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The HR Leader's Edge — Edition #5

So You Want to Be a People Manager

By Heidi Klotz, Professional Goal-Centric Certified Coach | Fractional CHRO

Published July 4, 2026

The first time I became a people manager, almost everything was working against me.

I walked into a senior manager role with a team of five reporting to me. I was the youngest person in the room by ten years. And I had walked into two labels that were already attached to the team before I got there: one person was known as the "top performer," and the other as the "low performer." These were not my assessments. They were handed to me, and I was expected to write performance reviews for people whose work I had never actually seen.

I had experience. I had credibility. What I did not have was a playbook. Nobody taught me how to do this, and there was no course I had taken that prepared me for the reality of leading people for the first time. It turns out I was not unusual. According to the Center for Creative Leadership, close to 60 percent of new managers step into the role with no formal training at all. We promote people for being excellent at their jobs, then ask them to do a completely different job with no map.

So I did the only thing that felt honest. I started by listening.

The top performer

The label said "top performer," but a label tells you almost nothing. What I needed to understand was the person. So I spent time learning their role, their work, what was going well, and what was quietly frustrating them.

What struck me was an openness. This was someone willing to learn, willing to try new things, and ready to be stretched. My job became showing them they were capable of far more than the work they were currently doing, and then giving them the room to go do it. Four years later, when our time working together came to an end, this person told me they had learned more with me in those four years than in their entire career up to that point. It remains one of the biggest compliments I have ever received, and I still carry it with me. That person has gone on to build a wonderful career.

The "low performer"

Here is what I found when I actually sat down with the second person. They were not a low performer at all. They had been doing the same job, in the same way, for a long time, and nobody had ever given them feedback on it. Meanwhile, the company was changing. Expectations were rising. The bar for the work was moving up, but no one had told them that. They were being measured against a standard that had never been communicated to them.

So we talked. I took the time to understand what they were doing and why, and then I explained why certain things now had to change, why the work had to be elevated, and what the new objectives actually were. Once they could see the why, they stepped up. The "low performer" was never the problem. Being unseen was.

What I actually learned

People just want to be seen and heard. That is it.

The question I get asked most often is some version of "how do you keep people motivated and engaged?" The answer is less complicated than people hope. See the person as a whole human being. Everyone has a life outside of work, and everyone is carrying something. If you can give someone a place at work where they feel good about what they do, where they are recognized and appreciated and genuinely seen, the motivation tends to take care of itself.

Your job as a leader is to be clear about expectations, to recognize good work out loud, and to communicate. It is also to get out of the way. The people on your team are the experts in their own jobs, so give them the freedom to do the work the way they know how, and offer guidance rather than control.

I have always described my role as a leader the same way. I am there to help people achieve their objectives. I am there to recognize the good work they are doing. I am there to break down the barriers and remove whatever is holding them back. And I am there to make sure their work gets the visibility it deserves. That is the job. Everything else is noise.

So if you are about to become a people manager for the first time, and no one has handed you a map, start here. Listen first. See the whole person. The rest follows.