Management Development: First-Time Manager - Featuring Eric Girard PITY PARTY OVER

Eric Girard, author of the book Lead Like A Pro: The Essential Guide for New Managers, assists professionals in transitioning from high-performing individual contributors to effective people managers.
Eric discusses the psychological aspects of this transition, providing insights into managing change and setting realistic expectations.
This conversation is a comprehensive exploration of the challenges and triumphs that managers face in their evolution to effective leadership.
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TRANSCRIPT
Stephen Matini : How did you get to this point? You know, because you take care, such a specific thing, which is helping manager transitioning people transition into manager role. So is this something that you have always thought? Have you always had an interest? How did it happen?
Eric Girard: I got into learning and development in my teens. It starts way back in the Boy Scouts. I was a boy scout for years and years and I used to teach kids how to swim and paddle a canoe and row a boat, anything in, on or under the water. And I loved it when a kid would get something like get a skill, like how to make a canoe do what they wanted. And they would go, whoa. And I thought, Hey, I like teaching. Then I went to college and discovered learning and development and joined the Association for Talent Development. Back then it was the American Society for Training and Development, joined a student chapter and got my first job out of college teaching people how to use their computers. And that was okay, but it was, it felt like I was on a hamster wheel. I felt like I was just running, running, running, running, running.
So I went and got my master's degree in intercultural training and wound up traveling around. I taught English in Japan. I lived in Australia for a couple years and then when I came back from Australia, I thought, okay, it's time to really find my passion. And I wound up working for a cross-cultural consulting firm. And then I got recruited to come to Silicon Valley. So that started my 20 year sojourn in Silicon Valley. And I went from teaching new hires about the company, new hire orientation into employee development, and then eventually management development. And then I thought, aha, these are my people. This, I like this. So helping managers understand their new role, helping them move from being great employees, great individual contributors, and moving to being a great people manager and learning all those skills and there's a whole list of them was really rewarding to me. So that's where I, I wound up settling, was in the area of management development and I love it and I've decided to make it my life's work now that I'm out of Silicon Valley and I've got my own practice, that's what I do. I love helping new managers make that shift.
 
Stephen Matini: Because of your cross-cultural experience, is there something that you have noticed that is consistent in managers all over the world?
Eric Girard: You know, managers are people, actually, this is a funny thing that came up in a class I was teaching. So I'm in Iowa teaching a class for, at the headquarters of one of my biggest clients. It's the second day of a three-day class. And this one manager who had been pretty active throughout, they raised their hand and said, I just wanna say something. All managers need therapy. That was a big thing to say. And they say, yeah, all managers need therapy because if you don't take care of your own stuff, then you're not gonna be any good to your team. This person was making the case that it's really important to tak