The First Three Objectives for Any New Leader

Many people, who are otherwise gifted and brilliant, stumble over the threshold of a new leadership role. Even experienced leaders trip upon their entrance – often forgetting that starting as a leader is its own unique dynamic.

In most cases, this stumble goes unnoticed or overlooked by the “honeymoon” period typically extended to a new leader. However, if balance isn’t quickly recovered, the honeymoon period will quickly come to a premature end.

In most cases, the cause of the trip isn’t whatever it was that the new leader stubbed their toes on. It’s the simple fact that they weren’t paying attention to the right things.

Simply: They are often too self-conscious when they begin.

The Challenges of Inexperienced Leaders

People inexperienced with leadership will often not know what to focus on. Most tend to focus on their own sense of inadequacy. The three errors they tend to make is to either:

• Focus on being liked by everyone: Avoiding responsibility by attempting to please.
• Focus on their area of technical prowess: Minimizing greater leadership responsibilities.
• Focus on bureaucracy: Clinging to policy and procedure to avoid risk and actual leadership.

Others, fewer in number but still common, have a level of confidence that is inversely proportionate to their level of awareness.

They tend towards the “new sheriff in town” approach. This is a rarely appreciated, therefore rarely successful.

The Challenges of Experienced Leaders

The error that experienced leaders often make is to assume that their past experiences and success will automatically transfer to this new leadership position. Because of their experience, they can often see things that need to be addressed. They usually do a better job of focusing.

However, they often underestimate the social dynamics of a new leadership role. Although aware of honeymoon periods, they often assume that in their case, the honeymoon indicates a complete transfer of credibility and respect from their last position to the current one.

This is called fundamental attribution error. That is: Misinterpreting the ingredients and conditions of past success as being the same for future, different success.

• This is the highly skilled surgeon who assumes that her medical brilliance directly translates into the leadership skills needed as a medical director or CEO.
• It’s the military officer who assumes that his command success over genuine life-or-death and national security issues translates into the leadership skills needed in an environment structured around collaborative or collegial decision making.
• It’s the highly experienced CEO, accustomed to overseeing thousands of employees in multiple geographies, who is now struggling to run a small non-profit in their encore career.

Experience matters. Experienced leaders are usually more effective.

Except when they don’t understand or differentiate why they were successful in the past and what is needed in the future.

The First Three Objectives for Any New Leader

Regardless of your leadership background, or lack thereof, you only need to focus on three things to start your new leadership journey well:

1. Understand What Is Important To Key Stakeholders: Your stakeholders are the people who have a stake in your decisions and success as a leader. If you have a board, shareholders or a supervisor, it includes them. It includes colleagues. Direct reports. Key business partners, vendors, and customers.

Why: Leadership is a relationship. Whatever else it might include, it’s primarily a social dynamic. The more accurate your understanding of the hearts and minds of the people you lead – the more effective you can be.

How: Any leader will go a long way to establishing a successful leadership experience by taking time to understand:

• The values and priorities of your stakeholders.
• What is important to them about this organization, its goals, and their involvement.
• What is top of mind right now.

This takes time – but it doesn’t take forever. In most situations, you should be able to have taken a pretty accurate pulse of your stakeholders within the first 90 days.

As you do this, look for trends:

• What are the common values and priorities that seem to draw people together?
• What are the common stories that they tell and reference? What makes those stories important to them? What are the lessons they feel those stories teach them?
• What are the issues, desires or concerns that occupy thinking and conversation right now? These may or may not be the most important issues – but they’ll need to be addressed in some way.

Additionally, look for outliers:

• Are there any key stakeholders who have very different opinions or experiences from the norm?
• Are there people who are opposed to or apprehensive about new leadership? What is behind that? What is important to them?
• Are there people being left out who need to be better included?
• Are there people who don’t fit or are toxic but have been tolerated?

2. Build Credibility: James Kouzes and Barry Posner are two well-known leadership researchers. They studied tens of thousands of leaders, in many different industries and cultures, and found that credibility was the key ingredient for a leader’s success.

Why: Credibility is the currency of leadership. Without it, you will be constantly fighting for every decision, for every inch of influence you hope to have.

Any effort you need to expand, due to a lack of credibility, is energy spent overcoming inertia or friction. It is energy not being spent toward building a vision.

How: There are three simple ways to quickly build credibility:

• Do #1. Understand the needs of your key stakeholders. By engaging in the first step in this process you’ll not only know what you need to focus on – but you’ll start to build credibility.

When the people you impact as a leader, believe you understand them even if you don’t agree with them they are far more likely to trust and support your decisions or processes.

• Do what you say you will do. To build credibility, Kouzes and Posner found that all a leader needed to do was: Do what they said they would do.

Pretty simple. But it often doesn’t happen. As much as people don’t want a leader to make poor decisions – they prefer a leader they can rely on than one who waffles all over the place.

This doesn’t mean being rigid about decision making and indulging in executive obstinacy – even when we know we are heading in the wrong direction. Our leadership career will be short if we can consistently be relied on to do the wrong thing.

But it means that commitment and execution matter—even in small areas.

• Do something quickly. As you follow #1 and start to understand some of the top-of-mind issues or concerns of your stakeholders – generate movement quickly. If you can, bring them a win. Even if it’s small.

As a consultant, sometimes after winning a new contract, there really isn’t much to do for a few months. But, I still do something quickly. I start generating movement. I accomplish something that the client sees and experiences.

It often only needs to be a small something – but it needs to signal movement in the right direction.

The reason is I need to quickly head-off any potential “buyer’s regret” that might contaminate our relationship. This happens, even when a client knows that their need for you is months away – they start to get agitated that you haven’t done anything yet.

When you know what your stakeholders are looking for – early action helps quell any concern or question about your ability or willingness to lead.

3. Clarify and Communicate Your Focus: Here’s what I mean by “focus.” The organization may have a vision for the future. They may have a strategy in place. (Or they may not have any of these things.)

Regardless of what exists – you need a focus for what you intend to accomplish.

This “focus” is a near-term picture (usually 9-18 months) of the future that you use to focus and align your team.

Every company’s vision is some form of, “Be awesome!” In most cases that is too vague and abstract to organize around

What is needed is a clear, shorter range picture of how you are going to move or maintain the trajectory towards “Being awesome” in the short range. You want to create a picture of what “Being awesome” looks like nine months or a year from now. You want to put handles on it and make it tangible.

Why: It creates a common focus and purpose, aligns actions and supports the development of unity – through your leadership.

How: In some cases, a leader will build this on his or her own. In which case, they’ll need to exercise discernment in how they roll it out and communicate it – so others don’t feel like their ship has been hijacked.

In best case scenarios, build this with your team. This will have the benefit of building your team, creating alignment and clarifying this “working vision.”

If you feel this is difficult, bring in a consultant to help you facilitate. But you need to develop this working vision quickly and start making progress towards it.

A Successful New Leader

A new leadership role should be exciting and full of positive energy, momentum, and opportunity. Most new leaders walk into a situation where they experience the honeymoon effect. They are given the benefit of the doubt.

Use that time well.

Others walk into difficult situations. Perhaps the people you lead have some challenging dynamics, or perhaps you find, for whatever reason, you aren’t trusted.

You’ll find that you can transform this new leadership experience into a positive one, and avoid tripping, by pursuing these three New Leader Objectives.

Take good care,

Christian

Coaching Opportunity

Are you a new leader? Are you an experienced leader facing a new, unfamiliar situation or role?

I help successful leaders (and leaders who want to be successful) quickly identify their focus, engage their teams and build their vision.

I primarily work with:

• Senior leaders who want to successfully drive a change in their culture.
• Owners or senior executives looking at exit strategies or succession planning.
• New executives who want to start strong.
• Executive teams and boards who want to dramatically improve their relationships or performance.

My 2018 calendar is filling in tight. This time of year, I fill in through to the first months of the new year. I only have room for 5 new coaching clients this year.

Interested? Would you like more information? Email me at Christian@vantageconsulting.org or call me at 907 522-7200.

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