From middle to senior manager: Challenges to face

Get Promoted was originally uploaded to Flickr by Alan Levine and is reused here under the terms and conditions of the CC BY 2.0 DEED Attribution 2.0 Generic Creative Commons license

The time has eventually come for you as a manager to climb up another step on the corporate ladder, and become a senior manager.

Perhaps a senior manager has retired, and your employer has chosen you to take his place.

This is a lifelong dream coming true for you, because, all those years, you felt stuck in a mid-management position seeing no light in the end of the tunnel.

There is nothing stopping you from grabbing the opportunity with both hands, or is there?

Do you think you are up to the challenge?

As soon as opportunity knocks your door, you start feeling pressure, anticipation, and anxiety, as a result of the new challenge that enters your career path.

Although these feelings are only natural, they make you wonder whether getting promoted to a senior management position is actually a good or a bad thing.

Assuming higher managerial duties and responsibilities is meant to be a good thing, because, in the end of the day, this is what the overwhelming majority of middle-level managers aspire to.

However, if promotion equates to a heavier load of duties and tasks, it could make you have second thoughts.

This is because, when undertaking a more senior management role, the increased responsibilities that come with this role are often overlooked, and promotion is only considered in a positive light, thus forgetting that it actually represents a major challenge that many middle-level managers may not be up to.

Are you ready to make the transition?

Smoothly adapting to your new role as a senior manager can have many more surprises in store than you possibly expected and were prepared for.

Becoming a senior manager means that you have to reconsider your relationships with colleagues who are still middle managers.

Since you are now superior than those colleagues of yours, and you could actually end up being in charge of and giving orders to them, you need to be prepared to make the transition, and really embrace the duties and responsibilities that come with your new role.

This could mean putting these duties and responsibilities above personal feelings resulting from working together with people at the same level within organizational hierarchy in the past.

How to deal with your own weaknesses as a senior manager

Once you get promoted, you may believe that have finally reached the end of the rainbow, in terms of personal learning; you get the illusion that you have reached perfection, somehow, which is not the case at all, of course.

You soon realize that this is far for the truth, and lifelong learning is a reality that certainly applies to senior managers, as well.

As a senior manager, perhaps you discover new weaknesses of yours that you hadn’t thought of before. This is not strange, because your new duties, responsibilities, and tasks can reveal areas that your performance is poor, whereas these areas were hidden in the past, since you had never been asked to showcase your relevant skills before getting promoted.

Being honest with yourself and dealing with any weaknesses of yours directly is the best approach that can help you to further improve as a manager.

Seeking further training and learning opportunities should be one of your top priorities, not only for your personal benefit, but also because, in this way, you will be able to set an example for those under your charge.

Encouraging those people to adopt a pro-learning attitude will also have a multiplier effect on your influence and effectiveness as a manager.

Sources and further reading:

15 Challenges Mid-Level Managers Moving Into Executive Leadership Face

Management development

Executing Strategy Challenge: “The Frozen Middle”

12 Common Challenges of New Managers