No one said things will be easy.
As part of Red Hat's quarterly survey, associates are asked to relate to a statement "I would highly recommend my manager to others" with 5 choices varying from "completely disagree" to "completely agree". Managers can see anonymized results for their reports, and 2 out of 5 people on my team gave a negative response (I'm not sure what exactly it means, probably they chose either "completely disagree" and "partially disagree" as an answer).
My first reaction was "Oh my God, I suck at being a manager" and a whirlwind of emotions. I cried for a couple of hours over a couple of days.
But honestly, I'd rather know I'm bad at something and get a chance to improve than not know and keep being bad at management. Also, I'm 4 months into the role, so I don't know why I have such high expectations of myself (though obviously it would be nice not to get to an "I don't recommend my manager" situation).
I hope that in several months I'll be able to write another blog post with some of the steps I took to make things better, and share the results I got. I already have some ideas, and I think I'll have a better action plan after talking with my manager and my mentor.
Just wanted to share this here, because it's an important moment for me, even though it's not a happy one.