What is Most Important When Managing Teams for the First Time?

I was walking with some long-time friends who both just received promotions and suddenly found themselves managing teams for the first time. They’ve both been operating mainly as individual contributors for the last 15 years with great success but found themselves in a new environment where they experienced the challenges of leadership within a company. One of them asked me:

“What is the most important thing for effectively managing a team?”

He then went on to mention aspects like meeting reviews, setting KPIs, one on ones, etc.

I responded with this

“Management is extremely challenging and no one is perfect here. I think there are 3 things to do and you’ll be better than most. Vision, consistency, and system”

Vision — Why Their Work Matters

Providing your team with vision is the most important thing a manager can do and is certainly the most overlooked while being the easiest. Simply providing your team with the vision of the company and tying their work to supporting that vision will do more for performance than 1000 meetings can do.

Example: “Here at XYZ soap factory we believe in solving the world’s hygiene problem where thousands of people die every month due to…