Advice from peers: How to succeed in your first management position

Your first experience in a management position can be both exciting and daunting as you learn on the job what it means to oversee people, programs and budgets. This is particularly the case in the global development sector, where resource-strapped organizations may not have a training budget or program in place to guide early-career managers.

“It's a huge learning curve,” says Maya El Hage, an operations manager for a global development organization in Lebanon who has been in her role just over a year. “You develop skills personally and professionally, and you are exposed to a lot of different people, different ideas, different stakeholders, different organizations.”