Clark Quinn (http://blog.learnlets.com/) suggests that you develop them the way that you would like to be developed as a new manager

…there’s an attitude change and major skill set development as well. The attitude change has to be one of moving from being a colleague and perhaps friend to being a respected manager. There’re a whole bunch of associated skills including comprehending business drivers, aligning and measuring performance, inspiring (versus just motivating), coaching, etc.

So what can you do to support them?

• Let them listen to some folks who were in the situation and learned lessons,
• Have them explore their own views of management and compare to other views,
• Provide them with principles and safe practice, and then scaffold that practice over time while providing them with a community for support.
• Practice what you preach, inspiring them, coaching their performance, basically modeling the behavior you would want them to adopt.

Being based in Eastern Canada (Toronto and Montreal), several clients of McKinley deal with hiring cycles based on seasonality. It’s now April and with the snow starting to melt, many organizations are looking to hire seasonal staff in the coming weeks. Some of those returning for a second or third season may move into supervisory or even entry level management roles.

So how can you support new managers? This was the question asked in March on the American Society of Training and Development (ASTD) Learning Circuits Blog. This month we will look at some of the challenges related to supporting new mangers including some of the posts from the blog.

We talked about the impact of informal learning earlier in the year and Ray Sims (http://blog.simslearningconnections.com/) made the follow suggestions that involve informal learning elements:

Audio Self-Paced Learning

Give each new manager a pre-loaded “mp3″ player (for example, iPod Nano) with playlists that cover core management topics such as: providing feedback and coaching, effective communication (via one-on-ones, in email, via presentations, meetings, etc.), handling conflict, motivation and leadership, etc.

Coaching

I would encourage new managers to establish a coaching relationship with an experienced manager other than their own. Here I would keep the actual program aspects “light”

Community

Lastly, I would include a community of practice element that consisted of, at minimum, a mailing list (or forums) and periodic conference calls on topics of particular interest to managers.

There are a number of resources available on coaching and in particular mentoring that would be helpful for new managers and supervisors.

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