It can be seen that the post is not easy and involves a totally new set of capabilities that have to be developed. The first problem would be the supervision of people who have been previously my colleagues. Many of my colleagues do not see me as their superior, at least in their minds. I have to be patient and persistent in their accepting me as their manager. Apart from the above fact, the new capabilities that I have to acquire are leadership. I know that certain qualities needed for leadership is inborn in me because it must be what my superiors made me a manager in the first place. I now have to supervise, motivate and evaluate my former peers.
Evaluation and, if found necessary in giving poor performance reports would be a very difficult task for me. My former colleagues are now a little distant from me, as can be seen from their behaviour towards me. I now have the entire direct marketing force under my command. I have to assign them duties and responsibilities and find it difficult to force certain unpleasant tasks on my former employees. I also have to give constructive criticism to people who have been very close to me earlier. Another aspect I find problematic is the training that I have to give. I have no real problems with new recruits, but I find that my former colleagues do not take my sessions seriously and even miss many of them.
I have to be polite but firm with them to show that their new boss is serious about his job. Another challenge is planning the monthly targets and seeing that they have been achieved. There are two problems here. One is to take to task my salespeople in case they have not achieved it. The next one is facing my superiors to answer for the non-achievement of targets. All these things are new to me, and I have only been able to see how these same sets of problems affected my predecessor. The biggest problem I find is managing individual salespeople and the organizational politics that exists in the firm. A fine balance has to be taken in managing these two issues. I cannot intentionally hurt individuals nor totally ignore the politics and demands of informal work groups of employees under me.
These are very challenging and problematic issues, but I feel that, given time, I will be able to manage the situation quite efficiently and that my former colleagues and new recruits will see me as an efficient leader.
