Build Your Internal Network

Perhaps you’ve already overcome one of the biggest hurdles for new managers. You’ve already changed your personal identity from one who creates value from directly producing to someone who creates value by managing the people who produce. As you prepare to move up in leadership, there’s another internal identity shift that will affect your success.

When you lead a team of doers, your success and the success of your team often depends on how well you produce your product or service, and how effectively your team consumes the products and services delivered from other teams.

But when you begin to manage managers instead of individual contributors, your role changes again. The value you bring will be less about overseeing the way your team produces and consumes. Rather, it will be about seeing and managing the relationships between various teams – both within your span of control, and across those of your peers.

Your focus will be more on building relationships with more people and across broader swaths of the company. You’ll want to understand how the different products and services – and personalities – interact with each other and combine to create broader value. You’ll want to understand what the other departments value and what causes them frustration.

Showing that you’re ready to succeed as a manager of managers will depend largely on the strength of your relationships with people you may not naturally interact with as a manager of a single team.

To prepare yourself for success at the next level, you’ll want to build your internal network.

If you’d like help figuring out how to create those conversations and making those new internal connections, let’s talk. Visit stevedwire.com/talk to start the conversation.