when you are hired to manage a team of white collar professionals, you are brought in to produce a collective
team performance to meet certain targets…

above you, you have the bigger manager at big companies, or the owner of the company if it is not so big…

in case of the former, your boss may appreciate your siding with him, but he would care more about how you can produce so his ass does nto get kicked.

in case of the later, your boss definitely want to be assure of your personal loyalty is with him/her, in addition to a good management of your team…

if you are hired already, they already bought your sales pitch to sell your talent, your vision, your ability, your experiences…the whole darn thing you lead yourself to beliebe and try to convince others…

now it is your time and place to prove:

what can you do to make a difference?

the first challenge is that all your team members look at you and think here is a guy coming in to play manager! heck, what does he know about this?

then you ask yourself, OK, all i need is the time to spend with them to identify what they want out of here and what they need from me, if any thing? can i help them?

but you cannot just play a nice guy, because that only lead them to take advantages of you

be observing. work out the role functions after defining function roles on your team, then look at the current work process. the actual process is never the designated procedure if there is one in place. this is where you may
come in.

don’t say anything just wait for the prob to help you get into the door. things happen and so do the bad things. sooner or later you will catch some of them failing on their jobs. now, time to move in what the plan you lined up
and ready to implment

when things fail, it is more about the system than the individual, at least so you declare around them. so you invite them, in light of the failure (and tell them this is now your ass on the line) to identify a solution to address the issue.

draw on their brain to make it work. you now may win some respects form them (just by the power of title you do not get far)

now you look at those refuse to give in to you, heck find an excuse and wait for the right prob to get rid off the ass, as long as you already know where to look for replacement and how

then, our chinese culture kicking in: remember birthday of everyone on your team (or have a female team member to remind you based on her calendar) and present a little chinese thing on the day

of course you should pay attention to people’s new cloth and never forget to offer compliments by saying “oh i like your new shirt…” stuff like that never hurts

also, never miss a chance to offer a pat on the shoulder (not literally because keep yourself away from any and all physical contacts to avoid harrasement accusations) by offering compliments on the jobs done or even well done.
people appreciate that

being the head of an outfit, you owe your loyalty to your team members or so appear to them, not to your boss. you do not show your loyalty to your boss in front of them (your boss understand that drill too) when pressures coming in from other depts. you are the one to offer protection to your team members, so they will stick to you.
don’t miss any of such chances to show how you care about the well being of all your outfit members.

now if you are hired in to manage managers, then your perspective change right away, which i will address in next session