From knowing manual testing to learning automation, what have you learned that can be sone to bridge the gap between manual testing and automated testing being separate jobs done by separate people? ...

Another great question asked by Gary Hawkes for the :

My journey has been through all these phases where I started as a Manual tester > Manual (lead)+Automation Tester > Automation tester and then Automation Lead

One thing I am 100% sure that all of our manual testers have knowledge about the coding, tools and technology. It's just that they don't have hand's on. Starting from small steps like opening an IDE, writing a small function, executing on local, the easy way to parameterise etc would develop confidence. Once we have gained confidence and then look into the automation code - it would appear easy because now we understand the "what", "why" and "how" part of it. Getting familiar to the keywords, libraries and syntax is a step ahead towards automation.  

Usual trend I have seen in the industry is that test cases are automated by automation team but those are executed and monitored by manual team as part of regression/release sign off. Here is the great opportunity to step into and help each other if we have separate teams. 
Analysing the failed test cases are good to start with. If test execution is failing For the failed test cases, instead of passing it to automation team, manual team themselves can dig deeper to understand the issue behind the failure and can start fixing those with the help of automation team. Automation team on the other hand should give sessions and training along with documentation to manual team for obvious failures and how to fix those. 

These are small steps for manual team to start with automation. Sometimes failed test cases could be just one line change like locator change, addition/removal of one field, addition/removal of one alert or pop-up etc. These are very small changes for which manual team can be trained and they can easily gain confidence to step into automation. Once they are well versed with these, later on they can fix bigger issues as well. 
This way creation of framework and regression suite can be done by automation team and maintenance can be done by manual team.