What is Your Duty as a New Leader?

As a Leader new in your role or to your team, you're going to be eager to get right to work and start to make your mark. How you go about this will affect your ability to lead effectively and gain the trust and support of your team.

As a Leader your work is not one directional, rather you only succeed when you build a partnership. Setting the right intention from the start will help you fulfill your duty and create momentum forward.

1 - Build relationships

They don't have to care but you do. To lead you must have the trust of your team. People trust people they know. Until they sense that you're in this for them and with their best interest, they're unlikely to follow you and your team will struggle to actualize its potential.

To put intention into building these relationships you can utilize mechanisms that may already exist in your day to day or build in standalone time for this work. For elements that may already exist in your day like a 1-1, you may want to lean more heavily into getting to know people as you start these meetings. You could even spend some extra time connecting in meetings that you lead.

Personality tests and insight could also provide additional insight into how you may be able to connect and build relationships more intentionally. By better understanding yourself and those you lead, you will have more insight into how to best connect in an authentic way.

At the end of the day you could also just carve time out of work altogether and take your new team or individuals out to lunch or plan events outside of work. It will be important that this is still ‘work time’ so that no one feels they have to dedicate their personal time to building a relationship. This uninterrupted time can be a great way to really take a deep dive in.

2 - Set the example

From expectations to behaviors to work ethic, you have to prove to them that you can walk the walk not just talk the talk. People don't respect Leaders who dictate from their perch but are not in it, with them, supporting and guiding by their side.

It will be important that you are both trained on any front line work that you support, as well as actually invest some time doing this work. As a leader, it both helps set the example as well as supports a more complete top to bottom understanding of any function that you support.

While you may not be directly responsible for this front line and day to day work, you are the accountable party to ensuring its completion. When it comes to the partnership of a Leader and those they lead, there will always be more respect when they can see you’ve walked in your shoes and truly understand the work at hand.

3 - Be present and intentional

Do not disparage past processes or leadership; focus on 'what is' and the path forward. Keep your work in the present. No matter the intention set to building relationships, you can kill trust out of the gate by being critical of past circumstances. The team members who were a part of that past will feel like they're being attacked by proxy and unlikely to follow you.

Curiosity will be your best friend. In moments where opportunities are identified, it will be really helpful, especially at the start of your tenure, to slow down and understand what the process or approach has been, who created it, how it's been received and how it's valued.

You haven’t just replaced a leader, you've replaced a piece of the team that others were already a part of. You’re coming into their space not the other way around. Honoring and respecting this, no matter the state of health or disarray, will help establish an intentional approach to evolution and support forward.

4 - Craft vision and generate buy in

You will be able to hit the ground running and gain momentum quicker once you have defined a vision and gained buy in. Until this happens you may be met with resistance or indifference and thus will not be effective. Leaders only fulfill their duty when they have people willingly following them. To do that they need to know who and what they're following.

This is especially important for new leaders or leaders who have replaced favored leaders. Beyond the personal relationship the people you lead need to know who you are as a leader. You can start by defining and outlining the specifics of how you lead, how you communicate, and how you ask people to communicate and give feedback back to you. You can also very clearly define the broad goals you’re working to achieve and how you see their strengths as allowing this vision to exist as a possibility.

Communicate this vision clearly and communicate it often. The biggest fear with change is in the unknown. The more your vision is known, the less scary it will feel, and the easier it will be for people to jump in and get going along your side.

5 - Get right to work

You'll want to hit the ground running and that is great. There is a difference between starting through building relationships and gaining trust, setting vision, etc vs coming in like a bull in a china shop so to speak. People struggle with change, so honor this and make sure to bring people along for the ride vs charging straight ahead.

There is a practical consideration here. For those new leaders who are taking over a team or a function that is in severe distress, you may have no choice but to dive right in. In these instances it will be so important to still take the time to learn the work and define the vision as you’re building the relationship and modeling the process.

People can sense if your intentions are genuine, so always honor the people that have been on the team no matter the circumstances and hunker down with them to shift the work forward to where it needs to be.

6 - Encourage feedback

Ask for feedback of you and your leadership often and celebrate getting it. The most powerful way to gain trust is to show your new team that you're as growth focused as you're asking them to be. Ask for feedback and receive it often. Take that feedback and set intention with shifting and evolving your process forward. Any team that feels like they can be candid with you and that you truly respect and hear them will follow you to the ends of the earth.

A helpful way to start building this habit is to amplify the feedback that you receive. Did you get constructive feedback in a 1-1, meeting, or review? Share that with your team, and connect it to the learning and insight that it provided you. Define how that new learning or insight helps you on your path forward. Make it not scary to receive and talk about developmental feedback.

As you model this and ask for it, your team can open up and you can get into a true flow state where you’ll be equipped to very quickly iterate and move through possibilities and ideas.

7 - Find a mentor

If you are unclear or unfamiliar with taking on the challenge of a new role or leading a new team, find someone who has done it before and would be open to giving you insight. It will be important to be intentional and specific with this person about what support would be helpful and how you’re carrying it forward.

Typically finding someone that is at least one full level of experience or competency above you keeps their support relevant enough to you, fresh enough to them, and will have you both with similar time considerations regarding availability. You can connect with others on your team, find someone on LinkedIn, or through networking or leadership groups.

Carry it forward

As with any work, it will be important to carry the momentum forward. How you start is how you will go. As you grow in tenure as a Leader or in your role, it will be important to not let your intention slip. The guidance here is not meant to be a one-time investment, but rather serves as a starting point to begin the journey. Take the time to set you and your team off on the right foot, and continue to invest that time as you progress in your Leadership journey.