How to Become a Manager When You Have No Management Experience

The classic catch-22 of becoming a manager is that every job seems to want management experience, and you cannot get management experience without a management job. The way out is to realize that leadership experience and management titles are not the same thing. You can build the first long before anyone hands you the second.

I did not have any management experience before my first leadership role. I took a job bartending because it was what I was able to get, and I wanted to work my way up. So I stayed late, closed down, cleaned and offered to do anything I could to learn more. Over time, someone gave me the chance to lead, because I had already shown I was willing to do the work the job needed before I had the job.

Lead where you already are

You do not need direct reports to lead. You can help train new hires, offer to show a struggling coworker a better way to do something, organize a small project or step up when things get messy. Each of these is leadership experience, and each one shows decision-makers what you would be like with a team.

When I promote people, one of the strongest signals is whether they already make the people around them better without a title. Before you lead others, you have to lead yourself, and then the people next to you.

Build the skills on purpose

Many new managers struggle because they were never taught how to manage. Deloitte found that 36% of managers say they were insufficiently prepared to manage people. You can get ahead of that. Read about leadership, take a course, listen to podcasts, and pay attention to how the good leaders around you handle feedback, conflict and hard decisions. Notice what the not-so-good ones do too.

Some of the most useful things to learn first are how to give feedback, how to delegate, how to run a one-on-one and how to have a difficult conversation. See How to Give Feedback to Employees and How to Delegate Effectively.

Tell your manager and ask for chances

Make sure the people who make promotion decisions know what you want. Tell your manager you would like to grow into a leadership role and ask what would make you ready. Ask for small chances to practice: running the weekly huddle, leading a project, covering when your supervisor is out. Each one becomes a story you can tell in an interview.

Tell the story well in an interview

When the opportunity comes, describe what you have already done in leadership terms. Instead of saying you have never managed anyone, talk about the new hires you trained, the project you led and the teammate you helped improve. Explain what you learned from each. Hiring managers are looking for evidence of leadership, not just a title on a résumé.

Many leaders, including me, hire for traits over experience, because we can train experience but you cannot always train traits. Humility, drive, emotional intelligence and integrity often matter more than a past title. See How to Hire for Traits Over Experience.

Be ready for the transition

Moving into management changes your job more than most people expect. Your success becomes the team’s success, and the skills that made you a great individual contributor are not always the ones you need. Read First-Time Manager Mistakes and How to Avoid Them and The New Manager’s First 90 Days before your first day.

New and aspiring managers are the heart of my leadership workshop, You Are Capable of More: Leadership. See also How to Get Promoted at Work.