Advice on line management - preparation for interview

neilio

I’m applying for a small promotion at work. Twelve of us report to our line manager who is creating two team leader posts that will report to him, and the remaining ten will report into the two team leaders, five each. Although the positions are open to the whole team to apply, three of us (me included) are of a higher employment grade than the rest, so it’d be weird if one of the junior people were to succeed and end up having a senior graded person report into them, therefore I think I am in with a reasonably good chance, but not naively assuming anything is a given. I’m applying for it but I want to be duly prepared. I’ve never line managed anyone before. Can anyone recommend any good material I can read up on to get myself prepared and understand the challenges of having direct reports at work?

danica322

An interview for a management position will contains of questions about your experience, management style, what you've accomplished in the past and what your expectations are for the future. Manager means person all of you looks what the manager do. Manager is the active worker in an organization. The manager will ask questions to determine how well you will fit into the organization, and how effective you’ll be in the position, most interviewers will focus on two important aspects of the managerial experience; chiefly getting results and dealing with people. There are so many questions ask to you these questions are mainly based on the experiences.

elsien

You need to take your lead from the job specification as that is what they will base the questions on if it is a competency based interview.
You can still also reference transferable skills from outside of the workplace, so if you have experience in handling people - motivating, organising, managing conflict etc and in running a local team or group, that would be appropriate to talk about.
It depends on what the team leader role is actually going to involve.

bouicca21

As Elsien says, motivating, organising, dealing with conflict are obvious ones. So is performance management.

jobbingmusician

Re performance management.

Disciplinaries should be last resort, and in any case are designed to help the employee improve to the standard required.

You need to ensure that your staff know what the expectations of them are - good practice is to have regular supervisions where any problems can be flagged up. If you encourage a no-blame culture where mistakes are used as a learning experience, it enables people to share mistakes with you before they have a chance to grow into something big!

TELLIT01

Re performance management. Any problems / issues need to be dealt with immediately, not left until the next scheduled 1-2-1. I was shocked some years ago when another team leader told me that he left them until that time because he didn't like confrontation! Wrong man, wrong job I think.