EP16 - How do I manage a team when I’ve never managed people before?

How to Lead a Team Before You Feel Ready?

One of the more honest questions in leadership is also one of the simplest: how do I manage a team when I have never managed people before?

The uncomfortable truth is that most people do not start with a clear answer. Leadership is rarely something you fully understand before you step into it. For some, it comes naturally. For others, it does not. That does not mean they cannot become strong leaders. It means their learning curve is visible.

That visibility matters. Too often, leadership is presented as confidence, certainty, and control. In practice, it is usually much messier than that. Most first-time managers learn through exposure. They observe other leaders. They test their own instincts. They make mistakes. They reflect. Then they adjust.

That process is not a weakness in leadership. It is the process of leadership.

A useful place to start is not with management theory alone, but with real examples. Watch leaders you actually respect. Study how they communicate, how they make decisions, how they handle pressure, and just as importantly, how they recover when they get something wrong. The mistakes are often the most valuable part.

Mistakes are not a detour in leadership. They are part of the route.

When you make mistakes leading people, you start to see what not to repeat. You notice where you were too vague, too passive, too controlling, or too quick to assume. Learning like that tends to stay with you because it comes from experience, not from a slide deck.

Leadership matters here because it is never abstract. It is relational. Every team is made up of different people, different energies, different expectations, and different ways of working. No one leads that well from theory alone. At some point, you have to deal with the reality of people.

First-time leaders often wait for a moment when they will suddenly feel fully prepared. In most cases, that moment never really arrives. A better approach is to stay open, stay observant, and accept that experience comes with the role.

There is something freeing in that as well. You do not need to become a perfect leader overnight. You need to become more aware. Someone who pays attention. Someone who listens. Someone who improves.

Leadership is built in motion.

The leaders who grow fastest are often not the ones who start with the most natural authority. They are the ones who are willing to learn. They look at people who have done it before. They notice what works. They notice what does not. And they understand that leading a team is not about acting like you know everything. It is about taking responsibility while you are still learning.

That kind of leadership is far more realistic and, in many cases, far more human.

If you are managing a team for the first time, the uncertainty you feel is not proof that you are not ready. It is proof that you understand the weight of the role. Now you build from there. 

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Timecode:

00:00 First Time Managing

00:14 Learn From Leaders

00:28 Mistakes Build Experience

00:47 Experience Is Key

Links:

Uniprisma: https://uniprisma.com/

Meijer & Co.: https://meijerandco.com/

Personal Website: https://www.thijmenmeijer.com/

Transcript:

[00:00:00] Thijmen: How do I manage teams, when I've never managed a team before? That's an excellent question. I think not many people have an answer for that. it comes naturally or not. if it comes naturally, well done. If it doesn't come naturally, I would say look at, a lot of, uh, inspirational, speeches or inspirational videos from people that you really like, people that have already,led, several teams, and how they did it.

[00:00:28]Thijmen: especially when these, inspirational CEOs or, leaders are, making mistakes because making mistakes is key almost to, managing people basically, or leading people, when making mistakes, you especially know what not to do the next time. So it's also about experience in the end.