I read lots of books about management, I tried to emulate what managers who I thought were competent were doing, and I made lots of mistakes and tried to learn from them.

There were some mistakes that I was never able to recover from, like being too friendly with the people who reported to me - that makes you really dread the prospect of having to lay someone off, makes it hard to give difficult feedback, etc.

Eventually, after being a manager for several years, I decided to go back to being a developer, and now I'm much happier.