Helping your agency’s new managers

As small agencies grow, individual team members usually begin to take on direct reports — often for the first time in their careers.

These newly-minted managers need mentorship and support to excel. Owners need to make sure that they set aside time and resources to help these talented individuals develop the skills that they need.

Chip and Gini share some of their experiences, including things you may want to avoid with inexperienced managers and some areas where you should focus your efforts for the good of the business.

Key takeaways

* Chip Griffin: “Part of the problem is that a lot of agency owners don’t really have a lot of management experience. They don’t have a lot of their own training and mentorship that they’ve gone through to get where they are today. So to some degree, it’s the blind leading the blind.”* Gini Dietrich: “We have to be really good at making space to have those conversations and to coach them and mentor them so that they can do the same for their direct reports.”* Chip Griffin: “Now, giving people room to fail does not mean abandoning them. So there is a happy medium here.”* Gini Dietrich: “I pay attention, especially in client meetings, to how they behave and the ways that they treat their team. You can learn the things to do and things not to do by observing, and encourage your team to do the same.”

View Transcript

The following is a computer-generated transcript. Please listen to the audio to confirm accuracy.

Chip Griffin: Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m Chip Griffin.

Gini Dietrich: I’m Gini Dietrich.

Chip Griffin: And Gini, I wanna find out how I can best manage you.

Gini Dietrich: Thank you.

Chip Griffin: Right after this,

There was a lovely little pause there though.

Gini Dietrich: There was.

Chip Griffin: I’m, I’m sure you’ll not be hearing because I’m sure that it will be removed in editing, but…

Gini Dietrich: I really hope it’s not.

Chip Griffin: There was a pause because I realized that I had not queued up the little jazzy intro for everybody.

Gini Dietrich: The look on your face was great. You were like, woo ..

Chip Griffin: Yeah. It is what it is, you know. We all make mistakes, and that’s, that’s sort of what we’re talking about today. Because as we, you know, learn to new, new – learn to do new things, learn how to speak, perhaps even.

Gini Dietrich: Maybe one of those.

Chip Griffin: We need to think about how we can help our team members do that same sort of thing.

So, basically we, we’re in a situation where small agencies have people who take on increasing responsibility on the team. And ultimately who may become a manager. And so now they’ve got people reporting to them. And this is something that if you’re, it’s someone who’s come up in a small agency environment, they may not have any experience with that.

And so you need to try to figure out how do I give them the skills, the guidance, the mentorship in order to be able to effectively manage other people.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah, it’s really hard. And you know, I think some, some agencies are really great at providing professional development and training to teach to help your,