How To Step Into A New Leadership Role

You work hard at your job and you’re good at it. There are goals in place to help you move up the company ladder and then one day it happens. You get promoted to a leadership role.

Now more than ever, you’ve got to show your value and prove your worth. Regardless if you’ve already proven it in your previous role.

Only this time it’s to show those who promoted you they made the right decision choosing you.

How To Transition Into A Leadership Role

As exciting as it is to be promoted to a leadership role, it can also be a challenge and a struggle.

Here are my tips to help you make a smooth transition into your new role.

The First 90 Days: A Must-Read

This book has been around for some time but I highly recommend starting with The First 90 Days by Michael D Watkins:

Even for a new internal role, it’s a great idea to leverage this book. It includes 10 steps to design your first 90 days. If I were to sum it up, the most important thing to learning the new job is just that; learning. This is your golden opportunity to ask questions and make an assessment of the team without bias.

Develop A Learning Plan

So as much as possible, resist diving into the workstreams right away and develop a learning plan. What do you need to learn about the role, your boss, your team, your customers or other stakeholders? Who should you be networking with? And who do you need to have casual one-on-one conversations with?

Once you have your learning plan in place then you can execute on that. Set up your calendar with all the meetings you need, organize all the documents you need to read etc..

It’s also critical to understand short-term and long-term expected deliverables. Start with those stated deliverables, but also you may augment them based on what you’re learning.

Create A Development Strategy

Once you wrap up your learning plan its time to develop your strategy. What is your vision, purpose, where will you play how you win? Do you have the correct management system in place to drive results? Do you have the right tools, funding resources and people in the right roles to be successful? If you don’t, what are those gaps and how can those be addressed?

Think About Behaviors In Your New Leadership Role

Finally think about your behaviors in this new role. Do you need to shed an old mindset? Especially if you’re going from being a peer to being a leader, how do you reframe how you think of yourself but also how others will think of you as they need to change their mental map as well.

Take note of what behaviors you will adopt as setting a model of leadership. For example, do you want to send emails over the weekend? Or late at night? Is that okay with the culture or does it send the wrong message?

What is your response time to requests? How do you say no? And how do you prioritize? Your team and their teams will fall in line with your leadership style. A business president I used to work with said that even if he walked down the hall with his head down, people started worrying (and spread rumors) that the business was going to be sold off.

Keep in mind that small gestures or words and have a huge impact on the team and be careful how your nonverbal signals can be interpreted.