Managers: as a someone who worked for years in various managerial posts and found themselves often anxious, overwhelmed and stressed, this is for you. I’m now a coach who works with managers every day, and this is what I wish I knew then that I know now.

How do I get the best from my team? As a coach who works with a lot of managers, this is a question I get asked a lot.

Start by listening. Here are two ways to do that:

When one of your top performers gets promoted into a senior role and they aren’t delivering as well as you thought they might, it's down to competence; one promotion too far isn’t it?

Or is it. Look more closely.

There can be many measures for how well you’re doing your job, but whether the team are ‘happy’ or not is a good one.

When I ask clients what ‘good’ looks like for them at work, the phrase ‘people are happy with what I’m doing’ is often heard. Whether it’s the first answer they give or perhaps the third or fourth as they reflect and think about it, it’s often there.

One of the big struggles I see managers wrestling with is 'letting go' of things. Everything they've done up to this point is based on the actual job they do, like being a press officer, an IT engineer or a designer. But when you make that step up, it becomes less about doing that job and more about helping others to do that job.