How to lead a team outside your area of expertise without losing their respect

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Who on my team should be a manager or who can I promote into management? There are more people than the ones that are just in that specific discipline. That could be great at it, but only if you set them up for success. So that’s why I want to talk about this mistake that folks often make, and how you can help them prevent that, or how you yourself can prevent that. If you don’t come from that same discipline.

Welcome to the Managing Made Simple podcast, where you get a masterclass in managing your team with ease in 15 minutes or less. I’m Lia Garvin, your host and team operations consultant for this show am I programs with small businesses and corporate teams. I condense a decade of experience driving team operations in some of the most influential companies in tech into strategies to save you time money. Most of all, stress doesn’t matter if you’re a business owner who realize that running a team isn’t as easy as you thought it would be.

Are a new manager learning the ropes, or are a seasoned manager ready to up their game? Everyone is welcome to hang out with managing Made Simple. From conflicts to feedback to delegating and more. We leave no stone unturned when it comes to what makes us love managing. Kind of hate it and everything in between. Let’s go. Welcome back to the show. Today I’m talking about one of the biggest mistakes that we can make when we are managing teams that are outside of our area of expertise.

So for example, you’re managing a sales team and you don’t have a sales background, or you’re managing an engineering team and you don’t have a computer science background, that kind of thing. Now I bring this up because the top two reasons people become managers. I know I’ve said this before, but the top two reasons are because of past success in a role or because you have been in a role for a long time. So most managers often come from having done that specific job.

But this doesn’t mean that the people wanted to be managers or even trained at it. And I think this can contribute to some of the reasons why we don’t always have the best managers. Because just because you were good as an individual contributor doesn’t mean you’re a great leader. And I’ve seen folks really struggle with this, like I mentioned, sales, for example. You can be awesome at crushing your sales goals that really connect you with your clients, all of that.

But it doesn’t mean that you know how to enable that in other people. Okay, right. Like they say, you know, just because you’ve done, you know, some of the athletes out there, like they don’t make the best coaches, some of them do, but it doesn’t mean automatically because you were good at that thing, that you going to be good at overseeing and helping bring that out in other people. But a lot of times, I think we have an opportunity to really expanding the pool of people who would be great leaders if we set our team members up for success when they don’t have that experience in the role.

And so I’m inviting you to think today, if you were thinking about, well, Who on my team should be a manager or who can I promote into management? There are more people than the ones that are just in that specific discipline. That could be great at it, but only if you set them up for success. So that’s why I want to talk about this mistake that folks often make, and how you can help them prevent that, or how you yourself can prevent that.

If you don’t come from that same discipline. Now, before I dive into that, if you like this show, if you’re enjoying, if you found it helpful, please take two seconds, two minutes or whatever it is to leave a review. Reviews help spread the word, and it helps me help more managers make managing their teams the easiest part of their job. So hop into your podcast app, whatever it might be. Take a minute, leave a review. And this is just incredibly valuable and helping spread the word and helping make sure more people have better managers, right?

So, you know, it’s all good. All right. Diving right into the topic, what is this big mistake folks make? I’ve seen it before. I’ve coached people on it. I have had I’ve witnessed it myself. And this is a new manager coming to a team or someone being promoted into the team, into the management role. And they say, hey, you know, I’m just happy to be here. I have more to learn from you than you are for me.

And they take a total backseat to their expertise and the team’s looking around thinking, well, then why are you the manager? What the hell am I going to get from this? And they immediately think this is a setback for them. Now, this manager, why did they say this? Most likely because they wanted to show humility. They’re saying, well, I’m not an expert in this. I don’t have a ton of experience in sales or engineering or marketing or design or whatever it is.

So I don’t want the team to think. I think I know everything. But the problem is, when you become a manager on a team, you are supposed to be the leader. You’re supposed to be like holding up the torch. You’re supposed to have the North Star. So if you don’t come in, they’re making it clear that regardless of whatever you’ve done in the past, that you are here to support every single person in achieving their career goals and helping them excel, then they are not going to respect you, right?

They’re going to think, okay, great, how long is this person going to last? This is just a setback to my career till this person quits. And I’ve seen it firsthand. I have been on teams where someone comes in like an external hire. They become the manager. It’s happened in design team. So I think kind of niche specific, but really can happen anywhere. And the manager comes in and they have a totally different background and they are like, hey, you teach me what you know, let me know where I can help.

And in this back seat, everybody on the team is grumbling around like, should we be doing their job? And they kind of self-organize to sort of box out the manager from having any participation and in what’s going on the team. They don’t ask that manager for feedback like in a design team, for example. Why would you ask the manager that has no design experience, creative feedback, for example? It feels like it would just be wasting time.

Or why would you ask this person career related feedback? They don’t understand your discipline. So this person hasn’t shown why they’re here and how to bring any value. And again, if you fall into this trap, I get it. So I and I talk about this story in my book or I talk about this situation in, in the new manager playbook because it’s something that a lot of us are faced with. Do you want some hands on support for all of the topics I talk about on this show?

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DM me the word Sprint on Instagram or email me at [email protected] and let’s build your unstoppable team. I was asked at one point to manage an engineer, so I was managing a team of, program managers, which was my, background. I was asked to manage an engineer, and I thought, well, great, like, this person is going to think like, who the hell is she? Like, what is she going to add? She doesn’t have an experience in my field.

She doesn’t know. You know, my challenges are. And so I was really, really worried about it. Now when I started, when I had my first one on one with this team member, you know, we talked about this and we said, well, hey, you know, I don’t have this background in computer science. I don’t have insight into, you know, all of the nuances of your work. But what I said is the thing that is going to set apart people that fall into this trap and the ones that avoid this trap.

I said to him, but here’s what I can do. Here is my commitment to you. Here is what I promise that I will do as your manager. Boom! I immediately demonstrated the value that I could bring to him. So I didn’t say, hey, listen, I don’t know how to manage an engineer, so, like, just go wrong with it. I trust you to make decisions on your own. Like, go on your own. No, I said, hey, I don’t have a background engineering, so let me find you a mentor there.

Here’s what I can help you do. I can help you build influence. I can help you become a leader. You’ve mentioned you want to manage. I can help get your experience there. I showed him that even though I don’t have the background, I still am here to help them achieve his goals, right? I also didn’t say I know everything about engineering and please still come to me and I’m going to figure out and I’m going to constrain you to call the shots, right.

I told him why I would find him, help that, help him find that specific support for his own role too, right? I also didn’t act like I know everything. I acknowledge the limitation there. But again, I didn’t say, well, this is just something that’s too bad. And I’m not saying that to toot my own horn. It was actually a really it was something I was really nervous about. When my manager asked me to take on this team member, I was like, hell no, it’s going to be a disaster.

We’re both going to feel like, why? Why are we doing this? He’s going to feel really bummed out, like he got it. He got dealt the worst manager that can’t help him. And I’m going to have a team member that hates me and thinks I’m useless. And I didn’t want to do it. I actually said my manager like, please, no, take it back. No way. It’s going to be a mess. And she said, no, I need you to take on this person.

And it ended up being one of the best experiences I had managing. So that’s why I tell a story. Because taking this approach, it can actually help folks that are really good at at leading and mentoring and coaching, but they don’t have that specific industry experience. It can help them lift other people up. So it’s a real opportunity for you, but you can’t shoot yourself in the foot by acting overly humble, overly like passive and saying like, hey, you know, I’m like, I don’t really know how to add value here.

When I figure things out. I’ll tell you again, it’s a delicate balance. I know I’m acknowledging that, and it’s got to be authentic in your own way, but coming in and leading folks in an area that you don’t have experience in, you’re going to be going up against the challenge of them thinking like, what’s this person got to offer? When is this person going to teach me? So you’re already on the back foot. So again, I think what we can usually do in trying to like, not call the elephant in the room is like, hey, listen, I know I don’t have any of this.

I don’t have any of that. I know that the person thinks, why the hell are you here? Right? Get out of here. You’re not good. So we can’t do that. We already know. We can’t act like we know everything. So, like. That’s why I didn’t say. That’s actually usually not the issue. But we can’t act like we know nothing when we enter a situation and we are put in as the leader. We’ve got to lead from the first moment.

We have to show people. I’m here to figure it out, to believe in you. I’m going to, like, do this. I’m gonna do that and build these relationships. Tell me what you are looking at. Tell me what your goals are. Tell me where you want to go, and I’m going to help make it happen. Whatever it takes. That is how we don’t fall into this trap. That is how we build trust. Well, and then the trust is by doing what we said and following up.

And it’s game changing. And again, this took a situation I was so afraid of, and it made one of the best experiences that I had as a manager. All right. So if you are managing someone that is outside of your domain, again, the biggest takeaway here is to not act like I have nothing to offer. I’m just learning from you where you know you are learning from them, but you’re discrediting yourself right out of the gate.

Come in their own, your own, your superpowers, right? And then say, and so yeah, I want to get to know you in the space and what kind of things that you’re struggling with so I can help you achieve your goals. Right. What’s in it for them? You paint that picture, you’re going to become that person’s favorite manager because we all want someone that’s in it for us, regardless of what their background is. Right? All right. Avoid this trap and you are going to find your all of your favorite direct reports, right away.

See you next time. That’s all I have for today. Thank you so much for tuning in to the Managing Made Simple podcast, where my goal is to demystify the job of people management so that together we can make the workplace somewhere everyone can thrive. With that said, let’s spread the word. If you love this episode, please pass it along to someone who might benefit from it. See you next time.