This article is heading off in a somewhat different direction from most leadership advice on how to excel at your role as a new manager. We, too, in our new manager training, talk about how you as a new manager should interact with your team. But here we want to shift the focus to how you should take care of and present yourself.
After all, at some point, you need to stay healthy and upbeat if you want your team to follow in your footsteps. Just like a traveling parent who needs to put the oxygen mask on themselves before they put it on the child in the airplane seat next to them, you need to keep yourself from overwork and poor habits in order to care for your team and model “the way” by setting a good example.
Here are three tips on maintaining your well-being and thus setting yourself up to be the best new manager you can be:
1. Set aside some time for yourself as a new manager.
Do something that restores your energy, feeds your soul or simply gives you pleasure. Perhaps a morning walk in the park before you begin your busy day, your favorite music on the radio as you drive to work, 15 minutes of meditation to orient your mind toward things that really matter, or time at the gym or on your mountain bike. You pick what works best for you and give yourself that “gift” every day.
2. Eat healthy and get adequate sleep as a new manager.
You cannot work efficiently throughout the week unless you maintain a healthy regimen of good food and good sleep. When you are overtired, you risk making mistakes for lack of attention or making “unfriends” due to your overdose of grumpiness . This is no joke. Aside from the health problems associated with a lack of sleep, sleep deprivation was sighted as a cause for the 1979 nuclear accident at Three Mile Island, the massive Exxon Valdez oil spill, and the 1986 nuclear meltdown at Chernobyl. The food side is also important. Poor eating habits can lead to problems with mental functioning and disturbances in mood and behavior such as fatigue, hyperactivity, irritability and apathy.
3. Ask for feedback on how you are doing as a new manager.
Don’t be afraid to ask for input on how you could handle things better. This will be the question you put to your team members over and over again as you manage performance. But when flipped, it provides insight into what your new team looks for in their leader, into what matters most to them and offers an opportunity to grow in a direction that will serve you and the team.
When you are struggling to “make it” as a new manager, don’t neglect your own physical and psychic needs. Take care of them as a daily habit and you will be in a far stronger frame of mind to tackle the ever-present challenge of managing people.
