I'm transitioning from being an individual contributor to leading a 5-person team. What’s the best way to succeed at this switch?

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You're going to be spending less time in the trenches, and more time elevating your team to do their best, according to their best capabilities. Start by spending some time getting to know your team better. Unless you already do, which is a great plus.

From then on, I'd make sure they do enough of what they like doing and that they feel heard. Make it a habit to regularly meet your individual contributors so you can talk about the job, how they feel, and what they’d like to do. I prefer keeping these meetings informal without any strict agenda (avoid 360s if possible).

Conduct your usual team-wide meetings and demos, so you can plan each weeks activities with your team in a more structured way.

I may not have enough time to create loads of actual content myself, but my job as a manager is to make everything else easier. This could be creating better SOPs, pushing for learning resources, implementing better processes, organizing team activities, pairing people for tasks, and so on.

One more thing that helped make my content team successful was ensuring that the whole team contributed to our high-level strategy. Like any company, our high-level goals are given to us by the C-level. But as a team, it’s upto us to come up with activities that would help us achieve said goals.

When it comes to management, there’s more than one way you can take a team forward. No right or wrong answers here. Stay as close to your team as possible and have fun in the process.

About the author: Kal Dimitrov is an SEO & Content Marketer for Enhancv – a modern resume builder that helps you get hired at top companies.

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