4 Lessons I Have Learned After Two Months of Being Head of Content
I have not been working only for myself these past two months
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Doing a great job at work and minding your own business is one thing.
Managing other people is a whole different story.
I’m good at excelling at my expertise. I’m good at following instructions. I’m good at doing well on my own. Taking the lead? Not so much.
Inconfidence, fear of confrontation, people pleasing, and hesitance in taking responsibilities for other people’s wellbeing are some of the reasons why I dread taking the wheel.
Hence, the past two months being the Head of Content at my company has felt like two decades. Every morning I have been waking up with questions filling my head: Did I miss any task? Are the deadlines too tight? My teammates have been quiet lately, should I call them up and check on them?
Every day for the past 60 days I have been showing up at work trying to figure out how to be a good leader, which is something I never took a course for.
The upside? I have garnered a few lessons that I thought worth sharing.
1. Treat your members like how you would treat newbie you
I’m managing three content writers, who are still college students with little experience. While they are passionate and good at their job, they are still learning and needing lots of help.
For the first two weeks, I did not actively check up on them. I told them to drop me a message whenever they needed help and when I didn’t hear from them, I didn’t ask.
At the end of the second week, I found out that one of my team members had been struggling with working and studying for her mid-term simultaneously, but she couldn’t tell me because she was scared that I’d think she couldn’t handle her tasks.
That’s when I knew I had not been communicating with my team enough. And I thought about how my manager cared for me and led me with passion when I first joined the company.
Then I did to my team members exactly what she did to me from my day one. I communicated.
