Preparing to transition into a new role

Last year, I transitioned from a Senior Communication and Engagement Consultant into my new role as Communication and Engagement Manager for The LKB Agency (LKB).

My new position is a long-time professional goal and with the support and guidance from my colleagues I have been able to prepare for the challenges ahead. In the lead up to my transition, I did a few things to prepare for my new role that really helped me. Here are some of my tips if you’re preparing to transition to your first management role:

1. Establish goals for the role
One of the first things I did, ahead of moving into my new role, was to establish a set of goals. I determined these goals by assessing what I wanted to achieve in my new role. Some of my goals were:

• Develop commercial management skills.
• Manage other people and delegate tasks.

To properly manage these goals and ensure I stuck to working towards them, I incorporated them into my regular professional development meetings with my manager.

2. Mentoring sessions
There is no better way to prepare for a new role than to get some tips and tricks from the best in the business!
I set up a series of mentoring sessions with our Managing Director, Lucy Beytagh, to help determine the type of manager I wanted to be for myself and for our team.

These sessions helped me step up into my role with complete confidence in how I was going to approach every day with our clients and team.

3. Shadowing managers
To avoid the feeling of being “thrown in the deep end” I took the opportunity to try and shadow my manager during important client meetings and other areas where I felt I needed to strengthen my skills.

This helped me feel more confident going into managing projects on my own.

4. Manage smaller projects
I started preparing myself to step into a bigger role by asking to manage smaller elements within our bigger projects.

This helped me get a sense for managing a project and the responsibilities that come with it while still feeling like I had the support and guidance of my manager to coach me through certain scenarios.

The above actions helped me confidently step into my new role where I feel capable of delivering the highest quality of service for our clients.

Transitioning to a new role is no easy task and I hope these tips can help someone else with their journey!

You can join the LKB team today! Find out more here.