First-Time Managers Leading People with Strengths

Part 1 of First-Time Managers Leading Their People with Strengths. You got promoted because your way works. It only works on the people who are wired like you.

The last series was five articles about you. Your themes, your hinder, your rhythm, your turn to say it first.

This series turns around and looks at the people who report to you. It is four parts, and this first one has the smallest job of the four. You do not have to change anything about how you manage yet. You only have to SEE something.

You are managing an earlier version of you

Here is the part that catches almost every new manager off guard.

You got promoted because your way works. It worked so well that somebody handed you a team. So without ever deciding to, you start managing every person on it like an earlier version of you.

You give them the feedback you would have wanted. The number of check-ins you would have wanted. The deadline pressure that always got YOUR best work.

Nobody sits down and chooses this. It is just the only management manual you have ever read all the way through, because you lived it.

The rule you were raised on

It is the Golden Rule. Treat others the way you want to be treated.

It sounds like a great rule until you realize that different people like to be treated differently. As a management method, it only works with the people who are wired like you.

For everybody else on the team, you are handing them something that would have been a gift to you. They are too polite to tell you it does not fit.

What Madi taught me about a theme we SHARE

I still remember one of the first people I managed. Her name was Madisen, or Madi. I learned so much from her and from her identical twin sister, Olivia (who, by the way, do not share a single top 5 theme).

I had already been coaching CliftonStrengths® for a while, so I knew exactly how to manage her. We both have Competition® in our top 5. In fact, we also share Learner® and Individualization®. With three of our top five in common, this was an easy layup and a perfect chance to treat someone the way I would want to be treated. We were the same, after all.

Well, it turns out this was the first time I found out that Competition® can mean comparing yourself to others, or it can mean comparing yourself to yourself.

I compete by comparing myself against others. Madi very much does not (Individualization® is her number one, it is not mine). She motivates herself by comparing herself against herself, and becoming a better version of herself every day.

And that was with a theme we SHARE.

So instead of giving her other people to compete with at work, I started asking her what she learned last week, and what she was going to do this week to be a better version of herself.

Notice what I got wrong. I did not ignore her themes. I knew them. I looked at the ones we had in common and assumed they worked in her the way they work in me. If a shared theme can fool somebody who coaches this for a living, think about what the themes you do NOT share are doing on your team right now.

The person who frustrates you most

Picture the person on your team who frustrates you most. (You already know who it is.)

There is a decent chance what frustrates you is not a performance problem. It is a difference in the way you frame and see the world versus the way they do.

They take forever deciding anything, even making the obvious move to build the longest road in Settlers of Catan.

They would rather mull and think through a decision on their own (in a quiet office) instead of talking through the options out loud.

They keep asking what happened in the past and why it didn't work.

Not one of those is a person doing the job badly. Every one of them is a person doing the job differently than you would, and from the manager's chair those two things can look exactly the same.

Different is not wrong

Different is not wrong. And very often, the thing that frustrates you about them is the exact thing your team is missing, because you don't have it.

That is the part worth sitting with. If everybody on your team decided as fast as you do, talked it out the way you do, and looked forward the way you do, you would have a very comfortable team with the same blind spots in every chair.

The assignment: see it, and stop there

Here is the assignment for this article, and you do it alone.

Put your top five themes next to theirs. Circle every theme they have that you don't. Then for each circle, finish one sentence:

"Because of this, they probably need ___ from me, and I have been giving them ___."

That is it. Don't fix anything yet. Don't announce anything. For now you only have to SEE it.

When you are done you will have a page of guesses about what your people need. Guesses. The next article is about finding out how many you got right, in a meeting you are probably already having.

I have been doing this for 25 years and I am still getting things wrong about Strengths. Madi was just one of the first people kind enough to show me.

More in this series

Part 1: Why the Golden Rule Stops Working When You Become a Manager (this article)

Part 2: How to Run a One-on-One That Is Not a Status Update (coming October 13)

Part 3: How to Delegate by Strengths Instead of by Who Has Time (coming October 20)

Part 4: How to Give Recognition That Actually Lands (coming October 27)

If you are planning a workshop

I facilitate CliftonStrengths®, team development, and first-time manager workshops. A new manager who can tell a difference from a performance problem keeps good people that the Golden Rule would have managed right out the door. If first-time managers are on your company's 2027 budget list, connect with me on LinkedIn and tell me about it.

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