Do You Really Want that Management Job?

You can't wait for the chance to show them what you can do. Of course, the bigger paycheck doesn't hurt either. At least, that's how I felt when I found myself in this position last summer.

I loved my job working in systems development for a university. My days consisted of being the "go-between" among techies and system users. I wrote web content and training manuals, tested systems, trained users and generally enjoyed the independence and flexibility that came with my job.

Then my office reorganized, and I found myself sitting in my bosses' office discussing my future. One of the many things to come out of the shift was a promotion opportunity for me. I was about to go from being a lone ranger to managing a team of five, some of whom had other staff members reporting to them.

I jumped at the opportunity. The chance to have more input into how our department was run, to impact major changes and be a part of the bigger picture, were all appealing to me. So was actually having spending money left over after the bills were paid.

Several months later, I don't regret my decision for a moment. But there are times when I miss the days I could walk into my office and spend hours at my desk, simply doing the tasks I had prioritized for myself and basically living in my own little world.

Management can be an exciting and challenging adventure. It is an opportunity to stretch your horizons and take advantage of skills you didn't even realize you had. But in most cases, moving from being an employee with your own set list of responsibilities to becoming a part of a management team means major changes in your work life. The decision to accept the challenge is not one that should be taken lightly.

In the workplace, we're conditioned to expect ourselves to grow professionally and financially by rising up the food chain. Managing people, budgets and operations is the goal we look towards from the time we sit in our first cubicle.

But I know many successful professionals who have built satisfying and financially rewarding careers without assuming management roles and responsibilities. These individuals have chosen to become experts and specialists in their fields rather than climb a ladder that leaves them managing multiple operations rather than focusing on work they enjoy.

Management isn't for everyone, and you should weigh the pros and cons carefully before you gun for that promotion.

Managing Projects

You always thought your boss was a bit unreasonable with deadlines and work schedules. You were among the loudest water cooler complainers, sure that if you had the power things would be vastly different. No one would be staying late to race the clock if you were in charge of your unit.

The water cooler gripes are still a daily ritual. Only now, the focus of the conversation is you.

Many people develop quite a bit of sympathy for their bosses and other managers once they step into a leadership role themselves. When making sure the project is done to specifications and on time is your responsibility, what's reasonable and what isn't can take on a whole new meaning.

If you could set the deadlines and assign all the resources yourself, chances are you would have been right about your ability to do things differently. But the first thing a new manager learns is that while she has more input into things, she's usually not the final decision maker. You'll still have workloads and deadlines put on your plate that seem unreasonable to you. Only now, it will be your job to delegate them to others as well as yourself and make sure they get done on time. You may be a manager, but you still have your own boss to answer to.

The second thing a new manager learns is that things she has no control over will impact her team. Your group is right on target, and may even meet that deadline ahead of time. Then the research division doesn't come through with the data you need for the next step, or a system breaks down and the techies can't fix it for a week, or funding arrives late, and the next thing you know you're behind. But if you can't work some magic, the head that rolls will be yours or someone on your staff's, so all you can do is roll up your sleeves and tell everyone to plan for a little overtime.

Managing People

Sally in computing can never get to work on time. She's always running late because she's dropping her kids off at school or stuck in traffic.

When Sally was just a co-worker, you didn't give it much thought. Her work always seemed to get done on time. She stayed late when necessary to make up for her missed morning time. Customers seem to love her.

Now you're a manager, and Sally's team mate Tom is in your office telling you that he's sick and tired of spending his mornings taking Sally's customer calls. He's stuck staying late all the time too, he says, because he can't get started on his own work until Sally drags herself into the office.

It'll be up to you to find a solution. Will you tell Sally she has to find another way to get her kids to school so she can get to work on time? Will you tell her that you're willing to give her some flexibility, but that in exchange she needs to take on some of Tom's work to make up for him covering her calls in the morning? Do you wish you could just close your office door and let Sally and Tom figure it out?

What were once just annoying or even endearing quirks among your co-workers will now be problems for you to solve. Katie hates the smell of coffee, and Tina always brews a pot in the morning, so Katie sprays her cube with an air freshener that makes Donna sneeze all day. Meanwhile, Tim is looking for online dates on company time, and Joey is instant messaging with a girl he met at happy hour last night instead of running that report your boss wants by noon.

When Katie isn't spraying the air and complaining about coffee, she's your star producer. But she spends every meeting sighing and complaining about how no one else pulls their weight around here. Tim, who you thought was too busy hiding his cell phone under the conference room table so he could text his new love interest, points out that Katie never lets anyone know when she's got too much on her plate.

About halfway through the meeting, your head is throbbing. What are you doing, you ask yourself - running a daycare? Close enough. You're managing an office.

Managing Money

Most likely, your new management position will involve overseeing a budget. At home, you may pay your bills by overdue dates and sacrifice the grocery money so you can have that night out on the town. But in the office, you'll have to exercise a bit more common sense.

Tina hasn't seen a pay increase in two years. Neither has Donna. That's not your fault - you've only been running the show for two months. But you're the one they'll expect to address the problem, as they should. When you review your budget, you see that you have enough to give each of them a paltry increase that leaves them both under market rate, or give one of them a more significant increase. Do you figure out who deserves it the most and make one of them very happy? Do you spread the wealth and give them both enough to buy a few extra candy bars a year? Do you beg your boss for more to go around?

Your team needs new computers and more ergonomic office furniture. There's a costly professional conference coming up, and it would greatly benefit you and some of your staff to go. You've got enough to cover one or the other, but not both. What do you do?

Some people are good with managing money, making the right decisions, and stretching a dollar. If you haven't been one of them so far, becoming a manager will force you to learn, unless you happen to work for a company with a big bank account.

Managing Yourself

Getting to know the quirks and frictions among your staff is challenging. Sticking to a budget while making sure your team and your department has what it needs is downright frustrating. The deadlines and projects thrust on you and your staff members by higher-ups make your head spin.

Management is fraught with challenges for the newcomer. But by far, the greatest may be learning how to manage your own time.

You've been a professional for some time. You're no stranger to plotting out your days and mastering your own productivity. But as a manager, you might find doing so a bit more difficult. You're management, but you still have your own work to do.

Your agenda for the day is to write a proposal, review and edit documents two of your staff have passed along to you, and draft a presentation for you boss. You've cleared you calendar and plan to spend the day getting it all done. But your boss is waiting for you when you walk in the door. He wants to give you a "quick" heads-up on a few things that are coming down the pike. Two hours later, you finally get to your desk. One of your staff is pacing in the hallway. He's been anxiously waiting to talk to you, because he's stuck on a project and needs your input or approval to move forward.

You give him what he needs, and then actually get an hour to yourself before another staff member comes in to tell you that her son's school has called because he's ill, so she needs to leave early. After you help her arrange coverage so she can go and take a phone call from someone who "wanted to speak to a manager," you glance at the clock and see that it is already 2 p.m. The workday is winding down, and you haven't crossed one item off your list yet.

Welcome to the world of management. You're in for a long night.

Meetings, Meetings and More Meetings

I remember a time when I looked longingly at my boss and other managers as they headed off to their daily barrage of meetings, leaving me typing away at my desk.

It wasn't that I had an overwhelming desire to sit in a conference room with a bunch of other people in suits, sipping bottled water and watching a PowerPoint presentation. But in my head, I saw these meetings as where the major moving and shaking was done. They were where the future of our organization was decided, and things that would impact me and my job were happening behind those closed doors.

I was absolutely right.

But what I didn't realize is that although major decisions are made in some meetings, sometimes those hours in the conference room are just fruitless exercises in talking in circles. People can meet endlessly on the most mundane topics. I now know that when I'm sitting in a meeting trying desperately not to think about all I could be doing instead, that I'm just as likely to be helping decide whose signature should go on an email or whether we should have the cleaning crew vacuum our office in the morning or at night as I am to be determining the direction we'll take in major initiatives.

Meetings eat away at time like leeches sucking at your blood. But if you're a manager, that doesn't mean you get to skip them.

Chances Are You Won't Be Doing The Parts of Your Job You Liked Anymore.

No job is perfect. But there parts of my old job that I actually enjoyed. Spending long solitary hours in my office writing web content wasn't a bad way to earn a paycheck.

When I became a manager, one of the first things I had to do was delegate much of that task to someone else so that I'd have time for my new responsibilities.

If you're an expert in your field and love what you do, think seriously about whether you'd rather be doing it yourself or managing others. Many school principals regret ever leaving their classrooms to move into an administrative role. Many a lab manager misses spending all their time among test tubes and Petri dishes. You don't have to look far to find an information technology manager who misses his days of sitting behind his own PC.

If your interests also include leadership and communication, then managing work in a field that you love is a natural next step. But if what you really dig about your job is rolling up your sleeves and doing it, management might feel like a big mistake. You'll still have your hands in the day-to-day work as a manager, but you'll have much less time for certain aspects of your field when your responsibilities include delegating, supervising, analyzing and overlooking the entire shop.

Will Casual Friday Be A Distant Memory?

That professional dress code has been a standard in your office forever. But in a role where you spent most of your day at your desk, you got away with jeans on casual Friday, never wearing a tie, or running about the office complex in your tennis shoes all day.

If you work in a more relaxed environment, that might not change. But in some environments, the shoes of a manager are much less comfortable than those of a non-management employee. You'll be expected to "look the part," complete with the choking tie or the boring black pumps, even on casual Friday. I still look wistfully at around my office at my jeans-clad staff on those casual days where I'm forced to show up in a skirt and jacket for a meeting, wishing that I was still among them.

The Boss Stinks. Oh, Wait. You're The Boss.
I was the queen of water cooler sarcasm. We don't actually have a water cooler in my office, so it was more of a hanging-out-in-the-lobby at day's end sarcasm, but still. During the height of what seemed to us all a period of extreme mismanagement years ago, I coined our boss Captain Buffoon and our office the SS Dumbass.

Blowing off steam about your job, the boss, the management and so on is a fact of working life. When you gather with co-workers for a gripe session, you've got to beware of the snitch, regardless of your position. But the fact that misery loves company outweighs our fear of getting caught, so where colleagues gather complaining and sniping will ensue.

I'd like to say I'm above it all, but the truth is that I miss a good old-fashioned bitch session. I don't participate anymore. After all, if we're all aboard the SS Dumbass, I may not be Captain Buffoon, but I am the First Mate. And we all know what happened to Gilligan when he upset The Skipper.

Being a manager isn't all bad. I do have more input into what we do and how we do it. I get a lot of satisfaction out of helping a staff member succeed or resolving problems. But there are times when I feel like I'd give my last dollar to spend a day at my keyboard, just doing my job, with no concern about whether so-and-so didn't come to work today or such-and-such upset a customer, other than a vague sympathy for the poor schmuck who did have to deal with the problems.

The schmuck is me now.

Management isn't for everyone. Every office is different, and so are the interpersonal dramas, budget woes and deadlines you'll take on as a manager. Think long and hard before you chase after that promotion, and make sure that for you the rewards will outweigh the headaches.