This week, I’ve been thinking about two ends of the career spectrum. New leaders are at the beginning of their career, perhaps 2-3 years (maybe 5-7 years) into their professional life overall. Soon-to-be retirees are at the far end of their career, but maybe not ready to watch Netflix and eat bon-bons on the sofa all day… still wanting to be active and contributing. In this article, I’ll share five best practices for new leaders and upcoming/new retirees.
I started my professional career in IT around 1981 as a college intern in small business sales for IBM and in COBOL programming for the USDA. I was so young and so naive but I knew how to learn from others. My life in leadership (managing people specifically) did not begin until 15 years later. I guess that makes me a bit of a ‘late bloomer’. Over the remaining 25+ years of my career, I was in various leadership roles (and occasionally returned to individual contributor roles).
Here are five best practices for new leaders that I wish I’d had early on… or maybe I had them but did not take them to heart and act on them. Now in the first year of my retirement from the corporate environment, I can see that these five practices also apply to those of us at the near-end of our professional career, with just a slight twist. In both cases, for new leaders and exiting leaders, these tips will help to ease the transition and help guide your inner transformation.
Prioritize Learning
New Leaders
Whether you’re a new leader or one preparing to exit your career for retirement (or semi-retirement), never assume you’ve learned enough or prepared enough. New leaders have a very new and different responsibility from when you were an individual contributor. Your role is now caring for and growing individuals, teams, teamwork, and future leaders, all while ensuring that your teams are producing. Learning through business leadership and management books opens your mind to new theories, new models of human behavior, new techniques for motivation, new ways to foster creativity in a safe space. Your brain needs to shift to growth mode and you need to feed it many new ‘seeds’. Over time, you will meld those models and theories into your unique way of leading.
Soon-to-be Retirees
Similarly, moving from day-to-day leadership in a business setting to the unstructured daily life after retirement is a sea-change in perspective. You can sleep and rise without an alarm. You can choose who to meet with and when. You have options on how social or private to be. You can choose to be active in a new community or quietly nest in your home. This switch needs pre-planning, considering options. Cold Turkey is a tough way to go. For myself, I spent the year prior to retirement in self-reflection on activities that I wanted to try in various aspects of my life. Several of them required some learning before retirement, but for most, I can choose my learning tools and schedule now during my more flexible days. For some retirees, the idea of a full, stark transition is unsatisfying, so they choose to study for a second career, one that allows for more personal time but still some income and interaction with others. Remember that, for some, the loss of the social environment of work triggers the grief cycle. Guard your heart and prepare so that you avoid the valley. Volunteering sounds good, but it is likely that you’ll need to explore various options and learn which one suits you best. Start your exploration of options before the day you leave the office so that you create a smooth transition.
Values & Mantras
New Leaders
A simple search in Amazon finds more than 60,000 books on leadership and more than 70,000 on management. That’s a lot of values, philosophies, processes and tips to consider. As a new leader of people, as you continue to learn and grow, you will need to choose the values that you stand for. Your bosses and your companies may be driven by values different from your own – both you and they will be undergoing change and at some point you may no longer align. Becoming a leader is a process of defining your self, your way of leading, your priorities, and the choices you make in business and with humans. I would propose that you begin keeping a list, a journal, of those values that resonate most deeply with you so that you can begin to recognize when someone or some company crosses your line. For me, I crafted my own set of mantras over time… mantras which emboddied those values. The list morphed over time but only by small percentages. I still have this document today and it still helps me choose what I stand for. Begin to grow your own list. Here are a few of my mantras and embody my values (just a few from a list of about 20).
My Personal Management Mantras (just a few)
Coach to create future leaders.
Set expectations and people will work toward them.
People own their own careers.
Treat employees as volunteers.
Practice situational management.
Suggest improvements after the ‘race’ is over.
Humans first, business second.
Create safe spaces for honesty and creativity.
Soon-to-be Retirees
For soon-to-be retirees, re-exploring your values and defining your mantras is also helpful. Consider where your priorities lie and how those define how you will spend your days. How do you prioritize your time with your partner and/or kids as compared to your charity project? How do you spend your first hours of the morning and final hours at night? If you choose to take a part-time job or start a part-time role, how does that priority impact your non-work time? How do you begin to step away from the stress of your prior working life? How might you prioritize mentoring or coaching the next generation of leaders? If your best friend asks you to work with them at their favorite charity, how will you decide to answer? How do you balance exploration of new options? You are about to step into a new role, a new lifestyle. Be intentional. Decide who you want to be. Consider your values. Create a few new mantras, or reconsider how your prior leadership mantras apply to your retired life.
Feedback
New Leaders
As a new leader, feedback needs to become a critical part of your life. Giving feedback is now part of your job. But even more important is asking for feedback. Your boss (and one or two other senior leaders), your peer leaders, your team. You need a well-rounded view and their 360-degree perception of your effectiveness on any given item can differ. Ask, take notes, take action.
- How well did I perform at «this task»?
- How effective have I been at my project tasks, but also in my leadership skills?
- How well am I listening and learning?
- What «skill» should I work on next?
Your job is to learn not only from books, but also from experience. Your perception of your effectiveness is never reality; you have to ask. And, to get meaningful feedback, those that you ask need to feel free to be honest with you.
Soon-to-be Retirees
As a soon-to-be retiree, feedback can also be helpful. Consider a few of the new activities you want to try out. Find a few people who have made the transition to retirement and who are also practicing that activity. Talk to them. What is their feedback on the fantasy vs. the reality. Where are the sources of enjoyment and fulfillment? Are their ‘grunge’ parts of that activity, the pain you go through to get to the hilltop? Take time to consider their feedback deeply against your values and time-priorities. Are there options to ‘try before you buy’? Participating in the community garden might make your heart sing, but there is very little activity in the snow, and the garden needs to be tended even in the rain. Are you ready for that? Learning to fly airplanes looks amazing, but are you prepared for the cost? Prepared to spend your time with only your instructor? Consider the wisdom of those who’ve gone before you and balance that with your passions and joys.
Story-telling
New Leaders
New leaders need to learn to tell stories that engage their team, create a belief in their abilities and the future, all of which then creates action. Stories provide the human connection and meaning between past behavior and accomplishments to the choices we make in the present, and the future we want to create. Bullet points on a slide are cold. Stories are engaging and human. Great stories add the element of purpose, the ‘why’. Great stories talk about how we have both gained mastery and how we will continue to grow in mastery through our next steps. Great stories enable team members to be part of something big while still finding their own sense of autonomy in how they participate. Great stories create intrinsic motivation, our internal drive to participate, even in hard things. Great stories highlight the ‘carrot’ and not ‘the stick’. Great leaders tell great stories and new leaders need practice (and feedback) to grow this skill.
Soon-to-be Retirees
Soon-to-be retirees can also benefit from story-telling. Hopefully, this is a skill that they grew as a leader during their professional life. The early retiree phase is a great moment to tell stories of lessons you learned in your career. Tell them to the young leaders following after you. Tell them to your kids and grand-kids. Use story-telling to remember and reflect and give back the value you learned. Tell your stories in presentations, or perhaps in poetry or songwriting. Books. Blog posts. Workshops and retreats. Stories of your own imperfect moments may be tough to share, but they are great examples from which young people can learn. Check your pride at the door and be bravely vulnerable for the good of the future.
Get a mentor/coach
Whether planned or by surprise, the transition into leader and into retirement can be emotionally tough. You are in new terrain and you don’t know the landmines. You may not be clear about who are your allies and your foes. You may lack self-confidence to try new things and the resilience to bounce back when things don’t go perfectly. You might be a pessimist when optimism and hopefulness are more useful. You might not have anyone who is yet prepared to be brutally (but lovingly) honest with you. You might be a bit stuck or complacent when you need someone to give you a nudge and hold you accountable to improving and growing and adapting. All of these are good reasons to reach out for a transition/transformation coach. Coaches come in various styles, all timezones, in-person and remote, and nearly all prices. Explore your options.
I hope you enjoyed this article. I’m sure this list is not exhaustive. Let me know if you have others!
If you’d like to try out my framework for transitions and transformations yourself, check out my book for the 4-week process.
