Primary Blog/Team building/The Impossible Challenge of my First Management Role





When I was an advertising rep, I got offered the most amazing opportunity, to step up into Management. I was offered the role of Classified Advertising Manager and the first woman in the management team. I had no experience in management but obviously, they could see something in me that I couldn’t. I felt that all I had to do to live up to their expectations was to do a great job. I started out with supreme optimism. I mean, how hard could it be?

My first wakeup call was the fact that my phone team were dysfunctional. They weren’t speaking to each other, and they weren’t proactive. They were sitting knitting while waiting for the phone to ring. Not what I had been used to in sales.

Then their union told me I couldn’t give them sales training because they were in the printers’ union. Plus, the face-to-face reps didn’t get paid commission for selling into the classified pages. And I was expected to grow the classifieds!

I didn’t know what to do. If I had been in their place, I would have upsold all ads and been friendly with my team members. But they were different from me, and I didn’t know how to get them there. Should I give them a pep talk? Motivational sayings on the wall? How did other Managers become inspiring Leaders? What did they do to transform their team?

I felt vulnerable and scared and dreaded each day. I was the Manager, I was supposed to know what to do, and I didn’t. And I didn’t have any role models to go to for advice. I was gutted that they were going to discover they’d promoted the wrong person. I was going to demonstrate my incompetence and my downfall for the whole company to witness. They’d blame it on me being a woman. Those who envied my promotion would be justified in their criticism of me.

But I found a way through. I found a process which transformed the team, made them forget they weren’t speaking to each other and got them brainstorming on problems I had no idea how to solve. And I ended up with a creative team. We did not just increase the classified pages, we ran a campaign which also increased the circulation of the paper. That’s right, people bought the paper because of the campaign we ran in the classifieds. And it was fun! But that’s a story for another time.

You see, I did the same thing that all new Managers and Business Owners do, I believed that I was supposed to solve all problems for my team. I was a team of one. Then I stumbled onto a process which changed the way I saw the team. And in my career, I have done this many times over for my own businesses and now I do it with my clients.

It starts with YOU and your potential as a Leader who inspires your team to achieve their potential. The gurus will have you team building, changing your social media platforms, marketing, advertising until you are totally confused and still not getting the business growth or the amazing team you know they can be.

And that makes sense, doesn’t it? Why would you be fiddling with the tyre pressure of the Ferrari when it’s the driver who controls how the car performs. You know you have potential, you know your team has potential. If you want to learn how to harness your potential and transform your team and your business, call me.


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