How I Became a People Manager

My story...

Credits: Premium Image from Freepik.com

Hey Everyone,

My name is Vijaya Vardhan. And I’m an accidental manager.

It was the spring of 2009. I was doing well as a technical lead in my company. My manager, John, called me up one day and told me, “Vijay, I want you to lead this team of 6 people”

I didn’t have words! I wan’t aspiring to be a people manager.

So, I took on the job. My journey just began… or so, I thought.

In the first week, I set up clear targets for everyone.
In the second week, I added processes on top of those targets
Come third week and and I started measuring their work
By fourth week, I generated my first monthly performance report for John.

“What a productive work it is to be a people manager”, I thought. Frankly, I was enjoying the job.

But, it slowly dawned on me that I was the ONLY one enjoying the job on that team.

My team began to avoid me. They didn’t respond to my “friendly” chats. They began to huddle in groups and chat with each other.

Naive that I was, I thought they were “just talking” to each other.

Exactly two months later, John called me to his office. He told me, “Vijay your team is unhappy with you. I want you to fix this in a month’s time”.

My heart skipped a beat. I thought I was doing everything well. I got to know later that they went to John’s office and asked for a replacement for me.

I had a sleepless night. My belief in myself was shattered. I thought I was worthless and a failure. I took a day off to think about it.

The following week, I mustered up the courage to go to John’s office and asking him what I should be doing. John’s terse but friendly reply was “Go, ask your team!”

On a cold December morning in 2009, I nervously gathered my team for a quick huddle in our conference room. They all looked worried. The question they all had was, “WHAT now?”

Standing in front of them, I asked them a simple but a cathartic question.

“What should I do to change?”. I felt every word.

Pin drop silence for a few mins… Felt like a few years.

One by one my team members started speaking. It was guarded and slow at the start.

But within 30 mins, we were chatting freely - sharing thoughts and experiences.

I learnt my first and painful lesson right there: To be able to LEAD a group of people, I first needed to CONNECT with them.

Boom! That changed everything. Over the next few weeks, I began to deepen the relationships. We worked together on creating the process and outcomes.

We were on the same page. Ofcourse, we disagreed and argued. But, there was a magical connection that brought us all together.

It was the bonding and the trust we cultivated. Now, looking back, it all pointed to one single thing I did.

I ASKED for help on what I needed to CHANGE.

That’s my story my friends.

After 20+ years of work experience and managing teams, the fire to build high performance teams is still alive on me.

I’m on a mission to help 100,000 middle managers in fast growing SaaS companies get UNSTUCK and achieve 10x career impact through Exponential Leadership.

My vision is to demolish mediocrity in corporate leadership to create empowered, driven and abundant leaders.

That’s my forte and more importantly, that’s my calling.

I’ll be doing a new post every week.

In my next post, I’ll explore what Exponential Leadership is all about.

I invite you to join me on this wonderful journey of Exponentiation.

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