From the course: New Manager Foundations

Explaining your approach to leadership

From the course: New Manager Foundations

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Explaining your approach to leadership

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- As a new manager, I know that you'll experience some amount of anxiety and ambiguity about what's to come. That's normal and you'll grow through it. However, you also have to know that your team is experiencing some amount of anxiety and ambiguity too, about you. Ambiguity is a challenge because when people don't know something they want to know, they fill in the blank with something inaccurate and possibly damaging. So, within your first week, have a team meeting to explain your approach to leadership so everyone can be informed and ask any needed questions. You can start by talking about your accessibility. They don't yet know how to feel about speaking up or going to see you when needed, and they don't know your communication preferences, so share them. I'm, of course, going to push you to have an open-door policy and to embrace multiple common channels, but there is no perfect answer. The point is to speak up and explain how you normally behave so employees know how to begin normal dialogues with you. Next, address how you typically make decisions. Again, allow me to suggest that you should strive to be as collaborative as possible, but nonetheless, make sure they know how you usually gather and process input from them and how you make and share your decisions. You don't know their history or preferences and though there is no one perfect way to make decisions, the goal is for everyone to know your preferences so they won't be surprised. It's also useful to share with the team some of your non-task expectations. Here I'm referring to daily behavioral expectations such as being positive, helpful, taking ownership and supporting open dialogues. When we talked about establishing your identity as a leader earlier, we talked about group norms and why the team should talk about them. Well, this would be a great time to do exactly that. Then you can keep the discussion going by asking the team about their expectations of you. Listen and take a few notes. Encourage them to ask questions. Then be positive, but frank, with your responses. Tell them you genuinely want to know their ideas, their needs, and their preferences as the group moves forward. Also, remember, it's smart to follow up with informal one-on-one talks. Recall our discussion of individual differences. Not everyone prefers group settings. So, sometimes in one-on-one meetings you'll learn something not shared publicly. Okay. To get started, create a meeting agenda to help things go smoothly. You'll need at least 30 to 60 minutes to cover the topics we addressed. No need to distribute the agenda beforehand, but feel free to pass it out when you get face-to-face that day. There you go. A little honesty and openness about how you operate gives the team clarity and confidence about beginning this new relationship with you.

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