New Leader Tuesday—Beware These 6 Time and Agenda Killers

A wise man once offered to a new leader, “You’re job has changed and now, instead of focusing on the details, you’ve got to detail the focus.”

For too many new to the role of leading, we allow the urgent-unimportant to monopolize our time and dictate our priorities.

Detailing the focus means ensuring that your eyes and efforts are locked on to the real issues in your new role.

Beware the pull of some alluring but dangerous new leader distractions.

6 Tempting Distractions to Avoid:

1. An Explosion of Invitations to Give Up Your Time. The new leader is a popular invitee to all manner of team and committee activities. While the invitations are gratifying, they will quickly multiply to exceed your available time. Learn to say “no” nicely, while selecting the one or two activities that will help you strengthen networking and visibility across groups in your organization.

2. The Sally Field Syndrome. (Upon winning the Oscar for Best Actress, Ms. Field responded with her famous, “You like me” exhortation.) Beware the lure of spending too much time trying to be liked by your team members. It’s nice to have good working relationships with your team members, but being friends or, worse yet, striving to “be liked” are truly false goals and big time sinks. You need to earn and give respect, give and gain trust and work to ensure you’ve got the right people on the right jobs focused on the right priorities. Build working relationships, but don’t preoccupy on needing to be liked.

3. Getting Bogged Down in the Numbers. Numbers are outcomes. They’re important and they tell a story, you just have no context for the characters or plot. Instead of trying to gain understanding by looking at the cells on a spreadsheet, look forward to the organization’s strategies, departmental goals and your boss’s goals; ask a great deal of questions about the business and listen carefully. Over time, the numbers will begin to tell a story that makes sense. Of course, it’s up to you to help drive the right numbers in the future.

4. Ignoring the Subtle Resistance of Your Team Members. All new leaders face some amount of subtle resistance during their start-up process. You’ve not yet earned the team’s trust or respect, and they’re naturally leery of the unknown entity who now pulls the strings of prioritize, hire, fire, and promote. While the team may not be working against you, you’ve got to prove yourself before they start working for you.

5. Not Being Sensitive to Pace. It’s common to step into a new team filled with excitement and energy, and want to have an impact in a hurry. This unbridled enthusiasm can backfire as otherwise hard-working or even over-worked staffers struggle to cope with existing work and appear supportive of the new boss’s need for speed. A shot of adrenaline is often healthy, but be mindful of the good, hard work that was in process long before you arrived on the scene to “save the team.”

6. Assuming the You Alone Own the Agenda. Everyone expects change when the new boss arrives, however, dictating change is very different than working together to identify areas and actions for change. The “new sheriff in town” and “here’s how it’s going to work around here,” work fine in the movies and a few truly dire circumstances, however, in my best twitter vernacular, it’s a formula for #(hashtag)fail in most organizational settings. Build the agenda together. It shows respect, gains buy-in and helps build your credibility.

The Bottom-Line for Now:

Watch out for the bear traps that catch so many first time managers and new team leaders by surprise. How you use your time and where you decide to place your focus are two key decisions on your critical path towards success as a leader.

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