The Dos & Don'ts of Being a New Leader
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The dos and don’ts of being a new leader.
Here are a number of valuable tips for new leaders, and they're just as helpful for seasoned leaders. If you're not doing these things, now’s a good time to start.
Whether you are a brand new leader, inheriting a team that’s new for you, or have been a leader for decades, here are the four dos and don’ts that I think are the most beneficial for any leader to step into their role and crush it.
DO: Establish a pattern of asking for feedback from your team.
I'm putting this first because I think it's super important and so many leaders don't do it: Ask your team for feedback.
This is how you empower people's voices, build trust, rapport, and better relationships with your team members. Come in as a leader and say, “Hey, part of me being in this role and your leader is that I'm going to be asking you for feedback on a semi-regular basis,”
This is how you learn and grow and improve as a leader. It’s also how you build strong working relationships with them and ensure that they’re having a great experience on the team.
So critical. Ask them for their feedback, respond well, and take what they say to heart. Doing this will earn their trust and respect, and set you both up for success.
DON’T: Believe that you are more important than your team.
Your role as a leader is not above your team, it is actually underneath your team — to support and lift them up.
Your role as a leader is to serve your team and make sure that they are successful. They are not there to serve you or to make you successful, it is the other way around. Leadership is not about wielding power and authority over other people. It is about developing and lifting other people up. If you do not approach leadership that way and have that mindset, you do not belong in a leadership position.
I said what I said.
DO: Be vulnerable and have a growth mindset.
You don’t have to know everything in the world. Your team does not expect you to be perfect. So many leaders put on a false front of “I know everything, I don’t make mistakes, I'm never wrong.” It feels so fake and dishonest.
It is okay to not know everything and have all the answers. It is okay to come from a place of wanting to grow, and improve, that's why we ask for feedback. Adopt a growth mindset of “I can learn things, I can be adaptable, I can improve, I can be vulnerable.”
No matter how long you’ve been a leader or a human, you definitely have some things that you’re great at, and you also have a lot of areas of opportunity to improve. Acknowledging and owning that is the strongest, most powerful way to move through the world and in your leadership role.
This attitude will ring true for your team. They will feel your sincerity, trust you for being honest and real instead of putting up a false front. It’s a power move.
DON’T: Be too casual or inappropriate with your team members.
This is a pitfall for a lot of new leaders and people that haven't been in a leadership position or people who become leaders of a team that they were just on.
As a leader, you cannot be best friends with the people that you're leading. You’ve have to create professional boundaries and not cross that line. You should be friendly and kind and polite, you don’t have to be mean to people but you cannot be closest friends with them.
At some point you might have to give them difficult feedback, or you may have to fire or let them go. It is a conflict of interest to be too close or too unprofessional with your team members. It doesn’t mean that you can’t be friends, but you need to be fully aware of the professional relationship that exists and not cross lines.
Part B of this point, which is critically important: Do not ever badmouth or talk poorly about other team members. It is the exact opposite of integrity to do this. Your team will not respect or like you for doing it, it’s a bad look for you. Don't even be tempted to do it.
DO: Invest in your skills to resolve conflict, have difficult conversations, and communicate effectively.
This is extremely important. These areas are things that you need to be highly skilled in. Do not wait for your organization to provide training in these areas, seek them out yourself.
It will make your life and job easier if you're great at resolving conflict, giving and receiving feedback, and nonviolent communication.
There are a thousand books like Fierce Conversations (by Susan Scott), or Crucial Conversations (by Grenny, Patterson, Switzler, & McMillan), or countless YouTube videos and blogs about this that you can find for free.
Invest in yourself and level up in these areas. There is no excuse to not be great at these things as a leader. It’s a must.
DON’T: Micromanage.
People are not little children that need to be babysat by you to make sure that they're doing their job. Stop breathing down people's necks and checking over their shoulders constantly.
Hire great people, let them do what you hired them to do. Find other ways to measure people's productivity than micromanaging them.
If you are prone to micromanage, it's likely a symptom of the fact that you are probably a control freak, and also not a clear communicator. Give people clear expectations of what you want to see from them; when things are due, how you want them done, etc. and then get out of their way and let them do their work without breathing down their necks.
Micromanagers destroy morale, cause people to hate and/or quit their jobs and dread coming to work every day.
DO: Set the bar for accountability on your team.
Whatever you allow, you endorse.
If there's bad behavior that takes place, people are underperforming, they have poor attitudes, toxic behavior, etc. If you allow those things to take place, you are putting a rubber stamp of approval on them.
You, as a leader on the team are the only one that can set the bar and hold the team accountable, it’s your responsibility. Coworkers can't hold each other accountable the same way that you can as a leader, that falls to you. You have to be willing to have conversations, coach people, to address and correct behavior, or make the difficult choice to remove somebody from the team if that’s what needs to happen.
That also means that you have to model what you want to see as exceptional behavior from your team. It falls to you.
DON’T: Break your word.
You have to be impeccable with your word. If you say you're going to do that something, do it. Be reliable, follow through, say what you mean and don't mince words.
Don't make false promises. Show up in a way that people can trust that if you say something to be true, it is true. And there's going to be times when that doesn't happen because something changes or some circumstance that challenges that — take ownership of that. Don't defend it, come clean. Being impeccable with your word is so important. Be trustworthy.
Final Thoughts
This is a big list of many things, being a good leader takes a lot. It's an important role and matters to do it right.
Go be awesome.
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This article was created by Galen Emanuele for the #culturedrop. Free leadership and team culture content in less than 5 minutes a week. Check out the rest of this month's content and subscribe to the Culture Drop at https://bit.ly/culturedrop