The Peter principle (and nobody tells you what the job is)

Most bad managers aren't bad people.

They're Peters. (Stay with me.)

The Peter principle says we promote people up and up, until they reach a role they weren't ready for. Sound familiar?

You were brilliant at your thing. Genuinely brilliant. So brilliant that someone looked at you and thought: "You know what? You should probably be in charge of the people who do the thing."

And just like that, the job changed completely. Nobody handed you a manual. Nobody sat you down and explained how you actually manage humans. You just sort of... started. On a Monday. With a lot of feelings. Maybe some big feelings. Maybe, not yours, but someone's who you now manage.

Here's what I want you to know: if you've been winging it, you are absolutely not alone. Most managers are winging it (most people are winging it). The ones who feel bad about being bad at it are usually the ones who care enough to eventually get good at it.

On your first day as a manager, people look to you for answers.

You won't have them yet. You're kot actually supposed to.

That's completely normal. And it still feels awful. That gap between what people expect of you and what you actually know? It's enormous. It's frightening. And nobody warned you it was coming.

Here's the thing I wish someone had said to me, gently, over a cup of coffee:

Your role is no longer the thing.

Your role is the people that do the thing.

Everything you were brilliant at (the skill that earned you the promotion) is now someone else's responsibility. Your job is to clear their path and help them go even further than you did.

It's not a bigger version of your old role. It's a different one entirely. And honestly? That takes some getting used to. You might even miss the old job a bit. That's completely fine. I still miss being an IC.

For every hard day as a manager (and there will be some), there's a day where someone on your team does something extraordinary and you realise, quietly, that you helped make that happen. Those days are brilliant!

Over the next two weeks, I'm going to share something I've been building to help managers learn the craft.

But first - what was your first week as a manager actually like? (Mine involved quite a lot of confident nodding while frantically googling things.)