A manager's stool - four months on

Given four months have elapsed since I took up a new professional role. I’m seeing the back of the shake-off period, yet I am still far from being a seasoned leader.

The experience from Szlachetna Paczka, which according to my predecessor on the area leader stool, should have been a dry run ahead of taking charge of a team in a corporate world, has indeed paid off.

I started my stint with a series of sign-up interviews with members of my team. They were meant to mostly break the ice and apparently they have done that job, but those one-over-one talks were mostly to get to know each other's expectations, working style and concerns.

Being knowledgeable in one's area of expertise definitely helps, but is way too little to get ahead as a manager. Leadership involves making use of soft skills. If people ask me how to describe the nature of the recent transition, I reply my role is about solving conflicts, managing emotions and reaching rotten compromises. My self-insight also reveals my paternal instinct is laid on my team.

The most frustrating aspect on the new role are meetings, or rather their number and senselessness of many of them. Their multitude is an aftermath of remote work in covid times when attending a videoconference was a proof of being busy at work. I aim to skip as many calls as possible (getting away with it so far), aiming to keep those I partake in short and finished with conclusions or homework. I frequently do catch up with simpler tasks in the background, but all in all multitasking, critical not to fall behind really badly, is debilitating.

With respect to decisiveness, I have had no inhibitions rising up to this. Mostly likely because I have long been fed up with senior managers getting paid for decision-making and shunning such responsibility.

Since the beginning of the year I have constantly been overloaded with excessive duties, regularly short of time, learning to live with overdue stuff despite working overtime and not getting extra paid for that (the Polish labour code does not envisage overtime pay for managers).

A bright glimmer of hope is that soon 3 out of my 8 corpo-children will be taken away from me (a new manager hired this month). Sadly, people around her (including me) are short of time to onboard her, which is an absurdity since she can't take over some of our work because of our ineptitude.

All in all, life has become more stressful and fatigue-abundant. Over weekends I keep away from work and my mind is free of work-related thoughts, but even despite that it takes me much longer to regenerate. Long-term weariness is also a side effect of not taking longer holidays since June 2025, a shortage of days off I might catch up with no earlier than in late May.

CringedIn

I have four reasons to use LinkedIn daily:
1) Mini Sudoku,
2) Queens,
3) Tango,
4) ZIP.
The numbers assigned are not incidental, since my routine is to play those four logical games in that very order. Besides, I have recently updated my profile so that people who check who I am are not confused.

For several years I used to keep away from LI for months and upon logging I discovered job proposal sent nearly a year earlier.

LinkedIn has developed in a similar way other social platforms have done. From a collection of people's CVs it has evolved into a combination of blogs, discussion groups, but most of all, bragging about members' professional (but not only) accomplishments. Unlike in most other social media, number of followers does not monetise in proceeds from advertising, but translates into new business opportunities in real life. In certain professions promoting oneself and building a "personal brand" (this phrase sucks) is inevitable and those who shun it, sadly lag behind.

The above is not my cup of tea, so I consider myself lucky to be prohibited (banking secrecy law prevents me from boasting of my achievements) from playing this lousy game. My professional value is shaped by how my workmates perceive me. Being a reliable and supportive leader and knowledgeable and trustworthy partner in dealmaking defines me, not a number of shitty self-flattering on LinkedIn.

Given the above, no wonder some sort of people overly active on LI are commonly mocked. The most renowned Polish page on platform making fun of horrific self-adoration practices in KrindżedIn (CringedIn). Their sense of humour takes my fancy.

At the end of the day, we work to live (it up), not the other way round. Definitely it feels better if your job brings you satisfaction, but working only to earn money is not a crime. Keep then in mind the essence of your life should be out of your workplace.

Becoming a manager (at work)

For many years I would think leadership was not for me. I preferred to pursue the alternative professional development path, i.e. becoming an expert in a certain area, having an independent advisory-profiled position and not having to wrangle with any subordinates.

I revised my approach in 2022 when I took over as an area leader in Szlachetna Paczka. I was in charge of 25 people, recruited by my seasoned companions or myself, found my way around it stunningly well, which was additionally backed by glowing praise towards my management style expressed in the feedback (passed on anonymously to my bosses) past the edition.

I was lucky to have reasonable and reliable people in my team and back then I realised the comfort of being a boss lies in the team you lead. Wise, reliable and communicative people can make leadership a pleasure, while the opposite type of people can turn it into a nuisance and an ordeal.

The generously employer-subsidised (until March 2027) Skoda Octavia has hindered my motivation to seek new challenges outside my current workplace, hence for a while I had been on a lookout for an opportunity window, i.e. vacancy on a managerial position. In March 2025 one of senior B-1 managers decided to quit. His departure triggered a knock-on effect which resulted in a team head vacancy to be filled.

The recruitment process was more demanding than I thought and I can boast of approaching it with carefully-thought-out plan and vision. I believe this contributed most to my nomination. I did not have to prove my hard skills, as I had been doing that for past 11 years. In a modern corporation soft skills matter most and they are examined during interviews. With hindsight I recall those checks as suitable for a senior executive rather than for an ordinary team leader.

I am looking forward to new challenges, yet with some fears at the back of my head. I slightly worry if my subordinates accept me. A crucial detail is that I am returning in a different role to the department where I worked between 2018 and 2023. On top, there is a risk some people I will be in charge of applied for the same position and were rejected. I will need to learn my team members' work style and come to terms with the fact not everybody is an anti-procrastinator, not everybody's business English is as good as mine, not everybody minds neatness of documents as I do (apologies for this one-off lack of humility). I will be forced to attend some dead-end meetings which since the onset of remote working have become a plague in corporations. Their side effect is work piling up and needed to be done overtime for which I will no longer be eligible a compensation (such is the labour code in Poland). And on top, I will need to grapple with office politics...

The new chapter officially starts tomorrow, but customarily for internal transfers, the transition from the current to the new position is actually a process spread over time. Keep fingers crossed for me.

An internal transfer

In six months it will have been a decade since I joint my current employer. With ups and downs and moments of both satisfaction and frustration, the overall balance of that professional relationship is positive, hence I'm soldiering on.

My first promotion (to a "senior analyst" position) came into effect in January 2018 and it involved a transfer to a parallel unit. I have carried on here until now, with one more promotion (I am an "expert" since September 2022) along the way. Six years in one place make up nearly a half of my career and are much enough to necessitate a refreshment. 2023 was the most difficult year on my professional path. An uphill portfolio of clients, instrumental role in an uphill multinational project and uphill mentoring to non-promising juniors have taken their toll on me. The workload at times was unbearable. I worked very efficiently, but could not make it within 8 hours, so I had to do overtime, frequently handling two things at the same time, despite that I got behind with work and assertively refused to take up even more tasks on my back. In December I was sick of it...

At the beginning of 2023 my previous (2018 - 2022) manager took over headship of a newly set up specialised financed unit. We'd got on with each other more than well, so in 2Q2023 we began negotiating my transfer to his new bereau. A green light was in place in late May 2023, with the very transfer delayed until early 2024 to let me sort several things out and to give my managers time to find two FTEs (speaks volumes of my workload) to replace me (they failed to do so).

In the new role, starting over on 1 February, though the transition period has begun now, I will need to learn a lot. I will see the back of taking care of not particularly bright juniors. Hopefully, my workload  declines, to be closer to "reasonable", which will be still a step ahead after what I have gone through in 2023. Combing career development with slowing down appears to be a challenge, time will tell if I am up to it.

Driving skills honed

I have regularly driven a car since 2011, covered probably around 150,000 kilometres since then, have not caused a collision (may it stay so, I had one, but was not a culprit) nor an accident. With such track record I could claim to be a skilful driver, but I keep in mind complacency comes before the fall. I keep my smugness at bay and every time I sit behind the wheel I make myself realise I might have an accident before I reach my destination and do my best to avert it.

Given the precautions I take and humility I strive to foster, I was delighted to learn my company had paid for a defensive driving course to all company car drivers. On top, I took part in a corporate competition and won a participation in another training, on a racing track. The prize has been probably the most precious one won in my lifetime, saving me some PLN 1,000 I could have paid for such event.

The defensive driving course was obligatory to all active users of the corporate fleet, consisting of whopping 1,300 vehicles, which are involved in 20 accidents (defined as resulting in at least one casualty spending at least 7 days in a hospital) yearly. My employer aims to reduce the number of such accidents to zero by 2025 – a commendable initiative for which I keep fingers crossed, yet I believe doable only by means of decreasing the number of cars in use (which would truly help the planet).

The defensive driving training was split into two sessions – during the theoretical one we analysed case studies of actual accidents and complex situations in road traffic and refreshed our knowledge of recent (imprecise) changes in the highway code.

During the practice sessions we drove around town, instructed how to do it more smoothly, predictably and safely. Needless to say one of the goals was to decrease the fuel consumption and the company cars’ wear and tear.

The second training, on a racing track was far more exciting. During the theoretical part we had truly practical exercises in first aid (commendable) and improved our skills of controlling a car in extreme situations (a waterlogged track was as slippery as thick slush) – we slalomed past obstacles, passed them by to return to the original lane or slid along a curve, trying not to lose traction.

The exercises were meant not only to teach us how to control a vehicle in dire circumstances. Our instructors showed us repeatedly a difference in speed of mere five kilometres per hour might make a tremendous difference in terms of avoiding an accident. Speed kills, you must not forget it! We were also confronted with the fear of falling into a skid or losing control over the car, however outside the public road, where nobody’s life nor health was at peril.

I hope I never have to make use of what I learnt, but if the worst come to the worst, I suppose, I would be more likely to keep a cool head.