Based on my findings, becoming a manager seems to be quite a unique expe- rience, dependent on many factors. Also, it should be remembered, that my sample was fairly diverse. The majority of my informants belonged to either the group experiencing the transition to their first managerial role as neutral or good/easy. Therefore, only three informants of the total 13 informants of the study seemed to have had a challenging overall experience. Key factors among others smoothening the transition appeared to be an appropriately demanding FTM role proportionate to the informants age and experience, and a reasonable workload. Furthermore, having other than role-related managerial experience seemed to lead to a better overall experience of be- coming a manager.
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When it comes to the challenges the groups faced, they were rather diverse even though there were some similarities. I believe, this highlights the uniqueness of each first-time manager’s experience, which is dependent on the individual, the organisational context as well as contingencies of the world. On one hand, challenges with workload and agenda management seemed to make the overall experience of becoming a manager more chal- lenging. One the other hand, across all the informants, most of the challenges were related to the Covid-19 pandemic, workload, lack of organisational sup- port (which is natural as all the informants were from an FTM training pro- gram that they had taken part to get more support than their organisation provided) and personal well-being.
In overcoming the challenges the informants faced, the results were diverse also within the groups. Across the informants, many mentioned receiving help from their peers and friends as well as from the FTM training program.
Other general ways to overcome challenges they mentioned were determined work with challenges related to subordinates, personal reflections as well as taking own actions when dealing with e.g., the effects of the Covid-19 pan- demic. I believe that the centrality of own actions in many aspects such as agenda management, fighting the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, and tak- ing care of personal well-being is one of the most important findings of my study. These actions were central for all groups. Also, with my informants it seemed that taking actions in one area does not mean that there would be sufficient actions in another.
Interestingly, no informant claimed that their personal well-being would not have had some kind of a role in their FTM process. In all groups, someone stated it had been a key in their process. The informants had been taking care of their well-being mainly by taking steps towards a better work-life balance and participating in activities supporting recovery from work stresses. Fur- thermore, an important finding was, that those informants who had a good well-being themselves, or held well-being important, seemed to be those, who were concerned also with the well-being of their subordinates. Also, I argue that especially in the long-term identifying and fighting possible threats for well-being will be essential. Only in a couple of cases, the organi- sation the informant was working for seemed to openly support work-life bal- ance and individual well-being.
Taken together, it seems that a key for a (first-time) manager is the ability to reflect and act consciously to both solve challenges and to take care of them- selves. Finally, I would like to conclude with the insightful words of one of my informants. The citation describes the benefits of being consciously aware in meetings and other gatherings but in my opinion could be applied also to other situations a first-time manager will face. She elaborated:
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Perhaps you could compare it with -- say – a tennis match – either you swing the racket any which way or then, if you ob- serve the ball and its trajectory in peace, you'll be much better prepared to respond to the serve.
-Informant 7, quote 63
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5 Discussion
In this chapter I will discuss my findings against the existing literature. First, I will discuss the findings related to the overall experience of becoming a manager as well as the challenges faced and ways to overcome them. Second, I will discuss the well-being findings. Third, I will provide recommendations for individuals and organisations about the topic of becoming a manager. Fi- nally, I will discuss the limitations of this study, propose paths for future re- search and provide a self-evaluation of this thesis.
It can be argued that the grouping of informants into three groups based on their overall experience of becoming a manager offered some preliminary in- sights of which factors contribute to a better FTM experience. There are two main reasons I call them preliminary. First, in this study, there were quite few informants per group. Second, the organisational context a person is op- erating in, likely has an important role and the contexts in this study varied.
A poor context e.g., lacking resources to support an FTM, can prevent a tal- ented individual from having a better overall experience of becoming a man- ager, or a poor personality-organisation-fit can lead to the same outcome.
Nevertheless, as mentioned in the chapter summarising the findings (4.6), there seemed to be key factors influencing the overall FTM experience of in- formants. One of them was workload. However, the question about workload is not straightforward: if a person is lacking skills in agenda management (e.g., prioritising, delegating, scheduling) a reasonable workload might seem higher than it is. This said, a seeming trend in the modern work life has been the increase of workload in general. So maybe a more appropriate statement would be that lacking skills in agenda management might make a quite high workload seem even more overwhelming.