the reality of being a first time manager

You can see then that adding both sides of the coin together covers the complete population of first-time manager. On the other side of that same coin 30% to 40% of first-time managers succeed by having the necessary skills. So, a number of different research papers have shown that on one side of the coin 50% to 60% of first-time managers fail. So you stretch that Gallup research a bit and say that maybe it's more than 30% of us who have some or all of the innate skills to be a manager. Another 20% or so have some but, not all of those innate skills that Gallup lists as required to manage others. In this research Gallup shows that maybe 10% of us innately have all of what it takes to be a manager. There is another set of research done on the other side of this same coin, research that looks at the number of people who have what Gallop believes are the innate skills required to manage others. You might think on the face of it all that this research is lopsided it couldn't possibly be right and so you might doubt it. So this is the predicament of a first-time manager. It's at this moment, as a first-time manager, that you wish (you may have been here already?) that you had the support, the direction, the coach, to help you overcome that feeling of being overwhelmed on the very first day!

However, it can feel that way when overwhelm sets in. O.K., so being a first time manager isn’t life or death. You take a look around and you wonder “What have I gotten myself into?”. The challenge only starts when we take that step up and look around, just like in The Hunger Games, as the participants platforms rise into the game. We're able to build a team, work with more people, take on more responsibility and be accountable for the results of that team, that group of aligned people. So it's a natural progression for us to want to move from Rockstar individual contributor to manager. A number of us look for opportunities to help and lead others. Well the answer lies in the ability to contribute. So I ask again, 'Why would you ever want to get promoted to be a first-time manager?'

You are an expert in your role, you drive for big results and you've been rewarded for it within your role. This is especially troubling when most likely, as an individual contributor, you are already a Rockstar. How and why would you ever want to take on the role as a first-time manager if you knew that 50% to 60% of those people failed in their new roles.

If the stats are to be believed and there are multiple pieces of research to show this, 50% to 60% of first-time managers fail. People moving into management for the first time should be the rarest breed of people ever.

The reality of being a first time manager