My type of work allowed a lot of latitude, I made an effort to not stick people in the same job every time. If you have that kind of flexibility, use it, I think people prefer variety (I know I did).
I had assertiveness issues at first, so I took the low-key quasi-passive-aggressive approach, as in “this needs to be done” rather than “do this” – if people feel like they are working with you as opposed to working for you, that can be effective.
And do pay attention, listen to your team. The larger job is yours, you cannot accomplish it without them, at least not short of wrecking yourself, so avoid needlessly putting them in situations they do not like if at all possible.
I’m amused to imagine you going around grabbing people to tell them that cats can have cheeseburgers but they cannot “has” them and that the correct spelling of lulz is ‘laughs’.
Many years ago I was promoted above people I had worked with for years, some were there longer than I was. The hardest part was sometimes your instinct as a friend and instinct as a boss will come into conflict and you need to choose Boss which can feel wrong but is the right call. You will need to sometimes be respectful but stern with people. It could be difficult at first but it gets easier with time.
Before getting stern, make sure you and your employee have the same idea of what the priorities are for their job. I remember once coming into my managers office for a semi-annual performance review and being confronted with a list of ‘issues’ and being astounded, because they were all things I considered trivialities – nothing to do with the major parts of my job. But – surprise! – they were important to my manager. And all surprises, because he hadn’t mentioned them over the past 6 months.
Performance reviews should never contain surprises.
You & the employee should have the same understanding of their high-priority tasks. (In writing!) And if there are issues about some of them, you should have been reminding the employee about them quite often.
P.S. You might get more suggestions from people if you didn’t use words like “fuck” in the title of this thread. Because of that, every email about this thread gets routed to my ‘porn’ junk mail folder; I expect many people’s email filters just discard it entirely.
Leadership: talk with the people you have to work with.
Identify the goals your business needs to obtain and clearly explain them to the people who need to work towards them.
Keep praise public and criticism private.
Ask questions that help guide people towards solutions.
Keep talking with people - make sure they know you are limited in your powers and never make a promise you can’t keep. One of the most powerful tools you have is friendly advice offered honestly. Keep people clearly informed of both what is expected of them and suggest ways they can improve their existence within the company.
Keep it positive, within reason.
Do not lie. If you can’t say, say “I can’t say.”
Your reputation, once earned, cannot be changed and shall always precede you.
If you’re serious, this is my best and most sincere advice, Google: “Army FM 22-100” (or 6-22) You should be able to find a .PDF pretty easily. That’s one of the manuals they use to teach new NCOs how to lead people.
It really helped me when I got my first management job. It’s all about making people excel at their strengths and ignore their weaknesses (instead of the usual claptrap about improving weaknesses).
A good manager is a good listener. Hear what people are telling you, the good and the bad. Especially be able to hear the bad news. Refusing to believe that a project is having problems does not make them go away.
A manager is going to learn stuff that he or she cannot share. However you can interpret what higher level management wants in terms that people can understand. A lot of the PHB syndrome comes from top management doing things for good reasons, but reasons that only they can see. Not always, but more often than you’d think.
A good manager steps away from the direct work, even if she can do it better than her reports. This is tough.
But maybe the most important thing: have you ever been in meetings where people talk past each other and nothing gets decided? You can stop this. You need to keep meetings on track, and you need to make decisions. This is especially hard when it is about something you aren’t comfortable with. You’re going to have to feel out which side is more plausible, and also who in your group knows best about the problem.
Oh, and you are going to have to admit mistakes. I had a director once that everyone loved because he came down and said he screwed up when he did. Doing this does not destroy your credibility, it adds to it especially when you did screw up. And you will.