2. Develop, Engage, and Promote Fundamentally, people want to matter and feel valued and appreciated. If you want to set new managers up for success (and long careers) tell them that you value them and that you want them to be on your team. “Telling” them they are valued can be done explicitly and implicitly: explicitly through development plans, access to paid training and professional development, participation in corporate mentoring programs, and implicitly by simple gestures such as one-on-one lunches with organizational executives and even the occasional surprise free donut.
Encourage new managers to attend a minimum of one webinar, take a course in a relevant area, attend work-related networking or panels once a quarter and join some sort of finance-industry group to get exposure to people from other companies. If you have invested in new finance systems and software, encourage them to register for the relevant annual user conferences. With the growing popularity of hybrid seminars and conferences, it’s possible to mitigate costs by having them participate virtually for events that last an hour up to a day but don’t skimp on conferences or shows that require them to spend more than a day attending. During the pandemic, we’ve become accustomed to the cost savings from not spending for airfare, hotels, and meals but post-pandemic we need to be realistic that these savings may not be permanent. With regard to promoting, there’s an anecdote that Napoleon said that any time he promoted someone in his army, that he’d have many disappointed people and one ingrate. We suppose that Napoleon was at least partially correct since promotions don’t always meet with people’s expectations. When promotable candidates realize they are not only competing with themselves but also with their co- workers, reconciling the idea of being a team player for the organization is difficult.
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