My first year as a manager was, in many ways, a disaster. Today, I manage a team of more than 120 people. But getting here was not a straight path from being a good individual contributor to becoming a good leader. It was almost the opposite. I had to unlearn many of the things that had made me successful in my previous role.

I came from Wipro and moved into a global tech company, where the culture was strongly focused on output. I knew how to manage my workload, meet deadlines and make sure things got done. So, when I became a manager, I naturally brought the same mindset with me. I thought being a good manager meant getting my individual tasks done. But I was wrong. My team was becoming disconnected. People were completing their work, but conversations were becoming shorter. The outcomes were there but the people weren't. I was measuring the team by what it produced instead of understanding the people producing it. I was still thinking like an individual contributor. The problem was that I was no longer an individual contributor. I was a manager, and those are two very different jobs.

The Conversation That Changed Everything

One afternoon, a developer on my team handed in his resignation. He was brilliant at what he did. He was technically strong and dependable. Naturally, I wanted to know why he was leaving. I asked him and he said, "You never once asked me how I was doing."

I had spent months working alongside this person without really connecting with him as a person. I knew what he was working on, his deadlines and whether his tasks were completed. But I did not know how he was doing. This brought in realization that being around your team is not the same as being connected to your team. I had confused proximity with connection. I was always present but I was never really there.

After that experience, I changed the way I managed my team. I started having regular one-on-one conversations that went beyond tasks and deadlines. These were not conversations to extract more productivity. They were conversations to understand the person. Someone struggling with a task may not need more pressure, they may need clearer direction. Management becomes easier when you stop assuming and start asking.

Another major shift was the way I thought about performance. Earlier, I focused heavily on velocity. How much work was getting done? Then, I started measuring them by whether they were growing. Growth can mean many things. It can mean learning a new technology. It can mean becoming better at communication. It can mean taking ownership of a project. It can mean becoming confident enough to speak in a meeting. It can even mean learning how to handle failure better.

When managers focus only on output, employees can become machines for completing tasks. When managers focus on growth, employees become stronger professionals and stronger professionals eventually create stronger teams.

The Skills Management Requires

One of the most challenging transitions in a career is moving from being a high-performing individual contributor to becoming a manager. The skills that helped you earn a promotion while still valuable, are not enough when you enter management.

As an individual contributor, your success is connected to your own performance. For management, it is no longer about how much you can personally accomplish. It is about how much you can help other people accomplish. This shift requires a different approach to people management and leadership development. Instead of trying to solve every problem yourself, a good manager creates the conditions for the team to solve problems independently. It also means accepting that you will not always be the most knowledgeable person in the room. A team member may understand a technology better than you, have deeper industry experience or identify an opportunity you had overlooked. Strong managers do not see this expertise as a challenge to their authority. They use it to make better decisions.

Instead of always saying, “Here is what we should do,” they learn to ask, “What do you think we should do?” This simple change can encourage employee engagement, collaboration and ownership while bringing different perspectives.

Leadership is a Career of Its Own

It took me an entire year to understand this. Management is not simply the next level of individual contribution. It is a completely different career. Being technically excellent does not automatically make you good at managing people, and being busy does not automatically make you an effective leader. Management requires a different set of skills like listening, empathy, communication and decision-making. Most importantly, it requires self-awareness. You have to constantly ask yourself, "Am I creating the kind of environment I would want to work in?"

If I could go back to my first day as a manager, I would tell myself four things.

1. Ask, and do not assume: Every employee has different motivations, strengths and needs.
2. Lead, and do not micromanage: Create clarity, remove obstacles and enable your team to succeed without controlling them at every task.
3. Start conversations early: Discuss workload, wellbeing, performance and growth before problems arise.
4. Measure more than outputs: Recognise learning, ownership and collaboration.

Leading a healthtech company, I have learned that great management is not about pushing people to work harder. A great manager is someone who helps people feel trusted, supported, challenged and capable of growing. Because at the end of the day, businesses do not just grow because tasks get completed. They grow because people do.