I have the good fortune of having a growing group of past clients who have agreed to be Noonday alumni. One of the gifts they regularly give me is the gift of their experience. I got such a gift over lunch a couple of weeks ago. I met with an alumnus who is just completing his first 90 days in a critical leadership role in his company.
In the spirit of a true Noonday alum, he encouraged me to share these lessons with the rest of you. (By the way, he’s been tremendously successful this year, pulling off an unprecedented set of initiatives.)
So from one talented, successful leader to all of you, here goes:
- Resist the urge to clean house immediately. “People in my group walked on eggshells, waiting for the ‘other shoe to drop.’ I decided to prove them wrong about that belief and hold fire.”
- Don’t wait too long to make changes. “My strength – wanting to prove my team wrong – became my weakness. I see people changes I need to make, but now my managers resist my attempts to make moves. ‘You can’t fire them now – they’re finally trying!'”
- Enroll your managers in the changes you make. “I saw that a core flaw of our department was the inability to continuously develop people. But instead of teaching my leaders to pull this off themselves, I jumped into the gap and did it myself. Now at the end of my first year in this role, I realize I should have gotten my managers to rigorously evaluate, engage, and develop the people in our group. It’s a core value for me and it needs to become a core value for them.”
Hindsight is always 20/20. Any of you who are recently through the first 6-12 months of a new role have something to add?
