Advice for the New Leader or Manager

Whether you are an external hire or a newly promoted manager, you will go through the phase of uncertainty as you handle your new team and your initial approach. This will be key to success, on whether you will be able to make it work or create an atmosphere of unease in the workplace. Some managers would want to please while others would use authority.

If you read no further consider these two points.

1. Lead from the heart - Show an interest in their well-being, keep your commitments, value there time like your own, and empower. Always listen, respect, and put their career development and opportunities ahead of your own.
2. Rule of 4 - it will take a new team, or a new team member, about four times longer to produce results and become engaged. Prepare yourself for these delays and the need to communicate principals repeatedly. Consider the needed communication level at first to be four fold normal as well. Remember the rule of four.

In Ken Blanchard’s the One Minute manager, the first minute-task that a manager needs to master is the One Minute Goal Setting. The preparation for the goal setting is the key. You cannot just go out there and start throwing goals in under a minute! Your initial goal setting can be an overview but for new managers learn to divide and conquer.

Finding the balance on your first few weeks on the job will be the deciding factor. Read on!

"You will never get a second chance to make a first impression. " - Will Rogers

Identify Relationships and the First Introduction

Most of the time, managers are introduced by higher management to the people they will handle, if that is not the case, it would be best to have an effective introduction planned out.

1. Plan an actual “introduction meeting”
2. Have someone introduce you, best if it is a company leader, but if no one is there then go ahead and introduce yourself.
3. Highlight only relevant job posts/experiences you have had in the past. Managers come across as arrogant when they introduce themselves and talk about what they’ve accomplished rather than what are their plans to make the team successful – don’t make it an about you speech. Be a human. Talk about your family and outside of career interests.
4. Listen to your team and TAKE DOWN notes! Let everyone have their say but set expectations on how long they can have the floor.

Use the meet and greet time for success planning by effectively setting expectations.

Please take a second to test your listening skill with this short online quiz!!!

Many people pride themselves on multitasking – do not be one of them as you become a new leader. All multitasking is – “doing a lot of things in a sub-par way”. When people are actively listening, they are retaining maybe 60% of the pertinent information. When they are multitasking, they might be retaining 30%. If you are learning about your new team and establishing expectations and building culture do you want to hear 60%, more, or only 30%. More importantly as an early example to your team make a point to pay attention.

Strike the word “no” and replace it with the two magic words “yes, and.”

Do not judge an idea, agree with it by saying “yes”, and then you add your 2 cents worth. Using “yes, and” is something you have to practice every day and reframe into you. Avoid the “no” and the but”.

Short Video

“To lead people, walk behind them.” - Lao Tzu

Know Your People

Preparation is the key before you move to your new title. As a manager, you would want to know your people more. It is easier to do a hostile take-over and just put the people you have worked with into key-roles within your team but that is not always an option.

Find out more about your people and read their files. You might have some “insiders” who can tell you about your people. Find a way to get reliable information and you do not need to hire a private investigator to do this. Identify your key-influencers. So who goes on their 15-minute breaks with whom? Be intuitive and observant. When you are looking for your team’s buy in especially for a “formed” team you are taking over, key-influencers can be your “key” in managing your group effectively. Set aside a chat-time and listen. Find out what your key-influencers think and what drives them.

Most important you need to learn who from the larger group is the natural leader, who usually swings the group opinion? Whom does the team naturally turn to when in a dilemma? Whom does the group run from?

Create your Change Coalition

Key influencers have a lot of impact to your team but that does not always mean that they are the people you need to stick with or depend on. You would need to find reliable and consistent people in your team to make up your change coalition. Make sure your people understand and expectations have been set prior to rolling out any changes in the way the team is managed. If a team member was out while all of this was happening then make sure that an email was sent out and your door is open for questions. Have your people re-state what the objectives were at the end of your rollouts to make sure you are on the same page and have a clear understanding.

Leaders should take opportunities to lead by example, to be fearless in the face of angst, and to show the positive results of embracing change. When leaders do this well, they can create trust within their teams. Without that trust, embracing change will remain a giant obstacle. Be as transparent as possible. Talk about any change openly, and celebrate your success in tackling them. During significant times of changes, angst is easily created by having a lack of information. Closing the information gap helps prevent people from coming up with their own versions of reality, which are often times much more negative than actual reality.

"A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way." - John Maxwell

Follow Through

Leaders are responsible for making things happen, on budget, as scheduled, and with the needed quality. Do this by ensuring that what you commit to is exactly what you deliver, no exceptions.

In gaining your team’s trust, make sure to have effective follow through. New managers fail in making an impact for forgetting this key element. Follow through to results establishes both dependability and credibility. Employees lose their trust and become discouraged when managers miss this – so be sure to step well early on.

Make sure you that you do not set yourself up for failure by creating demands or making commitments that conflict with each other.

Nurture Relationships

Professional working relationships take time and effort to develop. These efforts will pay off for everyone involved in the end. One of the best skills to develop for a successful leader is the ability to nurture and grow mutually beneficial relationships with your peers and among your team members. In your team, relationships should be priority. The number one reason why companies lose people is their priorities set on profit and not relationships. Relationships should be on top of your list as a new manager because you are working with people and not working to generate income. Income and profits are results of relationship. Do not let anyone tell you otherwise.

Discuss issues and resolve difficulties as they become apparent. If dealt with constructively issues will not cause disruptions but will rather provide opportunities to make visible principal based decisions and demonstrate your commitments and values demonstratively to your team. Most problems can be resolved through open, honest communication. Whatever title a person holds within a company, she deserves respect for the work she does. Demonstrating this will help you nurture good relationships, strong alliances, and establish a basic culture of trust and respect.

"Leaders don't create followers, they create more leaders." - Tom Peters

Create succession planning right from the start

Succession planning is the process whereby an organization ensures that employees are recruited and developed to fill each key role within the company. In this process, you ensure that you will never have a key role open for which another employee is not prepared.

While in the midst of significant change, many organizations let people development fall to the wayside. Transitioning into a new type of business, for example, can cause angst if employees do not feel equipped for a different skill set or type of work. Make sure to provide ways to prepare your people for, or concurrent to, organizational change. After all, an organization is nothing without its people.

The preparation coverage during vacations, delegation assignments (bubble assignments), and on-the-job shadowing so the employee has a chance to observe various jobs in action. Strong succession planning requires that employees are constantly developed and challenged in a direction to fill each key role in your organization.

As a manager – when you get sick or when you step up to a higher position? Do you have anyone in mind to take your place? Remember - you are setting up a highly successful group of people and it should be your goal to make sure you know what their career plans are. In addition, in knowing this – you will understand what drives them and ensure that you are working every day to realize their goals. Sincerity is a trait that you do not have to tell. People just feel it.

"The best leader is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done, and the self-restraint to keep from meddling with them while they do it." -Theodore Roosevelt 

Ten Tips:

1. Start on the right foot! People form opinions rapidly and tend to stick with their initial thoughts – so take the time upfront take time upfront to figure out how to get the team working well.
2. Get to know your team members and foster camaraderie
3. Gain an early win that is a “team win”.
4. Always keep an open door.
5. Your team is first – you are last.
6. Show case your values – make principal based decisions and explain the values and how you apply them.
7. Be clear about your decision-making methodology.
8. Talk about teamwork and be descriptive about what you mean.
9. Do not assume anything is understood.
10. Talk about five times more than you think you need to with about double length of time you think is right. So if your initial thought is “I will talk with each team member one a week for 30 minutes” start out with one hour a day, every day, with each team member. Really.

Take Always:

• Take the time to start out right
• Over communicate
• Explain your values and principals
• Aim for an early team win
• Nurture Relationships
• Create succession planning right from the start

Questions and activities you may want to ponder:  

1. Write 1,000 words about your favorite boss from the past. Why did you like them? What did they do in order to bolster your relationship? What can you incorporate into your style?
2. Make a list of how you would like to introduce yourself to your new team.
3. Make a list on your first day of your key-influencers. This can and will change over time.
4. Make a list of your change coalition.
5. Rate your relationships with your team members after your first week. 1) Don’t know and haven’t talked to them at all, 2) Know a bit of info about them, 3) Have talked a lot with this person. 4) This person has my trust... When you are done rating your relationships with your team members, plan out how to move people from a 1 to 4.

Further Reading:

  Here are a few titles that you might consider reading or rereading if it has been awhile.

One-Minute Manager – Ken Blanchard

Ready To Be A Thought Leader- Denise Brosseau

The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership – John C. Maxwell

Facing Leviathan – Mark Sayers

Influencer: The Science of Leading Change – Grenny, Patterson, Maxfield, McMillan, Switzler

Tim Crocker currently is employed by SASOL in Westlake, Louisiana as the Utilities and Infrastructure Production Manager. During his career, he has worked on infrastructure development at BASF, Biofuels development with British Petroleum, and utilities management at both Georgia Pacific and Domtar. His areas of expertise are process improvement Lean Management, steam and power systems, water treatment, and energy management. Tim received his Bachelors in Chemistry from the University of Portland along with a Major in Philosophy. Later he earned his Masters from the Institute of Paper Science in Atlanta, GA. Tim is an active blogger and speaker. Tim lives in the Moss Bluff community with his wife, Cathy, and daughter, Yuri. They enjoy gardening, amateur astronomy, cooking, and model rocketry.