Starting a new leadership position can be both, exciting and frightening experience. What you do during your first days will contribute to your success or failure in a new role. Following are key strategies to help you understand where to begin as leader so that you win the game.
1. Take time to get to know your direct reports
Schedule time with each of your team members to get to introduce yourself, get to know them and to start building relationships. Some questions you might want to ask are information about their role and responsibilities, prior path and projects they’re currently working on. Taking time to get to know your direct reports is never wasted. When done well, you will learn about things that are done well and you should do more of them, things that need to be improved and things that you might want to stop doing altogether. The key is in you paying attention to what they share with you.
2. Find out who is who
Depending on the size of the organization, this might be a simple or overwhelming task. The longer the list, the more important it is for you to prioritize it. Who do you need to connect with first? Board members? Top clients? Partners? Boss? Executive team? Sponsors? Map out your strategy and initiate the conversations if necessary.
3. Fix your attitude
No matter your role or position, keep in mind that you are part of a larger organization and not everything is about you. Your role is an important part of a larger business. Your role as a leader is not about being bossy, but about creating environment in which people want to perform at their highest level and produce their best results.
4. Manage expectations
Things don’t always go according to a plan. Even the best plan faces obstacles and unexpected surprises. But having strategies in place to deal with them shows that you are reliable and credible. Beware of over promising and under delivering as this can become a quick sand under your feet.
Now that you know where to begin as leader, it might be a good idea to improve your leadership skills. Check our FREE Leadership Breakthrough eCourse to help you move forward quickly.
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