Leading a team of people when you are young is hard. Especially, when you may have members in the team who are your age or older. If you are reading this and you are a first-time team leader then you’re probably either making the most of the challenge or considering running for the door—or a bit of both.
As a first-time leader, the pressure to prove yourself is great. You want to prove that your appointment was for the right reason and the pressure this creates is monumental.
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The urgency to rally your team and begin to produce results is great, as well as your anxiety when your team doesn’t quite understand what you expect of them. In addition, when your team has a problem to solve, you feel, as their leader, you should be the one who has the answers. The expert in the room.
There are a lot of reasons you were put in a leadership position, and it’s not always something you’re prepared for.
However, know this, leadership and life itself are very related and the events therein could pass for one or the other. Whether planned, unplanned, seen, unseen, known, or unknown, how you tackle leadership matters. This is especially true for first-time leaders in their first interactions with their new team members, their first tough decisions, their first hires, fires, failures, and successes.
This leads to the three truths first-time leaders should know:
- Taking over as a leader for the first time can make or mar your career. Getting this position right speeds up your career direction and vice versa. However, avoiding avoidable mistakes at this juncture requires preparation, commitment, and follow-through.
- Leading is different from telling others what to do. The reason telling others to do things can only produce so little is that telling wears off. People may comply with the teller’s direction intially. This is why more experienced managers persuade and support. Great leaders go one step further to co-create the future they want to see with their followers.
- First time performers often judge themselves too harshly. It is possible that at your desk you are shaky about taking another strong step because you had a previous wrong one. Offset tendencies toward harshness or leniency with feedback from others. Invite insightful teammates and experienced leaders to speak into your performance.
The path of leadership is not clearly paved and many suggestions are not applicable in every scenario. However, your actions in the first few weeks and months can have a major impact on whether your team ultimately delivers results. What steps should you take to set your team up for success? How do you create group values, establish clear goals, and form an environment where everyone feels comfortable and motivated to contribute?
1. Get to know each other
When you step in front of your team for the first time, don’t try to impress them with your knowledge and experience. No one will care about what you know, especially if they don’t believe you care about them. Get to know your people. Spend time asking them questions about who they are; what they know; what their experiences are; where they’re from; what they’re passionate about; etc. Take time to establish rapport and find common ground.
In practice, this may mean holding a retreat or beginning meetings with team-building exercises. For virtual teams, it might mean starting calls by getting updates on how each person is doing or hosting virtual happy hours or coffee breaks. One particularly effective exercise is to have people share their best and worst team experiences. Discussing those good and bad dynamics will help everyone get on the same page about what behavior they want to encourage — and avoid — going forward.
2. Show what you stand for. Don’t be wishy-washy
Use your initial interactions with team members as an opportunity to showcase your values. Explain what’s behind each of your decisions, what your priorities are, and how you will evaluate the team’s performance, individually and collectively. Walk them through what metrics you might use to gauge progress, so that they understand how they’ll be evaluated and what’s expected of them.
Team members will want to know how you define success. They will want to know if you are up for a little procrastination or delayed gratification. Which will it be, why and when? By subtly communicating your vision and values, you will show your team that you’re committed to a healthy degree of transparency and create positive momentum around yourself in the new role.
3. Explain how you want the team to work
Be clear on what’s expected of everyone and let them get on with it. When issues or opportunities arise, empower the team to find a resolution themselves with your support—don’t add every new issue to your own to-do list.
You also need to explain in detail how you want the team to work. When you have newer team members coming on board, don’t assume that veteran team members will explain to the new recruits how meetings are supposed to be run or the best ways to ask for help; it’s your job as a leader to set expectations and explain processes. If you don’t make those norms clear for everyone, you risk creating an environment where people feel excluded, uncertain, or unwilling to contribute.
4. Lead by example
Think about the behaviors you want and expect from your team members and be sure to exhibit those traits yourself. You’re the role model, so what you say and do will impact the team’s daily work habits and attitudes. That said, it’s important to be yourself and to believe in yourself. If you fake it, you’ll soon be unmasked and you’ll lose credibility and trust.
Be open, honest and passionate. Treat everyone on the team fairly, with respect and without favoritism and you’ll find those behaviors returned. Extend the same courtesy to the rest of the organisation as well. Never undermine or criticise other individuals or departments in front of the team. Make it clear you’re all there to work towards success for the big picture.
5. Keep your door open. Over-Communicate with all
Once your team is up and running, it’s imperative to keep the communication going to build relationships, assess progress, and identify risks and issues. Plus, you’ll get more engagement from team members if they see you investing time in them and showing interest in their activities.
If there’s one thing that new leaders need to remember, it’s that over-communicating in the early days is preferable to the alternative. It’s always better to start with more structure, more touch points, more check-ins at the beginning. How you do that — via big meetings, one-on-ones, email, or shared progress reports — will vary from team to team and team leader to team leader. I’ve never encountered a situation where a team member says, ‘Gosh, I wish the boss would stop communicating with me. I’m so sick of hearing from her.’ You will never hear that.
Also, if you need to have a challenging conversation, do it in private; no public floggings. And don’t try to win a popularity contest. Not all your feedback and initiatives will be well-received, but if you concentrate more on being everyone’s friend instead of being a strong leader, the work will suffer, as will your integrity.
6. Be swift to solve issues. Win on time
Identifying and solving a business problem that has a quick and dramatic impact early on shows that you can listen and get things done, says Watkins. Perhaps there is a longstanding employee frustration or an outdated work process. Maybe there is a project that you can easily fund or prioritize. Taking swift action demonstrates that you are connecting and learning. But most importantly, achieving an “early win” builds team momentum. It motivates people and can win you goodwill you might need later if the going gets tough.
Leadership is often challenging yet rarely rewarding. If you find yourself in the position of leadership, heading a team that’s working well and delivering results is a great feeling, so make sure it works!
