As were the challenges, the ways to overcome them were also diverse. In the literature, the ways to overcome the challenges are not listed explicitly, but I believe this is natural. I noticed that many informants had used the same way to overcome a variety of challenges. Nevertheless, some common aspects helping FTMs to overcome challenges could be identified from both the liter- ature and my results.
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Plakhotnik (2017) has listed a set of key features a potential manager should have. In this list she cites McCall et al. (1988), who have argued, a potential manager should be able to create and follow an agenda. Furthermore, Plakhotnik (2017) states they should have skills in critical self-reflection. My results show that for a first-time manager, managing agenda as well as the ability to reflect and choose consciously are central. These skills seem to pro- vide FTMs with capabilities to overcome a wide variety of challenges ranging from dealing with a significant workload to decreasing the impacts the Covid- 19 pandemic for their work. Interestingly, also in the only research article about FTMs in Finland that I found (Isopahkala-Bouret, 2008), the im- portance of self-reflection, and to some extent acting consciously, were dis- cussed.
I argue that in order to develop oneself in this sense, an important step is to stop and give time, space and energy to critical reflection and meta-level thinking about one’s own situation. Also, it is central that one realises in the first place their chances to change things and choose how to act instead of just reacting. Of course, in the words of a colleague of mine, it is important to understand which aspects one can change, how one can do it and why to do so. Becoming more proactive can also be seen as stretching and trying out one’s wings as a manager, who at least in theory should have more power in an organisation than an individual contributor.
According to the literature, in addition to agenda management, self-manage- ment can also refer to managing emotions and personal reactions. As the pro- cess of becoming a manager is also emotionally demanding, also having skills in understanding, listening, and managing own emotions and reactions seems important (Park and Faerman, 2019; Benjamin and O’Reilly, 2011).
This was visible with a couple of my informants but for some reason did not seem prominent among other informants. One reason could be the partial degrees of adopting a new identity as discussed earlier. However, for two in- formants having a pure managerial role and having feelings of insufficiency, it had been central to be able to deal with own emotions and reactions in their process of becoming a manager.
5.3.1 Role of support for FTMs
Naturally, a central resource for overcoming challenges is support in its many forms. The literature discusses the importance of formal organisational sup- port exhaustively in the form of e.g., training courses and performance ap- praisals (e.g., Plakhotnik, 2017) as well as informal organisational support in the form of social and peer support (Park and Faerman, 2019). Also, indirect organisational support and external training programs as well as the timing of the support are discussed (Plakhotnik, 2017). Furthermore, the literature identifies the role of support networks and developing them both within one’s
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organisation as well as outside of it, as well as the role of previous work ex- periences (Hill, 2019).
My study offers a view to a group of FTMs in which many were lacking or- ganisational support and therefore offers perspectives to a variety of sources of support. In short, all the aforementioned sources of support were preva- lent among my informants and the centrality of each depended on the in- formant’s unique situation. All the informants had relied on their sources of support to overcome at least one challenge and the majority several chal- lenges.
Plakhotnik (2017) has suggested starting the formal organisational support offered for first-time managers already before their promotion. According to her, this would smoothen the transition. However, only one of my informants reported receiving and benefitting from support prior to his first managerial role. Also, in his case this support was not offered by the organisation in which he became an FTM. As Spehar et al. (2012) point out, this kind of ex- ternal courses might suffer from discontinuity: if the utilisation of the newly acquired skills is not supported in the work organisation, the benefits of the course might be limited. The informant in question and two other informants had also started the FTM training program before becoming managers, so in this sense at least three informants had received training before promotion to their FTM role. However, the other two did not comment on whether this had been useful for them or not. Also, it should be noted that in the interviews the timing of the organisational support the informants had received, was not asked, so no exact conclusions about this matter can be made.
When it comes to the length of the support, according to my data, it appeared to be beneficial to extend the organisational support such as a training course for a longer period of time. This seemed to support learning from hands-on experiences as also Bolander et al. (2019) suggest. Also, the FTM training program extended to a period of eight months. This enabled the informants to carry out reflective assignments that involved observing, trying out and readjusting chosen practices in their everyday work as FTMs.
Next, I find it important to discuss in more detail the informal and indirect types of organisational support in addition to support networks. Park and Faerman (2019) elaborate the importance of seeking help from peers and su- periors to overcome challenges. This was of course visible with my inform- ants, and it should be noted, that it seemed that not all were comfortable with sharing their thoughts with people operating within their own organisations.
This brings us to the support networks and in my study, many informants had found one from the FTM training program. The groups formed during the program had offered a forum for finding peer support and help in
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challenging situations as well as going through emotionally tough experi- ences or then sharing general frustrations and anecdotes. Some informants had their own personal support networks and were of course utilising them.
A further interesting topic is indirect organisational support. One example of it can be the company culture (Plakhotnik, 2017) which can lead to e.g., hav- ing time to discuss experiences as an FTM with someone in the organisation as well as having a psychologically safe environment (Dubouloy, 2004 cited by Austin et al., 2013). Also, this indirect support was visible with many of my informants in the form of being trusted, allowed to make mistakes as well as superiors and subordinates being empathic and supportive toward them.
However, some of the informants had also experienced the opposite: poor organisational culture hindering their learning, limiting their access to sup- port as well as the need to deal with the sink or swim approach that should be avoided with FTMs as Plakhotnik (2017) states. Among my informants, there was also one example of senior managers not adapting their expecta- tions appropriately for an FTM (Plakhotnik, 2017).
Finally, as already previously has been discussed, the informants of my study were participants of an FTM training program. Therefore, obviously the pro- portion of informants who had received either very little or no organisational support was notable and might not represent the average experience of Finn- ish FTMs. However, this provided me with rich data about the different sources of support.