Laura Ashley-Timms is the COO of performance consultancy Notion, creators of the multi-award-winning STAR® Manager programme being used in over 40 countries worldwide.
Laura is also the co-author of the new management bestseller The Answer is a Question: The Missing Superpower that Changes Everything and Will Transform Your Impact as a Manager and Leader.
Picture this: you’re a female tech specialist whose career is picking up pace.
You’ve been consistently completing high-calibre work, and you want to progress to the next level. Becoming a manager seems like the logical next step.
Yet in this new role, you suddenly find yourself responsible for a team you must now guide and support – something your technical strengths and experience never equipped you for. You might be used to working independently, and now people rely on you to lead. Where do you begin?
This is the case for many new managers. In fact, 82% of all managers who enter a management position are considered “accidental managers”, meaning they’ve been promoted because of high performance in their specialist role, not for their people management skills.
We all know how pivotal managers are to our working lives, particularly for women in the tech industry. According to Skillsoft’s 2024 Women in Tech report, 46% of respondents reported ineffective management as the top challenge they faced in their tech careers. When asked what would motivate them to leave their job or employer, 40% cited their manager as the top factor.
People skills may not come naturally to you, but that doesn’t mean you can’t become an effective people manager. How can women in tech achieve this?
Swapping Command-and-Control for an Enquiry-Led Approach
In the absence of any clear direction as to entirely how they’re supposed to perform in their new role, many women promoted to management positions default to stereotypically male behaviours to have an impact at work. However, mirroring a ‘command-and-control’ approach, whereby you fix and solve staff problems by telling them what to do and firefighting your way through every day, is losing its effectiveness in the modern workplace.
Why? Because this telling approach inadvertently robs employees of valuable learning opportunities had they been encouraged to do the thinking themselves. While it might seem logical to offer direction to people based on your knowledge and previous experience, it can inadvertently stem the development of their independent problem-solving skills.
This approach can be disastrous in the tech industry, where innovative thinking is vital. As a new manager, you may work with team members who have way more knowledge than you in a particular specialism, so sticking to the solutions you know could extinguish the spark of a potentially brilliant idea that the other person was shaping.
The tech world is also notoriously competitive, and many talented employees are ‘poached’. If your team members feel you’re not allowing them to develop and progress, they’re more likely to leave for another organisation that offers and encourages these growth opportunities.
Rather than providing direction and solving everyone’s problems, you can be much more effective as a manager by adopting an enquiry-led approach, which means learning to ask employees insightful questions that stimulate their thinking to find solutions rather than simply telling them what to do. Adopting this approach allows managers to create a culture where each team member’s contribution is acknowledged and encouraged. It helps employees develop their confidence and autonomy, enhancing a sense of ownership and fulfilment in their role, ultimately strengthening trust and improving performance.
Using the STAR® method
Asking better questions sounds great in theory, but what about in practice? The tech space can be extremely fast-paced, which makes it tempting to fall back on a command-and-control approach as a quick fix. And mastering an enquiry-led approach requires training – it’s not something managers are taught how to do. This is where the STAR® model can help:
- STOP—step back and change state.
- THINK—is this a coachable moment?
- ASK—powerful questions and actively listen.
- RESULT—agree on the next steps and an outcome from the conversation.
When a team member comes to you with a problem, STOP. Avoid providing all the answers or mentally trawling your own mind for solutions.
This wins you a moment to THINK instead about whether the situation could be a coachable moment, i.e. a time when a deft prompt from you could help this person explore the situation and possible solutions themselves.
If it is a coachable moment, this provides the space to ASK authentic questions intended to stimulate the other person’s thinking, which will help them to reflect on the possible actions they can take to resolve the issue. A useful tip here is to focus on what? rather than why? questions, as the latter can imply criticism or blame, e.g., asking, “What do you think is the reason this is happening so often?” rather than “Why is this happening so often?”.
To secure a RESULT, you need to ask a few more questions to agree on the appropriate follow-up. This increases the likelihood that actions will be followed through and allows you to give some appreciative feedback, which builds further confidence.
Conclusion
Modern people management is about enabling others, helping them to flourish, and bringing out the best in teams. By learning to apply the STAR® model, managers win back valuable time by not stepping into every problem they encounter and instead begin to develop an Operational Coaching® style of management. By bringing coaching into the flow of everyday work, new managers can shed their imposter syndrome and contribute to a collaborative, psychologically safe environment and a culture where people are acknowledged and encouraged to excel.