Zayne was exceptional at their job. When you assigned Zayne a task to complete, you knew you wouldn’t have to check in with them. It got done. Reports always came in ahead of time. Sales targets were met — even beaten. Zayne was a great collaborator and team player but often preferred to work in solitude in the corner meeting room. Based on their performance, Zayne was soon promoted and given a small team of five to manage. A few months down the line, Zayne was struggling.

Does this story resonate with you?

When the career path to manager is unclear, results-oriented and high-performing employees often find themselves suddenly promoted into the role — more for their technical strengths than for their people management skills. Many of these “accidental managers” are then let loose on their teams without receiving the proper training. Sadly, this phenomenon is very common. In the UK, over two thirds of managers categorise themselves as “accidental managers.”  In fact, the Chartered Management Institute believes some 2.4m of 3.4m UK managers fall into this category. If those levels are at all similar in the U.S., then more than 17 million people managers are ill-equipped to support their workforce.

The result is a new manager who experiences anxiety and imposter syndrome, potentially causing a disconnect between them and their direct reports. It can negatively impact team productivity, engagement levels, and well-being. In fact, recent research indicates that managers may have an equal (if not greater) impact on the mental health of their employees than their spouses, doctors, or therapists.

So, what do you do if you’re an accidental manager?

Becoming an accidental manager carries a number of risks, both at an individual and organizational level. Outside of the potentially detrimental health impacts on you and your team, accidental managers are set up to fail. They spend their time doing something they have relatively little experience or training in as opposed to doing the work they’re best at.

Through our work as organizational and management performance improvement specialists, we’ve observed that many accidental managers hold onto their previous roles as a coping mechanism. They turn into the dreaded perfectionist or micromanager, doing aspects of their old job — maybe inadvertently — instead of delegating tasks to their teams. Team members, in turn, feel discouraged as their growth and development declines.

The good news is that your route into management need not continue to define you. In the absence of more formal training, you can use what we call the STAR method to excel in your new role. The STAR method a simple four-step management framework — stop, think, ask, result — that can help managers adopt coaching-related behaviors that help stimulate higher levels of collaborative and foster solution-driven teams. It starts with transforming your day-to-day behaviors to develop more of an inquiry-led approach to management. Learning to ask questions intended to stimulate deeper reflection on the part of a team member has been shown to be a powerful way to draw on their talents.

Retrain your mind.

To fully step into a people management role, you must adjust your mindset away from being the doer toward being an enabler of others. This is often the hardest shift for managers to make. Accidental managers typically adopt a directive command-and-control style by repeatedly stepping into the problems presented to them and trying to solve them. However, your main job is no longer to write code, produce articles, or analyze data. It is now to enable, guide, and motivate your team to achieve similar results through their own endeavours. You cannot be doing the work for them.

The first step is to learn how to STOP — to resist the urge to immediately solve your team’s challenges. When you feel compelled to do this, learning how to stop can interrupt your habit of responding immediately which offers an opportunity instead to THINK. Why has this person approached me? What do they need from me? Do they want me to help them brainstorm or are they simply seeking validation, or a confidence boost around their work? How can I help them get better at this task? Will my feedback make things better or just different?

Ask more powerful questions.

To help your employees solve problems, ASK questions to stimulate their own thinking. Giving people the chance to find contribute to a solution — as opposed to presenting it to them — shows that you believe in their potential and trust their ownership.

As a kid, you probably hated it when your parents asked you “why” you did something. Apply the same logic to your team members. Replace “why” questions with “what” questions. Why-based questions can sound accusatory, as if the employee is to blame for the problem they’re presenting. This often results in defensiveness, clouding their assessment of the situation. Replacing “why” with “what” refocuses the conversation on the facts of the situation you are enabling them to solve.

For example, instead of asking “Why did you assume the market size was small?” change the question to “What factors led you to assume the market size was small?” It’s a small change, but it invites your direct report to share their thinking openly, without the fear of a consequence. Removing any hint of blame in this way is more likely to encourage an employee to explore the specifics and establish a foundation of trust.

Practice active listening.

If you really want to cultivate trust with your new team, practice actively listening during these discussions.  What does this mean exactly? It means giving the speaker your full attention without giving into distractions, showing genuine interest in what is being said.

For example, after you’ve asked your direct report a question to help them reflect on a particular challenge, resist the temptation to interrupt with your own input. Instead, acknowledge their words by nodding after they make a point. Be present in the moment, concentrating on what they are and aren’t saying. Then repeat what you hear to them, “I hear what you’re saying. (Rephrase the problem or details in your own words.) That sounds like a tough one. Do you have ideas around how to move forward or would you like me to help you brainstorm?”

Your ultimate goal is to draw out the talents and logic of the other person, helping them to determine a clear next step (a RESULT) that they can take to begin to resolve the issue. In the process, remember that there is more than one way to reach a solution. You need to help your team member find their own path if you want them to build resilience and tackle similar situations on their own in future. If you notice them getting discouraged or stuck mid-conversation, follow with open-ended questions like, “That’s one way of doing this. How else could you approach it so our go-to-market time gets reduced further?” or “What other ideas do you have about this?”

Most of us are taught to “ask open questions.” Going beyond this to learn how to ask more powerful questions designed to help the other person with the thinking they need in the moment will also help you to develop a more authentic connection with the employee. In turn, they will feel more comfortable and confident thinking through issues with you, and eventually, come to you with answers instead of problems.

. . .

Like anything else, practice makes perfect. In time, asking thoughtful questions that enable your employees to learn will become second nature. Repeated use of an inquiry-led approach will not only help you build stronger relationships with your direct reports, it will also improve their engagement and performance levels by encouraging them to take the autonomy they need to grow.

Those who now report to you will feel valued and listened to. They will develop the confidence to fix problems independently, allowing them to hone their own skills for a successful future.