You’ve gotten a promotion – hooray – you made it! You were probably selected because you were great at executing on your job. Many first time leaders or leaders new to an organization, focus on making a great impression on their leaders, demonstrating competence in their roles. While there is nothing “wrong” with working to demonstrate competence in your role, sometimes leaders do this to the exclusion of other critical areas of leadership.
Mistake One:
New leaders don’t get a good feel for what your employees do and the tasks that they find challenging so you can support them.
This requires spending time in conversation with your team. It may require you having different conversations than you have ever had before. It will require you to be curious and demonstrate some great listening. It also requires a mindset shift. This can be difficult, but recognizing that time you are spending talking with your team and talking with them about what is working, what they do well, where they struggle is part of your job. These conversations to get to know the team can feel casual to some leaders and like a “waste of time”, however, getting good information on what your team does and what they believe their roles are is critical to leading. Knowing this will help you provide the right support and clarity in communications with the team.
Mistake Two:
New leaders act like they know everything and don’t leverage the strengths of your team members.
After a promotion, you want to be the leader and some new leaders fall into the trap of thinking that you need to know everything. Great leaders know that not only do they not need to know everything, but it is exhausting and damaging to team relationships for them to behave as though they do know everything. As a contributor to a team you want to feel valued for your talents, so as leader, you are going to want recognize and encourage your team to use their talents. This doesn’t mean you need to not know anything, but it does mean you should not discount what your team knows. In order to figure this out, you need to speak with your team, figure out what strengths each team member has and how and if they are being used. Some leaders use an assessment to help team members discover and talk about their strengths. This can be a great way to get common language with the team, create a group activity for your team and ensure that not only you, but the group are aware of strengths.
Mistake Three:
New leaders take a hands-off approach with employees because they don’t want to micro-manage them and absolutely don’t provide consistent feedback.
No one wants to be labeled a micro-manager, so its easy to see how some new leaders can fall into this trap of starting with a hands off approach and stay that way. Allowing the team to “self-manage” can be tempting for new leaders, but is not a good approach. People want to be seen and heard at work, they want to know they are doing good work, they need feedback, encouragement and acknowledgement. New leaders should invest in knowing their team, the goals of the team and ensure that they are communicating with clarity and providing consistent messaging and feedback to the team. Teams that are productive and engaged get good and clear messaging from their leaders. Taking too much of a hands off approach creates confusion for the team, allows rumor and speculation to take hold and ultimately causes more dissatisfaction, decrease in productivity and reflects badly on the leader, which is the opposite impression that most new leaders and setting out to make.
If you are struggling with how to overcome any of these obstacles, I have lots of resources I am willing to share. Contact me at nikki@ridgelinecoaching.com.
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