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Begin managing expectations from the moment you consider taking a new role. Focus on expectations during the interview process.
It’s wise to get bad news on the table early and to lower unrealistic expectations. Then check in regularly to make sure your boss’s expectations have not shifted. Revisiting expectations is especially important if you’re onboarding from the outside
Buy yourself some time, even if it’s only a few weeks, to diagnose the new organization and come up with an action plan.
Your early conversations should focus on situational diagnosis, expectations, and style.
The most effective approach is to integrate your boss’s goals with your own efforts to get early wins.
Surface the Difficult Issues When serious style differences arise, it’s best to address them directly. Otherwise, you run the risk that your boss will interpret a style difference as disrespect or even incompetence on your part. Raise the style issue before it becomes a source of irritation, and talk with your boss about how to accommodate both your styles.
This is what Michael did, although he wisely waited to build credibility before addressing it.
Your key outputs at the end of the first 30 days will be a diagnosis of the situation, an identification of key priorities, and a plan for how you will spend the next 30 days.
By the end of the first few months, you want your boss, your peers, and your subordinates to feel that something new, something good, is happening. Early wins excite and energize people
This research has direct implications for how you should manage your transition. It suggests that you should keep your ends clearly in mind when you devise your plan to secure early wins. The transition lasts only a few months, but you typically will remain in the same job for two to four years
To the greatest extent possible, your early wins should advance longer-term goals.
So be sure that your plans for securing early wins, to the greatest extent possible, (1) are consistent with your agreed-to goals—what your bosses and key stakeholders expect you to achieve—and (2) help you introduce the new patterns of behavior you need to achieve those goals.
Get wins that matter to your boss. It’s essential to get early wins that energize your direct reports and other employees. But your boss’s opinion about your accomplishments is crucial too.
Effective leaders get people to make realistic commitments and then hold them responsible for achieving results.
Early in your transition, you want to project decisiveness but defer some decisions until you know enough to make the right calls.
What messages do you want to get across about who you are and what you represent as a leader? What are the best ways to convey those messages? Identify your key audiences—direct reports, other employees, key outside constituencies—and craft a few messages tailored to each.
They should focus instead on who you are, the values and goals you represent, your style, and how you plan to conduct business.
Think about risk management: build a promising portfolio of early-win initiatives so that big successes in one will balance disappointments in others. Then focus relentlessly on getting results.
goals
Elevate change agents. Identify the people in your new unit, at all levels, who have the insight, drive, and incentives to advance your agenda. Promote them or appoint them to lead key projects, as Elena did.
If you cannot establish boundaries for yourself, you cannot expect others to do it for you.
Go to the Balcony. Do you find yourself getting too caught up in emotional escalation in difficult situations? If you do, discipline yourself to stand back, take stock from fifty thousand feet, and then make productive interventions.
Ultimately, your success or failure will flow from all the small choices you make along the way. These choices can create momentum—
