Career Management Training:
Start Well With Management Transitions

An often neglected area of career management training is the initial transition into a new management role. There’s no getting away from the fact that those first few months in any new job are critical.

Political leaders sometimes give themselves a 100 day action plan to start a new term of office. This is designed to focus thoughts and energies on making a good, purposeful start. The same logic applies to anyone embarking on a new management job.

At Apex Leadership we have developed a process to ensure managers get the best possible start that will enable them to:

• thrive in their management transition;
• become more effective managers in both the short and long term;
• develop careers using good habits, sound theory, and the experience and wisdom of others;
• maintain a healthy work-life balance, coping with the demands and pressures of management.

The real issue facing managers making a transition into a new role is how long it takes for them to become effective. This is probably a much more complex issue than many people realize.

Transitioning managers must not only cope with settling in themselves, they must also deal with the complexity of managing people and situations. Managers are also often under pressure to make significant differences almost immediately.

So the reason for using a structured process to help deal with this is obvious and simple. Used properly, such a process should help ensure the transition is successful, whilst also accelerating the time it takes the manager to become effective in the new post.

This will be of immense benefit to the manager, the employer and, (often forgotten) to the people the manager manages. A structured Management transition:

• Helps a manager avoid the trauma of succeeding in the appointment, but not succeeding in the job;
• Accelerates the transition into a new post, as efficiently and as effectively as possible;
• Provides a route map to success, with phased actions and outcomes;
• Helps new managers to get the basics right, from the beginning of their managerial careers, crucial career management training;
• Gives experienced managers the opportunity to review and re-evaluate their skills, knowledge, priorities and attitudes.

Management Transitions is a structured process consisting of ideas, guidance and exercises for managers covering. The process is designed to help transitioning managers to:

• Understand what makes a good manager;
• Consider the manager’s personal perspective, identifying their own strengths and development needs;
• Analyse the organisation’s situation, and assess its challenges and opportunities;
• Understand the key processes for which they are responsible;
• Develop relationships, with their their team, their own manager, and build a wider network;
• Get to know their customers;
• Identify and address early opportunities and quick wins.

Management Transitions can also be used more widely to provide on-going career management training. A practical, easy-to-use tool for individual managers, and for their organisations.