Becoming a Manager: Stepping Up the Corporate Ladder

You feel you’re ready to transition from an individual contributor to a supervisor or manager. This is a significant step that comes with new roles and responsibilities to redefine your relationship with your fellow employees and your new peer managers. Let’s look at what you can do to prepare as a future manager.  

How Do You Become a Manager?

Becoming a manager requires skills development, relationship building and strategic positioning. Here are key steps to take:

• Master Your Current Role:  To climb the ladder, start by excelling in your current position, proving you are ready for a management role. Show competence, consistency, and leadership potential by consistently meeting or exceeding expectations. For example, if you aren’t particularly detail-oriented in your current role, don’t expect others to assume you will master that skill in a new role.  Examine your current work to see where polish or improvement is needed. 
• Develop Leadership Skills: There are many ways to develop leadership skills – through hands-on experience, or through reading, training, and applying what you learn.  For example, working on your Emotional Intelligence (EQ) enhances your ability to understand and manage your emotions, as well as influence others. Most jobs require effective verbal and written communication skills to convey goals, expectations, and feedback. Effectively managing conflict is also a core skill to prove that you are ready to lead others. Taking on new responsibilities in your current role demands excellent time management skills, allowing you to fit more mission-critical actions and decisions into your day. 
• Seek Opportunities: Actively look for opportunities to solve problems, improve processes, or take on added responsibilities. Acting like a manager without overstepping is tricky, but most people have more influence to effect change in their current roles than they realize. Volunteer to lead projects, sit on committees or take on tasks that involve coordination and strategic oversight, allowing you to mentor junior colleagues and display leadership skills.
• Expand Your Functional Skills:  Consider investing in training or certifications related to project management or your industry.  This could include learning a specialized process or technology used by the company, asking for a special assignment, or asking to participate part-time on a project in a different department to expand your skills and network. Many HR members will be more than willing to compensate for your training in becoming a manager.   
• Build Relationships: Build relationships with peers, current managers, and others outside your work group to prove that you are ready to be a future manager and a crucial part of an organization. Connections can become mentors or advocates to speak on your behalf. Take advantage of any mentoring program to seek guidance from someone in a leadership position, and proactively communicate your career goals and commitment with your manager.
• Ask For and Notice Feedback:  It can be difficult to evaluate your own strengths and weaknesses – so ask for feedback from others. Do you consistently receive the same corrections or miss the same content elements in your work? If so, concentrate on filling those gaps – routine feedback provides important clues for change and makes it clear to your superiors your desire to grow and develop as a potential leader.
  

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Management roles take time to earn. Demonstrate that you are committed to the organization’s mission and long-term growth for both your team and your organization. Focus on excellent delivery and continued improvement to take advantage of leadership opportunities as they arise.

How to Be a Great Manager

If you have been promoted to a leadership position as a manager, now it’s time to focus on developing and building skills in leadership, managing complexity, communication, and empathy.  Let’s explore the characteristics of great managers.  

• Lead by Example:  Your everyday actions send a clear signal to your team what you expect from them. Think about the messages you send through your daily behavior. What do you want to model?  How will you show that? Examples of strong leadership include emotional regulation, actively listening, being punctual, keeping your promises, and giving honest, constructive feedback. Demonstrate the values and standards you want your team to follow.
• Clear and Consistent Communication: Your directors want clarity and honesty, even when the news isn’t good. Provide your team with clear expectations, regular updates and constructive feedback. Keep communication open through meetings, office hours and informal check-ins. so that the team feels comfortable sharing their thoughts and ideas.  Communication also means listening actively – pay attention to your team’s verbal and non-verbal cues. Show through your words and actions that they are heard and valued – even when you can’t meet every request.
• Empower and Delegate: Great managers trust their team to take ownership of tasks. Share desired outcomes, explain why they are important, and outline available resources and any known risks or constraints. Giving your team responsibilities will help to boost their skills and confidence that they are an essential asset to the team.
• Make and Own Tough Decisions: Great leaders make decisions and drive progress within the systems they use. Rather than placing blame on bureaucracy, great leaders recognize barriers and limitations and are honest when certain things just aren’t possible. Becoming a manager means you must resolve conflicts quickly and with compassion, while still treating everyone with fairness. Individual situations sometimes require unique handling.
• Recognize and Celebrate Success: To grow and develop your team, make it a priority to give active positive feedback that encourages the behaviors you want to see at the individual and team level – do this publicly and privately, as well as formally and informally.  Recognition boosts resilience by building confidence and a sense of self-efficacy.  Use developmental feedback strategically, focusing on areas where it will have the most impact.  

Great leaders create a thriving team environment, drive mission-focused performance, and foster a culture of continuous growth and trust.  They also prioritize self-care to maintain the energy needed for long-term sustainable success.  

Manager Training Programs and Continuous Learning: 10 Key Topics

Being a manager starts by recognizing the need to invest in their own development to continuously improve their leadership skills.  Pryor offers a number of training programs in these areas; start with our training category Management and Leadership.  Here are 10 key topics:

1. Leadership and Management Training: Consider general courses in leadership and supervisory fundamentals, decision-making, and strategic thinking. These courses help you develop a leadership mindset and inspire and motivate your team. For example, check out Pryor’s Transitioning to Supervisor, Management & Leadership Skills for New Managers and Supervisors, and A Crash Course for the First-Time Manager or Supervisor. 
2. Emotional Intelligence (EQ) helps you recognize and manage your emotions and impact the emotions of others. Pryor’s “Emotional Intelligence Library” covers both emotional and social awareness. Developing Emotional Intelligence is a great starting point.  
3. Conflict management teaches you strategies to mediate disputes, manage conflicts productively, and maintain team harmony.
4. Active listening and feedback training helps you sharpen your listening skills and provide constructive, meaningful feedback to team members.
5. Public speaking and presentation training improves your ability to communicate effectively in front of larger groups or in high-pressure situations.
6. Project management: If your role involves managing multiple projects or initiatives, project management training provides strategies to organize, plan, and execute projects more effectively. These also sharpen problem-solving and decision-making skills. 
7. Time management training helps managers juggle multiple priorities, manage workloads, and balance strategic thinking with operational demands. Managing Multiple Priorities, Projects, and Deadlines is a great Pryor offering in this area. 
8. Coaching and mentoring help you develop your skills to support your team’s growth, guide them toward self-discovery, and encourage problem-solving. For example, Pryor’s Leadership, Team-Building and Coaching Skills for Managers and Supervisors is a 1-day training that helps you lead a team to excellence. 
9. Change management training can help you lead teams through periods of transition, such as implementing new processes, restructuring, or managing organizational growth. Creative Leadership is another 1-day training to help a team apply innovative solutions for success. 
10. Business and strategic management skills offer important insights to develop greater skills in managing project and department budgets, critical thinking about business-related trade-offs, and stakeholder management. Some of these courses may include skills development related to digital and technology management – critical for today’s workplace.  Strategic Thinking and Planning and Strategic Goal-Setting are popular Pryor courses in this area. 

Pryor offerings in leadership, management, supervision, emotional intelligence, project management, and communications range from short videos to live virtual and in-person seminars, and can prepare you to become a future manager.