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New leaders…either those that are first-time leaders or those that find themselves responsible for leading a new team, deal with extremely high degrees of ambiguity at start-up. They lack context for the people, the team culture, the issues, group and individual dynamics and so many important variables in the environment, that they find themselves acting on instinct or avoiding acting because of this knowledge gap.

One of the critical challenges for the new leader is quickly closing this context gap to gain a solid footing for decision-making, agenda creation and ultimately to begin driving improvements and better alignment around the organization’s key objectives.

While experienced leaders understand that information is never perfect, they also understand the importance of asking the right questions, listening carefully and observing to quickly assess the culture, people-dynamics and key issues.

Six Suggestions for Closing the Context Gap:

  • Meet one on one with everyone that works for you soon after gaining responsibility for a new team. Use the three critical questions: What’s working? What’s not? and What do you need from me to help you better execute your job?
  • During the one-on-one sessions, resist the temptation to preach about your own agenda.  The reality is that you want help and input in defining the new agenda.
  • Share the findings from What’s Working/Not Working? with your team members in a group setting. Ask the group to to interpret the answers/lists and define actions and needed improvements.
  • Get outside of your own group and meet with your counterparts in other functional areas.  Ask the same three questions, with a twist on #3 to learn what your team can do better to support internal customers.
  • Meet with customer facing colleagues or customers to gain insight into what his happening in the market with customer, partners and competitors.  Communicate this information to your team.
  • Encourage your manager to clarify key corporate strategies and goals and to define how your team is accountable to helping achieve those goals.

The Bottom-Line:

Spend quality time asking questions and listening inside and outside of your team.  Share insights and involve your team in interpreting the insights and translating them into priorities and actions.

Your ability to learn to ask the right questions, listen carefully and to communicate your findings to your team members will help you close your start-up context gap.  Follow this approach and your credibility as a new leader will grow quickly as your team appreciates your efforts to involve and educate them from the start.