Wisdom and Leadership

Taking on a leadership role in a new organisation is a huge transition and leaders often place unrealistic expectations on themselves. Make a good impression! Understand everything! Make decisions fast! Take care with these expectations – they can trip you up;

Mistake number one: Get some quick wins

In a bid to prove value, leaders aim for fast runs on the board. They want to be perceived as willing to make tough decisions and take prompt action to solve problems. It is typical for new leaders to make big changes in the first month.

Mistake number two:  Roll your sleeves up

Newly appointed leaders are keen to demonstrate their commitment and show that they are prepared to work hard. Getting stuck into detailed tasks and diving into facts and numbers is a natural tendency. Working long hours is too!

Mistake number three: Stick with what you know well

Previous behaviors and strategies are the obvious place to try to leverage success in a new role. It is easy to resort to the comfort of familiar tactics.

There are better approaches that can achieve longer term results:

Take your time

Wanting to quickly demonstrate expertise is seductive, but  first getting to know the territory is vital.  The pressure to perform immediately can be mostly self imposed.  Give enough time to really understand the challenges and try to resist making fast decisions.

Focus on everyone else

The spotlight is on a new leader and it is easy to become too focused on making a good impression and providing answers. Everyone else is interested in his or her own agenda.  By listening more, saying less and really exploring the needs and issues of others, a new leader will establish trust.

Stay above the detail

At the early stages of a new appointment all the details are not so important. An overview can be maintained  by scanning, looking for patterns, making links between functions and identifying gaps.  Diving into detail and tactical action will look busy and productive but is less effective.

Become the learner

A new context will require new approaches.  Rather than being the expert, the leader who is confident is always willing to be a learner.  Being the naive questioner can yield important information. Adopting a learning attitude will encourage good connections with people and create new ideas.

What are you doing all day? When researchers follow business leaders around all day they find that most of their day is spent having conversations.  This doesn’t mean just talking! A huge part of an effective leader’s conversation is listening.

Nancy Klein, a global leadership expert, agrees.  Nancy teaches leaders how to enable others to think well. She says listening is more difficult than most leaders realize, it is more than just keeping quiet.  Nancy advises leaders to understand the difference between “listening to reply” and “listening to ignite”.

Listening to reply is thinking hard about the next statement or question, waiting for a pause in order to jump in with our own ideas. Listening to reply is often aiming to be clever and to show the other person how we can help and how much we know. These are natural tendencies in strong leaders! Nancy warns that when we listen to reply we can inadvertently stop the other person thinking and close down his or her own flow of ideas.

Another way to listen is to listen to ignite, where the quality of our listening is such that we somehow ignite the other persons’ own insights bringing the other person closer to their own best thinking. This is listening for the best in another person, seeing their strengths and qualities whilst they are talking. Listening to ignite is being confident without the need to provide lots of clever comments and allowing the other person to be brilliant. These conversations can lead to innovation and richer insights. Surely a wonderful way for a leader to spend their day!