Those are some really good and helpful points - and especially relevant for my situation, although with a much smaller team.
Not sure if I've shared my experiences from this year. Forgive me if I ramble.
I've been WFH full time for nearly 2 1/2 years, working with the same team for over 6 - basically since I graduated from college. My immediate group is 3-4 people (1 floats) and we've always worked quite well with each other. In June, one of our team leadership was let go and I took over a lot of roles and responsibilities that she held, including overseeing the day to day of my immediate group.
Now, this was an exciting and extremely challenging task, first because the person who was let go was a rock star and we, including our client, were shocked and angry at the sudden cut, second because we were going through a botched migration at the time and the client was extremely unsatisfied with the rollout, and third because I was up to then the least senior person in my group so it presented an awkward social/professional position with my colleagues. Within a week I was in leadership meetings with folks higher up than I'd ever spoken to in the corporate hierarchy - oftentimes feeling completely out of my league. In many ways I still feel this way.
On top of this, raises and promotions were frozen due to COVID financial impacts, so I was added to leadership while keeping my previous title that gave me little to no clout with anyone in the corporate structure who didn't know the internal situation of our team. Now, I'm not one for titles, but it's made internal escalations a nightmare.
6 months in now and things have gotten much better. Our platform has stabilized and the client is satisfied again. My group is a machine and I am proud to work with my colleagues. To
@Tyr's point, I've definitely had a crash course in management and have learned a lot of the same things listed. I think points #3, 5, and 8 have been my focuses this year. #3 because I have the tendency to take on tasks myself that could be delegated because I can do them (and faster) - trusting that they can take ownership and being hands off when I can has been an adjustment. #5 because of all the platform issues we had at the beginning - I feel like I spent weeks writing Root Cause Analyses documents this summer. And finally #8 because my team really has brought our platform back from the brink and there have been many long, late nights to get where we are now. They all deserve a long vacation and I hope they know how appreciative I am of their work. Gratitude has become a staple of my daily meetings.
Agree that emotional intelligence is so important. As a first time manager/leader in any capacity and someone who can get very heads down on my particular tasks, it's been an adjustment to reach out individually and make sure that they're all doing ok too. My mental health struggled just as theirs has this year, and it's important to me that they know that I understand if they need a mental health day.