Visiting Voices – From Doer to Manager
The shift from a doer to a manager isn’t something that is always straightforward or simple.
When you start a business and work within it, either alone or alongside your employees, you are a doer, and you do whatever is needed to allow your business to succeed and prosper.
If the business does indeed prosper then it will grow, and there will be a need for more people to work alongside you.
Until the day dawns when you have to acknowledge that much of your time is being spent managing the business; administration, negotiation, sales, marketing…but no longer getting your hands dirty with the rest of the doers.
This needn’t be a problem, unless you started your business because you had a passion for the doing; because you wanted to be intimately involved in the fundamental aspects of the business without which there is no business.
For many people though this is exactly what has happened: they started their business with passion, worked hard and long as a doer, then one day realised that they were no longer doing, but managing, at which point they often fall out of love with their business.
Many small and medium sized businesses are being managed by people who may not have lost their passion for the business or the product or service they offer, but have fallen out of love with themselves, because they have been obliged by circumstances to step away from the shop floor. These businesses are always going to struggle to maintain their growth and to met their potential.
So is the solution for the managers to get back to doing? To roll up their sleeves and get their hands grubby? Probably not.
One alternative to this is for the manager to seek an outside intervention in order to shift their own passion and enthusiasm into a plane more suited to their new role: namely that of steering the boat rather than pulling on the oars; managing the team rather than being on the field kicking the ball.
A coach can often help you find the way to re-route your enthusiasm and dynamism into a path that will allow you to play a full and productive role while at the same time allowing your people to continue the ‘doing’ that you need for your continued success.
