Research & Development World

  • R&D World Home
  • Topics
    • Aerospace
    • Automotive
    • Biotech
    • Careers
    • Chemistry
    • Environment
    • Energy
    • Life Science
    • Material Science
    • R&D Management
    • Physics
  • Technology
    • 3D Printing
    • A.I./Robotics
    • Software
    • Battery Technology
    • Controlled Environments
      • Cleanrooms
      • Graphene
      • Lasers
      • Regulations/Standards
      • Sensors
    • Imaging
    • Nanotechnology
    • Scientific Computing
      • Big Data
      • HPC/Supercomputing
      • Informatics
      • Security
    • Semiconductors
  • R&D Market Pulse
  • R&D 100
    • Call for Nominations: The 2025 R&D 100 Awards
    • R&D 100 Awards Event
    • R&D 100 Submissions
    • Winner Archive
    • Explore the 2024 R&D 100 award winners and finalists
  • Resources
    • Research Reports
    • Digital Issues
    • R&D Index
    • Subscribe
    • Video
    • Webinars
  • Global Funding Forecast
  • Top Labs
  • Advertise
  • SUBSCRIBE

Mistakes New Managers Make: The Four Biggies

By R&D Editors | October 29, 2008

By avoiding these four common mistakes, you’ll be well on your way towards becoming an excellent manager. Mistake #1: Becoming Buddies with Employees

It’s a hard thing to do, but new managers — especially if they’ve been promoted up from within their work units — must form new types of relationships with their co-workers. Because of new positions, former peers are now subordinates. It just doesn’t work for them to be buddies with their employees.

Naturally, you feel closer to some employees than you do to others, based perhaps on similar backgrounds or interests. But by socializing with an employee you invite charges of favoritism, and nothing wrecks teamwork more than a feeling, among employees, that the boss has a “pet.”

Even if you were totally unbiased in terms of how you treated your “buddy” — with whom you often have lunch — you would still be seen as playing favorites. Also, having a buddy makes your own job harder: how could you reprimand the person you had dinner with last night? Wouldn’t you be tempted to be more lenient in enforcing rules with the employee who is your tennis/jogging/movie-going partner? When assigning work duties, and your “buddy” asks for a preferred task, would it be possible to deny him?

If you try to be buddies with all of your employees, then you’ll hesitate to give them the nasty, least desirable tasks. There have been cases where the manager ended up doing all of the crud work himself. Obviously, it’s not a great idea. As a new manager, you must cultivate relationships marked by a certain degree of formality; i.e., always remembering that you are there in your role as manager, and your employees are just that — your employees.

The trick is to be friendly, but not friends. It’s a difficult balance to strike. Yet the failure to establish this kind of relationship is a major reason managers fail.

Besides his clinical work and university teaching, Dr. Martin Seidenfeld provides consulting to organizations on management issues and on managing organizational stress. www.docmartyseminars.com

Related Articles Read More >

6 essentials for seismic rated cleanrooms
Critical Spaces Control Platform
Phoenix Critical Spaces Control Platform uses automation to direct airflow
Endiatx
Endiatx aims to boldly go beyond traditional endoscopy and, eventually, redefine surgical scale
FMN Laboratory researcher in a cleanroom
Take our quiz to test your cleanroom IQ, covering everything from ISO Classes to ULPA filtration
rd newsletter
EXPAND YOUR KNOWLEDGE AND STAY CONNECTED
Get the latest info on technologies, trends, and strategies in Research & Development.
RD 25 Power Index

R&D World Digital Issues

Fall 2024 issue

Browse the most current issue of R&D World and back issues in an easy to use high quality format. Clip, share and download with the leading R&D magazine today.

Research & Development World
  • Subscribe to R&D World Magazine
  • Enews Sign Up
  • Contact Us
  • About Us
  • Drug Discovery & Development
  • Pharmaceutical Processing
  • Global Funding Forecast

Copyright © 2025 WTWH Media LLC. All Rights Reserved. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of WTWH Media
Privacy Policy | Advertising | About Us

Search R&D World

  • R&D World Home
  • Topics
    • Aerospace
    • Automotive
    • Biotech
    • Careers
    • Chemistry
    • Environment
    • Energy
    • Life Science
    • Material Science
    • R&D Management
    • Physics
  • Technology
    • 3D Printing
    • A.I./Robotics
    • Software
    • Battery Technology
    • Controlled Environments
      • Cleanrooms
      • Graphene
      • Lasers
      • Regulations/Standards
      • Sensors
    • Imaging
    • Nanotechnology
    • Scientific Computing
      • Big Data
      • HPC/Supercomputing
      • Informatics
      • Security
    • Semiconductors
  • R&D Market Pulse
  • R&D 100
    • Call for Nominations: The 2025 R&D 100 Awards
    • R&D 100 Awards Event
    • R&D 100 Submissions
    • Winner Archive
    • Explore the 2024 R&D 100 award winners and finalists
  • Resources
    • Research Reports
    • Digital Issues
    • R&D Index
    • Subscribe
    • Video
    • Webinars
  • Global Funding Forecast
  • Top Labs
  • Advertise
  • SUBSCRIBE