Three Tips for New Leaders

By: Gina Kellogg-Soleil

Kate finally made it!  She’s moving up the ladder and feeling like her career is moving forward.  This is her time to shine, make a difference and create a name for herself.  She has put in her time, proven herself, and now she’s being recognized her for all her hard work.  Kate is being promoted to store manager!

Six months later frustration has set in.  Kate is repeatedly saying there’s not enough time in the day. She’s following all the company’s policies and standard operating processes, and making sure the team is performing its roles and responsibilities.  Emails are checked, deadlines are being met and Kate’s store location couldn’t be more organized.  She’s doing everything “right”, so why are sales down, her store employees disengaged, and customers moderately satisfied at best?  Kate’s spinning, and she needs to see results fast.

Ah, the proverbial new manager’s trap of being so focused on systematic perfection that we forget about what real leadership is and what truly generates results—people.  Sure, when asked what it means to be a leader, Kate, like all of us, can verbally provide the “correct” answer:  great leaders inspire a shared vision, model the way, leverage the strengths of others, yada, yada, yada.  Let’s admit it, although we all know what it means to be a great leader, leadership is hard work, and it takes time and practice. The reality is that great leaders are great because they’ve learned from the many mistakes they’ve made throughout their career.  Kate is experiencing one of the first lesson’s  every great leader learns—results come when you put energy into the people on your team, the people who are customers in your store and the people who are within your network; not from solely following systems and processes.

Like Kate, most new leaders tend to veer away from putting energy toward people, and  they gravitate to a systematic management approach because it’s tangible, easy to measure, and being able to cross off “to do’s” from a list gives a feeling  of success and recognition.  And many times they’re good at it! Yes, it’s important to have these systematic management skills, but they need to be balanced with basic leadership.  If Kate’s your employee, here are three leadership tips that can help shorten the new leadership learning curve:

1.  Trust:  The best thing a new leader can do in their new role is spend their first 90 days focused on building trust.  Yes, that’s correct – trust.  New leaders should spend their first 90 days beginning to build trust with their team by simply observing, talking with employees, and most importantly listening to what their team and customers are sharing.  Building trust requires new leaders to patiently soak in the environment and build relationships.  When trust is built, both employee engagement and customer loyalty increases—a combination that equates to increased revenue for all.  Building trust doesn’t stop after being in a new role for 90 days, though.  The 90 days gives the new leader time to begin establishing behaviors that will allow them to integrate the necessary management tactics.  Once employees trust a new leader, they become engaged, welcome leadership guidance, and will actually want the leader to succeed.

2.  Self-Reflection:  New leaders should immediately get in the habit of looking first at themselves before putting blame onto their employees.  Many new leaders fall into the employee blame game all too easy, making statements such as: “It’s like they don’t even listen,”  “She’s so frustrating,”  “Why can’t they figure out how to do something so simple,” “We’d be so much further ahead if they could only….” Alight new leaders, listen up.  A leader is a direct reflection of his/her team, and a team is a direct reflection of their leader.  What does this exactly mean? When frustration with employees rears its ugly head, it’s often times because a leader’s behavior is triggering a cause and effect reaction.  The solution?  When a new leader finds frustration surfacing, self-reflection is a must.  Here is a series of questions that can help new leaders troubleshoot perceived employee dilemmas:

     1) Is it possible that others have the same frustration with you?
     2) What about your behavior could be causing their frustration?
     3) How can you change your behavior to eliminate the frustration?
     4) How can you apply the same rational to the frustration you're having with your own employees?

3.  Servant Leadership:  It’s all about the people.  In the grand scheme of things, it’s the people on your team and the people who are your customers who achieve the business results.  New leaders can lose sight of how important it is to put down the PDA and put their energy towards their employees and customers.  The misconceived notion of new leaders is that they have been put in a position of authority and granted a title of control.  Great leaders know it’s the employees and customers who are the ones with the real authority and control, and an instrumental part of being a leader is about serving your employees and customers by helping to ensure they have the resources, knowledge and attention necessary to thrive.  Not surprisingly, the concept of serving your people circles directly back to the need for trust.  If a new leader wants results, help them put down the PDA and pick up the habit of servant leadership.