Becoming a Manager: Learning the Importance of Emotional and Social Competence in Managerial Transitions

• Published date: 01 January 2019
• Author: Sue Faerman,Hyun Hee Park
• DOI: 10.1177/0275074018785448
• Date: 01 January 2019
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0275074018785448

American Review of Public Administration

2019, Vol. 49(1) 98 –115

© The Author(s) 2018

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DOI: 10.1177/0275074018785448

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Article

Introduction

Although public sector employees frequently view a promo-

tion to a managerial position as a positive career experience,

many new managers find this transition to be more challeng-

ing than they expected it would be and are therefore often

frustrated and/or overwhelmed by the challenges of the tran-

sition. In many cases, individuals about to make such a tran-

sition have not thought in advance about how different their

new managerial positions might be from their positions as

individual contributors (e.g., accountants, computer pro-

grammers, policy analysts) and so, soon after making this

transition, struggle with two issues. First, because public sec-

tor agencies generally promote individuals because of their

excellent performance and expertise as individual contribu-

tors, rather than considering their potential as managers,

individuals who are promoted often do not expect that not

only will they need to develop a new set of skills and exper-

tise to be effective managers, but that the skills and expertise

that they developed as individual contributors will be less

relevant to their performance as managers. Second, as is the

case with many other role transitions, individuals do not

expect that the transition involves more than simply taking

on new responsibilities; rather it involves taking on a new

identity (manager) and letting go of their previous identity

(individual contributor) (Maurer & London, 2018). As a

result, new managers often feel disoriented, isolated, stressed,

threatened, and/or uncertain about their ability to succeed in

their new position during the early stages of their transition

(Benjamin & O’Reilly, 2011; Freedman, 1998; L. A. Hill,

1992, 2003, 2007).

That new managers struggle as they transition into these

new positions is especially troublesome, given how impor-

tant front-line managers are to the day-to-day functioning of

government agencies. Moreover, given that many research-

ers studying managerial transitions identify this first transi-

tion period as critical to the future success of managers

(Benjamin & O’Reilly, 2011; L. A. Hill, 2003, 2007; Hogan,

Hogan, & Kaiser, 2011; McCall, 2010), it is somewhat sur-

prising that researchers who have focused on the emotional

turmoil that new managers experience during this first mana-

gerial transition have not considered the role of emotional

785448ARPXXX10.1177/0275074018785448The American Review of Public AdministrationPark and Faerman

research-article2018

1Kookmin University, Seoul, South Korea

2University at Albany, NY, USA

Corresponding Author:

Hyun Hee Park, Assistant Professor, Department of Public

Administration, Kookmin University, 77 Jeongneung-ro, Bukak #603,

Seongbuk-gu, Seoul 02707, South Korea.

Email: hyunheepark@gmail.com

Becoming a Manager: Learning the

Importance of Emotional and Social

Competence in Managerial Transitions

Hyun Hee Park1 and Sue Faerman2

Abstract

This article explores how newly promoted managers develop emotional and social competencies to understand their and

others’ emotions and then use this understanding for personal growth and in their interactions with others. This study draws

on five waves of semistructured interview data collected from 16 newly promoted managers in a large northeastern state

agency. The findings suggest that new managers undergo a developmental process—role exit, movement, and role entry—as

they make the transition from individual contributors to managers. At each stage of the process, their emotional and social

competence (ESC) facilitates learning and moving to the next stage. In addition, throughout the process, new managers

develop their ESC and utilize the benefits in their daily decision-making and management behaviors. The findings also suggest

that organizational context is an important factor that defines the contents of ESC in the organization. Based on these

findings, this study argues that organizations should help new managers understand the emotional aspects of managerial

transitions in developing their selection and training practices.

Keywords

emotional and social competencies, managerial role transition, socialization

Park and Faerman 99

and social intelligence/competence (ESI/ESC) during this

transition.

This article presents the results of a study that examined

how managers in a large public agency, newly promoted

from a professional position, managed the transition from

individual contributor to manager. Examining data collected

through five waves of semistructured interviews, the article

focuses on these new managers’ emotional reactions to this

transition and how their ESC developed as they experienced

this transition. It should be noted that all of these managers

were promoted during an intensive hiring period in their

agency, Department of ABC (DABC),1 that resulted from a

state legislative act that not only strengthened one of the

functions of the agency but also set more stringent deadlines

for completion of activities within that function. As a result,

the agency hired 75 new auditors and promoted 31 auditors

to management positions across eight regional offices and

the statewide office of the affected division, thus increasing

the number of front-line managers in the division by almost

80% within a year.

The next section of the article examines two literatures—

the literature on managerial transitions and the literature on

ESI/ESC. In addition, we also briefly examine the connec-

tion between management derailment and ESI/ESC, as the

management derailment literature provides some important

evidence for why ESI/ESC can be expected to influence

managerial performance. This is followed by the research

questions, the methodology, and the results of the study. The

article concludes with a discussion of the results and the

implications of the results for the study of the role of emo-

tional and social competencies in managerial transitions as

well as for promoting, training, and developing new public

managers, followed by a discussion of the limitations of the

study and suggestions for future research.

Literature Review

Managerial Transitions

While all transitions can be stressful (Ashforth, 2001; Conroy

& O’Leary-Kelly, 2014), the transition to a managerial role

can be especially stressful for individuals in professional,

scientific, or technical positions because these individuals

have developed a “professional identity”2 that is associated

with their professional, scientific, or technical expertise.

That is, because of the nature of these types of positions,

incumbents are likely to have had specific education and/or

training for this position, as well as developed particular

approaches to thinking and problem solving based on their

education or training. Moreover, as noted above, newly pro-

moted managers are likely to have been promoted because

they demonstrated high levels of performance and, conse-

quently, are more likely to have self-concepts defined, at

least partly, by their prior successful performance (Benjamin

& O’Reilly, 2011; L. A. Hill, 1992, 2007; Maurer & London,

2018). Thus, a clear challenge in this role transition involves

moving away from a deeply rooted prior professional role

identity and developing a new managerial role identity

(Freedman, 1998; R. E. Hill & Somers, 1988).

Several researchers have used stage models to examine

the psychological aspects of work transitions. For example,

drawing on Lewin’s (1951) field theory, Ashforth (2001)

describes role transitions as boundary-crossing events that

involve role exit (unfreezing), movement, and role entry

(refreezing). Similarly, focusing on work-related identity

loss and recovery more generally, Conroy and O’Leary-

Kelly (2014) discuss transitions as involving “separation

(detaching from the old sense of self), transition (resolving

ambiguity inherent to this indeterminate state), and reincor-

poration (establishing a new sense of self)” (p. 68).

Alternatively, Maurer and London (2018) describe the role

identity shift that managers experience in terms of a contin-

uum and the degree of change in one’s mind-set along the

continuum. Individuals who make incremental shifts in their

role identity “continue to function within the same identity

they developed previously, still pursuing the same types of

goals and thinking about their careers. . ., but with a higher

level of learning and functioning on certain knowledge or

skills”; making a “substantial role identity shift involves

adding and enacting new leadership skills and goals. . .

[although] there is a likelihood that people could continue to

function primarily within the individual-level domain”;

finally, making a “radical role identity shift involves a new

configuration of goals, priorities, and mental models along

with new skills and capabilities . . . a fundamental shift in

how they think about themselves relative to their careers,

work, goals, direction, and the skills or capabilities upon

which they depend” (pp. 8-9, emphasis added). Interestingly,

while these models differ, all authors emphasize the loss of

orientation that individuals experience as their mind-set

shifts from who they were to who they are becoming.

Other researchers have focused on the specific elements

of the shift in mind-set that are required as one moves from

being an individual contributor to being a manager (Benjamin

& O’Reilly, 2011; L. A. Hill, 1992, 2007; Maurer & London,

2018). Perhaps most importantly, making a successful transi-

tion requires new managers to understand the importance of

interdependence, that is, working closely with peers and oth-

ers outside their immediate work unit, as well as spending

time with subordinates (Benjamin & O’Reilly, 2011). In

addition, new managers need to make a shift in how they

measure their personal success and how they derive personal

satisfaction. As individual contributors, their success was

based on their own performance, and personal satisfaction

was derived from positive evaluations of this performance;

as managers, they need to learn to measure their success in

terms of their subordinates’ performance and derive satisfac-

tion from helping their subordinates perform at the highest

level (Benjamin & O’Reilly, 2011; L. A. Hill, 2007; Maurer

& London, 2018). Drotter and Charan (2001) argue that “the