Becoming a Manager: How New Managers Master the Challenges of Leadership

New managers must learn how to lead others rather than do the work themselves, to win trust and respect, to motivate, and to strike the right balance between delegation and control. It is a transition many fail to make. This book traces the experiences of nineteen new managers over the course of their first year in a managerial capacity. Reveals the complexity of the transition and analyzes the expectations of the managers, their subordinates, and their superiors. New managers describe how they reframed their understanding of their roles and responsibilities, how they learned to build effective work relationships, how and when they used individual and organizational resources, and how they learned to cope with the inevitable stresses of the transformation. They describe what it was like to take on a new identity. Two themes emerge: first the transition from individual contributor to manager is a profound psychological adjustment--a transformation; second, the process of becoming a manager is primarily one of learning from experience. Through trial and error, observation and interpretation, the new managers learned what it took to become effective business leaders.

Linda A. Hill, Ph.D.
Wallace Brett Donham Professor of Business Administration
Harvard Business School; Faculty Chair, Leadership Initiative

Linda A. Hill is the Wallace Brett Donham Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School. She is the faculty chair of the Leadership Initiative and has chaired numerous HBS Executive Education programs, including the Young Presidents' Organization Presidents' Seminar and the High Potentials Leadership Program. She was course-head during the development of the new Leadership and Organizational Behavior MBA required course. She is the co-author, with Kent Lineback, of Being the Boss: The 3 Imperatives of Becoming a Great Leader and Breakthrough Leadership, a blended cohort-based program that helps organizations transform midlevel managers into more effective leaders. Breakthrough Leadership was the winner of the 2013 Brandon Hall Group Award for Best Advance in Unique Learning Technology. The book was included in the Wall Street Journal as one of the “Five Business Books to Read for Your Career in 2011.” She is also the author of Becoming a Manager: How New Managers Master the Challenges of Leadership (2nd Edition). Both books are available in multiple languages. She is author of course modules: Managing Your Career, Managing Teams, and Power and Influence and of award-winning multimedia management development programs High Performance Management, Coaching, and Managing for Performance. She is also the subject expert of numerous e-learning programs: Breakthrough Leadership (based in large measure on Being the Boss); Stepping up to Management (based in large measure on Becoming a Manager); Harvard ManageMentor, and advisor for the Change Management Simulation: Power and Influence. Hill has authored or co-authored numerous HBR articles, including “Where Will We Find Tomorrow’s Leaders;” “Winning the Race for Talent in Emerging Markets;” and "Are You a High Potential?" She is a contributor to the HBS Publishing series on Managing Up, Hiring, and Becoming a New Manager. She was named by Thinkers50 as one of the top ten management thinkers in the world.

Professor Hill’s consulting and executive education activities have been in the areas of leadership development, talent management, leading change and innovation, implementing global strategies, and managing cross-organizational relationships. Professor Hill co-authored a book entitled Collective Genius: The Art and Practice of Leading Innovation forthcoming in 2014 from Harvard Business Press. It features thick descriptions of exceptional leaders of innovation in a wide range of industries—from information technology to law to design—and geographies—from the US and Europe to the Middle East and Asia.

Organizations with which Professor Hill has worked include General Electric, Reed Elsevier, Accenture, Pfizer, IBM, MasterCard, Mitsubishi, Morgan Stanley, the National Bank of Kuwait, AREVA, and The Economist.

Professor Hill is a member of the Board of Directors of State Street Corporation, Eaton Corp., and Harvard Business Publishing. She is a trustee of the The Bridgespan Group and the Art Center College of Design. She is on the Board of Advisors for the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund USA and a Special Representative to the Board of Trustees of Bryn Mawr College. She is a former member of the Board of Trustees of The Rockefeller Foundation. She is also on the Advisory Board of the Aspen Institute Business and Society Program. She serves on the Editorial Board of the Leadership Quarterly.

Dr. Hill did a post-doctoral research fellowship at the Harvard Business School and earned a Ph.D. in Behavioral Sciences at the University of Chicago. She received her M.A. in Educational Psychology with a concentration in measurement and evaluation from the University of Chicago. She has a B.A., summa cum laude, in psychology from Bryn Mawr College