Being a Good Boss When You’re New to it

When you’re a new boss, you might worry about keeping everyone happy and satisfied at work. It’s an intimidating position to be in, particularly if you’re not guaranteed a great deal of support from your superiors.

But there are a few things you can do to give yourself the best shot at running a strong team and posting the numbers you and your bosses want to see.

Listen to feedback

When you’re the boss, you should make sure you set aside some time to listen to what your team members are thinking. They may have some feedback for you on how to improve things. This could be as basic as an improvement to office layout to reduce the possibility of an accident at work or as complex as enhancing the customer journey so you have fewer drop offs in the buying cycle.

They could also share some ideas with you about how to improve your own performance. Although this might be difficult to take at first, you’ll get used to it. You’ll probably even start to welcome the observations from your team.

Be honest

When something isn’t going right – or if you’ve had some negative feedback from above – your first instinct may be to protect your team. You don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, after all. But by protecting their feelings, you’re not allowing them to work on things that went wrong.

Transparency will make your team members feel valued and appreciated. When you let them in on what’s going on at senior levels, they can feel like they’re being taken seriously and that they’re trusted.

Be clear

When you want something done, the best way of achieving exactly what you’re looking for is to be clear about what you want. Your co-workers aren’t mind readers – so if you want them to complete something, tell them. Be clear with the results you expect of them and the effect their work will have on the wider organisation.

Make your team members feel like partners, involving them in the decision-making process. This will boost their sense of accountability and help them feel like they’re responsible for the success of the organisation.

Recognise team members

Everyone wants to be recognised for a good job. You don’t have to go implementing an employee of the month scheme for just your team when someone has done something exceptional. But you could think about recognising them in another way – be it sending an email to the whole department highlighting what they’ve done, an announcement on your intranet or productivity app, or even taking them for lunch.

And when someone hasn’t performed to the expected level, don’t address this in front of everyone, especially if it’s a one-time error. If you do want to take it up with the worker in question, arrange a meeting or ask them to talk in private. Find out if there’s anything going on and if you can help them with anything.

Being a new boss doesn’t have to be scary. Just treat your team members the way you’d want to be treated if you were in their shoes and you’ll be on the way towards a strong working relationship with everyone.