The first steps to becoming a really great manager are simply common sense; but common sense is not very common. The major problem when you start to manage is that you do not actually think about management issues because you do not recognize them. Things normally go wrong not because you are stupid but only because you have never thought about it. Management is about pausing to ask yourself the right questions so that your common sense can provide the answers.
When you gain managerial responsibility, your first option is to do what is expected of you. You are new at the job, so people will understand. You can learn (slowly) by your mistakes and probably you will try to devote as much time as possible to the rest of your work (which is what your were good at anyway). Those extra little “management” problems are just common sense, so try to deal with them when they come up.
Your second option is far more exciting: find an empty telephone box, put on a cape and bright-red underpants, and become a Super Manager. When you become a manager, you gain control over your own work; not all of it, but some of it. You can change things. You can do things differently. You actually have the authority to make a huge impact upon the way in which your staff works. You can shape your own work environment.
‘What makes a great manager’, www. project-management-blog.com/2006/05/