Cognology
  • Products
    • 360 Degree Feedback
    • Competency Management
    • Compliance Training
    • Course Builder
    • Learning Management
    • Onboarding & Inductions
    • Performance Management
    • Profiles
    • Skills Management
    • Talent Management
  • Resources
    • Agile Performance Management
      • Balanced goals
      • How does performance management work?
      • How to write SMART goals and objectives
      • The Ultimate Guide To Agile Performance Management
      • What Remote Working Means for Performance Management, Plus 7 Other PM Trends
    • 360 Degree Feedback
      • What is 360 degree feedback?
      • How to run a 360 degree feedback process
      • 3 Easy Tips For Your 360 Feedback Questionnaire
    • Induction and Onboarding
      • Employee Onboarding Resources
      • Easy guide to a great Onboarding Process
      • Get the Onboarding Business Case Whitepaper
      • How To Switch From Face To Face New Hire Inductions To Online
      • Selecting an Onboarding System
      • Sample Orientation and Onboarding Program
      • Forms You Will Need For A New Employee In Australia
      • What Is Information Onboarding
    • Competencies & Skills
      • The Ultimate Guide To Competencies
      • What is a competency?
      • 7 reasons you should be using competencies
      • What is competency based assessment?
      • Competency Assessment Methods
      • Competency Assessment Template Form
      • Easy Guide to Competency Based Assessment Tools
      • Competency Management
      • What is skills audit?
      • How To Conduct a Skills Audit and Identify Skill Gaps
    • More about Performance Management
      • What is Performance Appraisal?
      • Performance Appraisal Template With Tips
      • What is performance management?
      • Social Performance Management Explained
      • What is talent management
    • Samples
      • SMART Goal Examples
      • Sample Goals and Objectives
      • Sample competencies
      • Sample competency review comments
      • Sample goal review comments
      • Sample development activities
      • Sample one-on-one check-in conversation notes
      • Sensitive items to avoid in feedback/comments
    • Learning & Coaching
      • A leaders guide to coaching
      • Coaching conversations
      • How to give feedback like a pro
      • How to conduct one on one meetings with team members
      • Seriously Good Learning and Development
    • More
      • Designing a Work-From-Home Policy: Where to Begin
      • How to Keep Employees Informed During a Crisis
      • How To Keep Staff Working From Home Productive
  • About
    • About Cognology
  • Ask Us Anything
  • Search
  • Menu Menu
Jon Windust

Why new managers should always start by managing freelancers

June 12, 2015/in Feedback, Leadership, Learning/by Jon Windust

Learning how to manage is difficult. Overnight, you’re given responsibility for a bunch of people and somehow you need to deliver a result. It’s stressful, scary and can end in failure – for the manager, the project or both.

I don’t think the process needs to be this difficult. There’s only a few skills – though I admit some will want to differ – that you need to be an effective manager of people. And all of these skills can be learnt and honed very effectively through managing small-scale projects with freelancers. With more freelancers in the economy than ever before, there’s plenty of opportunity.

What is the role of a manager?

At the core of a manager’s responsibilities is helping their employees to learn.

Employee learning is critical, because fundamentally every business result happens as a consequence of employees learning and refining their behaviour over time. Happy customers, financial results and high performance are all consequences of successful managers facilitating employee learning.

Put simply, you cannot be an effective manager if you can’t help your employees learn. (Or, if you can’t facilitate learning, you will be an ineffective manager).

As a result, the critical success factor for a new manager is how quickly they can build the skills to help their team learn effectively.

How do you help others learn?

Facilitating learning doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to ‘teach’. But it does mean that you must partner with employees to foster, and even drive their learning. Doing this requires two things:

  1. Setting expectations, and
  2. Giving feedback

When you break it down, this two-part ‘expectations / feedback’ process (repeated frequently over time) sits at the heart of all employee learning.

The learning loop and process

So in terms of skills, the first two things that a new manager needs to learn are:

  1. How to set good expectations, that are easily understood and actioned; and
  2. How to give good feedback, to make sure that expectations (and relative performance) are understood

In my view, an A1, gold-medal way to learn these two skills is through managing freelancers on small projects.

Why freelancing is such an effective tool for teaching managers how to drive learning

In order to deliver a successful outcome with a freelancer, you must set clear expectations and provide frequent feedback. Because there’s no broader context, the success of the entire project is contingent on the manager’s ability to communicate expectations that can be well-understood, and feedback on the project deliverables. Put another way:

If the project manager fails to set good expectations (that are easily understood and actioned) – then the project will fail.

If the project manager fails to provides good feedback (that make clear actual performance versus set expectations) – then the project will fail.

The success or failure of the freelance project provides an immediate feedback mechanism for the new manager. In a relatively safe and quarantined learning environment, the new manager can see the consequences of feedback and expectation setting for learning and project delivery.

In conclusion

At the simplest level, to manage means you must be able to bring out the best performance in others, and drive learning in those around you to do so. In teaching someone how to manage, you must first teach them how to facilitate learning.

As I’ve mentioned in this article, teaching emerging managers how to drive learning is extremely effective when they are managing freelancers on small projects. To deliver the project, new managers must learn how to drive learning through the expectations / feedback loop. It’s an investment that you’ll see pay off for the rest of their management career.

Have you used freelance projects to teach new managers how to drive learning? I’d love to hear about your experiences. Jump into the comments below or join the conversation on Twitter (@cognology).

Jon Windust

Jon Windust is the CEO at Cognology – Talent management software for the future of work. Over 250 Australian businesses use Cognology to power cutting-edge talent strategy. You can follow Jon on Twitter or LinkedIn.

Tags: feedback, leadership, learning
Share this entry
  • Share on Facebook
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on WhatsApp
  • Share on Pinterest
  • Share on LinkedIn
  • Share on Tumblr
  • Share on Vk
  • Share on Reddit
  • Share by Mail
https://www.cognology.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Learning-loop.gif 210 210 Jon Windust https://www.cognology.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Cognology-logo-colour-300x101.png Jon Windust2015-06-12 00:34:172021-12-03 10:57:12Why new managers should always start by managing freelancers
You might also like
Learning and development trends 3 Key Trends in Learning & Development
Jon Windust Can you teach leadership?
High performer learning The Best Learning and Development Research of 2016: Part 2
Crowdsourcing vs 360 degree feedback Crowdsourcing vs. 360 Degree Feedback (part 2)
Zhang Ruimin – the would-be unknown leader
Workplace feedback frequency The science of feedback: What is the right frequency for workplace feedback?

Recent Posts

  • Course Builder
  • 7 Trends Driving Change in the Skills Landscape
  • How HR Can Boost Talent Retention, According to New Research
  • The Worried and the Well: How to Boost Your Employees’ Wellness in a Time of Crisis
  • The Quick Pivot at ACSQ

Subscribe

Get our latest news, tip and tricks

Receive our occasional newsletter

Products | Pricing | Resources | Blog | About | Contact

© 2021 Cognology

© Copyright Cognology 2019
  • LinkedIn
  • Twitter
  • Youtube
Joy, data (and performance management?)Performance management dataThe freelancing megatrendFreelancing is the new workforce megatrend
Scroll to top