so it’s another unknown, and most folks already have enough unknowns.

We frequently remind managers, as well as aspiring managers, that management is a new career. As surely as teaching is different from accounting, management is different from the role that a person held as an employee or as a start-up entrepreneur.