Success premises, have great start with your team!

 When you start a new job, or you begin working in a new area, there is always this feeling of anxiety and expectation on the new challenges, the new people you will meet, the new environment and not less important ..... your new boss. The importance of the initial meeting with her/him are critical as it will generate the first impressions and most of the times expectations on both sides. 

If you are the leader and you are welcoming the new employee, it is very important to make them feel as welcome as you can, but also it is a great time to align expectations so it can be the beginning of a great start.

16 years ago I was starting a new job in a different country, so the anxiety to know the foreign culture, the people as well as get to know my new boss was high. For my surprise I had the best initial meeting I have had in many years, and the outcome in terms of alignment and expectations with my boss was phenomenal. The meeting started with a document with my name and the name of Success Premises. After that time, I have had always used this and I want to share it with you. I have the document divided in 4 sections: Basic Premises, Expectations alignment, Communication and Priorities. In this post I will share the most important basic premises:

• Trust: You start with my full trust, is up to you to maintain it and reinforce it. Trust is like day and night, either is there or not, there are no medium or gray scales. If I don′t trust you, we can not work together
• Transparency: There is space to do creative things, things out of the box, the request is to make sure you share it with the involved stakeholders. It is important that all the correct persons has the proper visibility of what we are doing. 
• Be on time: This is a key premise, to be on time means to show respect for the time of other persons on a meeting, also for our customers and for ourselves. You have to be accountable for this and honor it
• Things on time: There will be many occasions where I will be asking you for delivering a report, or a presentation or something. It is very important that of you commit to a date for delivering, you honor it. You can negotiate any date, but once you are committed, your word is on the line
• Straight to the point: It is very important to be concise and accountable, if something is wrong, or if there is a problem, please be straight forward, talking around will only be a waste for our time. We need to be productive and talking straight will save us a lot of time. There is a saying " Don′t ruin good apologies with a lousy pretext"
• Strategy first, be fact based: All the tasks we do, the discussion we will have, the arguments must be to help get closer to where we are aiming, to our goals, to our strategies. Also is important that all the conversations and dialogues are well founded. We can discuss whenever you want, but you have to be well prepared
• Don′t bring problems without a possible solution: I am here to help you grow, not to do your job. If you bring a problem, please take the time to think which might be the possible solutions... most of the time what you will share with me will be the best way to solve it!
• No surprises!, Bad news first news: When something wrong happened, if you failed with a customer, if you made a mistake, if we lost a bid, whatever the case, please raise your hand as quickly as you can, so I can react faster to help you and solve it!. If you let me know of what happened 2 weeks later, there will be nothing I can do. Once we react, we will understand what could have been done different so we learn as a team.
• Teamwork: A key element that must be in top of our minds, we are here a s a part of a team, and teams within teams; we must look for the greater good! Your enthusiasm, collaborations and willingness to help your colleagues is critical.
• Respect: This is another black or white element, if there is no respect, we simply can not work, and this goes in both directions. This applies to all your the persons you have interactions with, not only your direct team, but everyone in the company

There are some other points, but this are the main ones. You might be thinking that all these are obvious and in fact they are, it is just that we tend to oversee them and at least when I have share them with my people, it has made a lot of sense for them, it is better to start well aligned!!! I hope it helps you for your next starting point!