Are you eyeing a promotion within your current organization or perhaps seeking to progress into management elsewhere? As industries undergo major global transformations, from managing hybrid workforces, to bridging the talent gap, to widespread adoption of AI, employers seek the qualities associated with leadership and management roles.
In fact, Coursera’s The Job Skills Of 2024 report highlights that leadership skills are even more in demand in 2024 than ever. Leaders are especially needed to manage and direct organizations to safely navigate organizational change, so companies can be more robust and withstand internal and external threats.
“All leadership skills have increased their rank this year,” the report states. “Both rapidly changing macroeconomic conditions and emerging technologies like AI are driving new demands on leadership—pushing learning leaders to increase their focus on cultivating skills like leading teams with empathy, team building, and team management.”
But how exactly does one go about landing a role in management? Below are six simple steps:
1. Know What You’re Signing Up For
Some people have the idea that once you’re working in management, you can sit back, relax, and have your team do everything for you. This is far from the reality. It’s essential to understand what you’re signing up for and embrace all that the role entails if you decide to continue. Managers, especially middle managers, are some of the most stressed out employee groups today, accounting for more than half of all middle managers. Managers are caught between answering the demands of senior leaders to enforce policies and strategic agendas, and fostering an inclusive, engaging, and high performance culture in their teams. The demand to make both groups happy including external stakeholders can place heavy pressure on any manager, seasoned or new. So it’s essential that you evaluate these factors to see if it would be realistic to take on this load at this point in your life.
You also need to seriously analyze the role you’re going after, and perform a SWOT analysis to see what strengths you could bring to the role, and what leadership skills you need to build to be successful. What are the core competencies of this management position, and what are its responsibilities and expectations?
2. State Your Intentions
Once you’ve established that this is something you’re committed to for the long term, and that you’re in it for the impact, not for the prestige, title, authority, or money—then and only then should you express interest to your boss. Initiate the conversation with them and discuss your career goals in your next performance review or monthly catch-up.
Announce your intention to finish the year strong, ready to progress into a management or supervisory role, and ask them for their suggestions and recommendations on areas you could improve in your performance, projects you could undertake, or extra training you might need.
Telling your boss about your decision to pursue a career in management ensures that you are both on the same page, working towards the same goals, and that your manager is empowered to help you in your journey. It also helps you with goal-setting, ensuring you will stick with pursuing your career goals for 2024 because you have someone holding you accountable.
3. Exceed Performance Expectations
If you’re serious about pursuing a career in management, this is certainly not the time to underperform, or settle for just enough to get by. Your performance at work needs to be stellar.
For some, that may entail taking a step back, going back to the drawing board, and working on improving and developing some of the more basic, underlying skills critical to your success and performance of your role, before thinking about more senior responsibilities. You need to be committed to displaying a strong work ethic at all times, be self-motivated, and regularly meet and exceed your targets and KPIs.
This will be needed as evidence of why you deserve a promotion, later on, so it’s essential that you not only over-perform but that you maintain a record of when you have done so, and how you have tangibly contributed to the company’s success.
4. Develop Leadership Skills
For your employer, and any other employer for that matter, to take notice of you and offer you a management job, you need to demonstrate core leadership skills and qualities such as empathy, active listening, emotional intelligence, self-awareness, teamwork, taking initiative, resolving challenges using your own intuition, and building healthy interdepartmental relationships. Get ahead of the curve by building AI skills so you can apply them to your work environment and streamline processes to make you and your future teams more effective.
These skills don’t come naturally to everyone—and that’s perfectly OK. That is not a sign that you’re not supposed to be a manager or leader, rather, it indicates that you need to upskill and undertake coaching or training courses so you can confidently demonstrate these skills.
And remember, even with all the training, it’s natural to be overwhelmed by the prospect of leadership. Despite having all the theory, you’ll only ever truly know how to respond as a manager in certain scenarios when the situation calls for it. You’ll learn on the job through trial and error, intuition, mentorship, and more training along the way. Don’t wait to consider yourself perfect before you apply for a management role.
In fact, why not start now and make yourself known beyond your immediate circle of team members and colleagues you regularly liaise with? Ensure you make your presence felt in every department of your organization, establish positive relationships with senior managers and leaders—especially the decision-makers for your department—and build trust with stakeholders. This is a good way to begin developing your leadership skills.
Ultimately, securing your first management role comes down to asking yourself three questions: What impact do I want to make in my career? How dedicated am I to this long-term goal? And finally, Am I willing to put in the effort to be truly exceptional?