Tips for New Leaders
Congratulations! You’ve been promoted! What now?If you’re stepping into a new leadership role, you might feel overwhelmed. To help you out, we’ve gathered tips on important leadership topics where you may have questions: communicating with employees, knowing how to handle your new position of power and showing the right attitude. Keep reading for advice on being a successful new leader.The Key To Great Leadership? It’s Consistency — AND Flexibility. ERE Media: “When you transition from an individual contributor to a leader, it can be hard to give up control of your past work. However, micromanaging your team will stifle creativity and disengage them.You must trust them and give them ownership of their work. Hold them accountable to the results you agreed upon, while being flexible about how they achieve the results. They will fail sometimes – that’s how they learn and grow. Recognize which failures are okay and which are not. This will help your team flourish while ensuring you avoid problems.”How Leaders, in Politics and Business, Use Influence Instead of Power. Entrepreneur: “Self-awareness is an important skill for leadership, and the most self-aware realize that the confidence they have in their own knowledge and abilities has to be measured against a humility to know that we are all accountable to someone: boards, managers, employees, customers, investors, G-d, our mothers. Knowing to whom you are accountable, developing that buy-in and leveraging that to make enlightened, effective decisions is the formula that drives leadership.”10 Experts Share Their Top IT Leadership Tips. CIO: “Without exception, the most effective communications are face to face. Clarification of project details, communication about needed improvements, a heart-felt thank you; these objectives and many more are most effectively achieved when face-to-face. This is so because face to face conversation provides immediate feedback through multiple channels all of which aid in genuine – expressions, gestures, vocal tone, back-and-forth exchanges happening in real time, just to name a few. Next time the urge rises to send off an email to initiate a conversation, consider an actual conversation instead. Follow-up with email if a written summary makes sense, but have the initial conversation face to face.”A Leadership Lesson From an Army General: Use "Briefback" Communication. Lifehacker: “To be a strong leader, retired Lt. Gen. Frank Kearney suggests that your communication should always be a three-part process, or what’s known as ‘briefback’ communication. You give orders, they reflect those orders back to you, and you clarify everything that may have been misunderstood. Kearney explains: ‘We are in a world where most communication is one way. Email is a classic example. We make assumptions that people understand our intentions, but just because you’ve sent an email doesn’t mean that people have read it, much less understood it. With three-way communication, you clear things up easier and faster.’”5 Steps for Expanding Your Expertise to Become a Better Leader. Triple Pundit: “Check your ego. View your expertise as a way to contribute to a goal, not to be the smartest person in the room. While it’s true that experts know more than most regarding their discipline, it’s easy to become overconfident or self-important. And that attitude prevents partnerships and effective collaboration. Be humble about what you know — and what you don’t know — and look for opportunities to serve others using your knowledge.”Looking for help training your new leaders? Contact us.Success Labs is a leadership development and management consulting firm in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. For more than 25 years, our expert team of consultants has worked with hundreds of companies to explore their business potential and improve their company and cultural performance. Contact us to get proactive about your people strategy.
