In this post, I thought I would provide three tips for new leaders. Please feel free to share this email with any new leaders in your life who you feel need this.
1. Communicate Differently to different audiences. Your upper management team has different concerns, different goals, and a different style than your peer mid-level managers and your team. As you present and speak to each audience, you need to adjust your language, your message, and your justifications to match the listeners. The most difficult will be upper management since that is a role you have not held yet and one whose language, goals and concerns you are least familiar with. Listen. Learn. Ask questions. Then practice and adjust. Learn how to present your issues and your accomplishments (and your team’s) in terms that matter to the audience.
2. Carve out Time to improve your own new craft of leading teams and leading people. It’s not a simple extension of your prior role as an independent contributor. Your success is measured differently now and your value comes from skills you may not yet have mastered. Your value comes in the value that you can get out of your team and in the way you present that value to others.
- Block your calendar for Monday mornings to prepare for a good week.
- Block Friday afternoons to catch your breath, summarize, and close out unfinished tasks.
- Block time for one-on-one’s with your team.
- Block time to prepare for your weekly one-on-one’s with your boss.
- Block time for creating presentations and team meetings.
- Block time for learning and mentoring with others.
Make your time meaningful. Managing humans can create real chaos in your calendar. YOU are the only one that can manage that chaos, and time-blocking is a great way to do that.
3. Manage your Mindset: Remember that your time contributing to the production of your product is reduced – that belongs to the team. You now have a new role to nurture other individuals and nurture teamwork. This is a precious role in the lives of others (much like being a parent). According to some surveys, a person’s relationship with their direct supervisor is the key to engagement and success. Control your mental chaos. Find your source of creativity. Practice grace. Tend your ‘garden’. Be the best boss that you can to each unique human in your team. Create an amazing memory and help them grow.
The Bonus: During your one-on-ones with your boss and your team members, ask for feedback. “What is the one thing I should improve this/next week?” Be brave. Feedback can be brutal sometimes. Your most trusted senior team member is an excellent resource to answer this question. Ask them to be honest AND gentle. Then followup. Find out how to improve on what they told you, and ask for followup feedback. You won’t be great after trying once, or trying for one week. But keep trying. It matters. It matters to ask. It matters to take action. It matters to followup.
My Wish: I hope that each of you succeed in the full transformation to great leadership, not only the transition of getting a new title. This transformation to leadership takes time and attention. We need more Great Leaders in the world, and less Bad Bosses!
Consider finding a coach or mentor to help you through the hard parts.
