Culture Makes or Breaks New Leaders

Many in the business community agree that a leader’s success (or even survival) in a role depends on their ability to work within the operational culture. And for those transitioning into new roles, culture lies at the root of many onboarding paradoxes. New Leaders are often hired to make changes, fix broken things, “take us to the next level,” have early impact, yet they must act within the context of the organizational culture to accomplish those imperatives. In addition, the New Leader must navigate not only the maze of corporate norms, but also the subculture in their own operation.

Seek  First to Understand ...

While actively learning about their operations, New Leaders are likely to notice that the number of definitions of the culture roughly equals the number of people in the organization. Some ways people commonly describe the culture of an organization include:

• “The way we do things around here.”
• “Lessons learned that are important to pass on to the next generation of employees.”
• “What we do when noone is looking.”

Without a common understanding, the New Leader may encounter barriers to gaining knowledge about the culture. This part of the onboarding process comes with a number of challenging questions:

• How is the culture described by the organization?
• Is it the same for top leaders as it is for others deeper in the organization?
• In the selection process did the New Leader hear the “whole truth" about the culture, or just the depiction of how the organization hopes to function someday?
• What about the discrepancies between how the inhabitants broadly describe the culture versus how the subcultures really function?

Addressing these questions can help the New Leader learn about, and demonstrate respect for, the existing culture (which has added importance for those hired as change agents).

Navigating the Culture -- It's OK to Ask for Directions 

To navigate the corporate culture, New Leaders must figure out not only “the way we do things around here” but also “the way we don’t do things around here.” While they were hired to lead their operations, the organization will directly and indirectly signal to the New Leader what they can and shouldn’t do to drive success. Those who take the time to observe, ask questions about the best ways to operate, and then follow that advice, are ultimately more successful.

New Leaders also have diagnostic tools available to give them an early view into the performance climate of their own operations – the culture that will make or break their results.

Culture Informs Planning and Action

In order to adequately grasp the culture, New Leaders must take a step back during their first months on the job and focus on learning rather than attempting to drive near-term performance. Some mistakenly assume that “because people downstream report to me, they will follow my direction and short-cycle their own.” These Leaders then move forward in a manner that runs counter to their operation’s culture and performance climate. Their outcomes can range from a simple lack of communication, to heightened frustration and complete failure.

New Leaders can truly “get” the culture if they work with their Hiring Managers to construct deliverables that:

• Facilitate learning about the corporate and operational culture.
• Demonstrate that they have incorporated that knowledge.
• Start moving the New Leader’s operation toward desired goals and performance levels.
• Working with (and within) the organizational culture that existed before New Leaders came on board will help smooth their transitions, balance the paradoxical nature of onboarding, and deliver results.

Working with (and within) the organizational culture that existed before New Leaders came on board will help smooth their transitions, balance the paradoxical nature of onboarding, and deliver results.

New to Your Job? Don't Let Your Rival(s) Drag You Under

Whether you are a New Leader hired in from the outside or elevated to a role, there’s a good chance you will work with someone who is unhappy with your presence. We call these people rivals, and they are important to your success. Regardless of their feelings toward you, remember – they hold key historical, functional and technical knowledge.
When New Leaders are ramping up it’s tempting to ignore rivals and avoid that potential conflict all together. However, failing to recognize rivals (and bring them back into the fold) can result in missteps, missed opportunities and fragmented teams.

 

The 5 Faces of Rivalry (and What You Can Do)

Though your rivals carry a negative view of you, most understand that overt hostility is too risky. Because they often go underground, identifying rivals can be tricky. Knowing the patterns of rivalry can help you surface and head off potential issues. We find that most rivals fit into one of 5 categories.

1. The Interim Leader served as a fill-in for your role before you were selected. Even if someone explicitly told them they were not a contender for the position, they may still have seen their temporary appointment as an “audition.”

Key actions to take with an Interim Leader:

• Demonstrate respect and appreciation for what they have accomplished.
• Learn from them by asking questions and truly listening.
• Talk with them about their career and aspirations.
• Support their readiness for future promotions.

2. The Upstart is often a younger, ambitious leader who has been dubbed a high-potential by the organization. They have natural leadership ability, but still lack experience and maturity for high-level roles.

To corral the Upstart:

• Ask your HR Partner what skills/behaviors caused them to identify this leader as a high-potential.
• Meet with the Upstart to learn about their past contributions and future goals.
• Direct their energy to closing any skill gaps, showing you support their career objectives.
• Involve them in special projects to absorb some of their excess capacity.

3. The Technical Expert has deep experience (maybe even more than you) in knowledge and technologies valued by the organization. This rival usually surfaces in high-tech areas, such as IT or R&D.

To deal successfully with the Technical Expert:

• Recognize that this rival sees technical proficiency as the most important aspect of your role.
• Do an honest self-evaluation of your technical aptitude, and demonstrate willingness to learn.
• Find ways to acknowledge their capabilities.
• Create an understanding that your role as a leader requires more than technical ability, and support their development of leadership skills.

4. The Feedback-Deprived has spent most of their career cut off from needed feedback. Well-intended colleagues might hold back corrective comments to preserve relationships, which then creates a self-awareness void.

To help the Feedback-Deprived team member(s):

• Ask HR about the effectiveness of each team member.
• Ask team members to share their best accomplishments, strengths, weaknesses and goals.
• Where significant gaps exist, identify a strategy for addressing them.
• Deliver your observations with respect (as it can be embarrassing to hear long-withheld feedback).

5. The Culture Keeper understands the organization’s history and holds the secrets of why the operation engages in certain practices. Many organizations hire New Leaders to serve as “change agents.” And Culture Keepers are likely to oppose change efforts.

To successfully interact with a Culture Keeper:

• Don’t dismiss their comments, but recognize that they are communicating organizational norms.
• Remember that people often object to change because they are concerned about their ability to deliver results using new processes or methods.
• Avoid saying: “When I worked at ______ company, we did ______.”
• Enlist the Culture Keeper as a key advisor in your change initiatives.

Common denominators in the strategies suggested above include the importance of listening, learning and communicating effectively when starting a new role. Doing so will help you bring your rivals into the fold, and it will have broader, enduring benefits as well.

If you sense that you are being challenged by a workplace rival, contact us at info@leaderonboarding.com.

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The OnBoarding Paradox: How New Leaders Prevail

When starting a new role, leaders often don’t realize that they will face what we call “the onboarding paradox” during their transition. New Leaders who fail to recognize and reconcile the gaps between explicit and implicit expectations for their navigation and performance allow the stage to be set for their own future derailment. In our work with clients, we have found that it is essential to identify and balance each paradox as it is encountered. Below are some examples.


Eight New Leader Paradoxes:

1. Make changes, but don’t change anything. What the company often wants is changed outcomes – without having to increase investment or implement/adhere to new processes. A no-win situation until you build needed support for change.

2. Fix broken things, but do so without causing pain, discomfort or disruption. By definition, when something is broken, it means that something is not working. And there is a reason for that. And often, if you tackle the reason, you are likely to be tackling a person. Exercise caution and respect.

3. “Take us to the next level” without devaluing existing employees and practices. Best practice for the New Leader is to honor the team for their accomplishments, and then quickly focus them on evidence that suggests the need to develop “what’s next.” Worst practice: criticizing or wiping out the New Leader’s team, and then replacing them with people from a former employer.

4. Be heroic, but be just like the rest of us. Outsiders are often brought in to accomplish results that no one else has been able to deliver. Be sensitive to, and dispel, any notion that you are there to “save the day.” If the day truly needs to be saved, it first needs to be understood. Making an effort to understand those in your new world will lead to broader acceptance and support.

5. Have early impact, but don’t do anything until you completely understand us. Many New Leaders make the mistake of “transmitting” information to teams and colleagues. In fact, the best way to “prove yourself” is by “receiving” – demonstrating your desire to comprehend and appreciate the context you are entering. This is best done by asking good questions, and then truly listening and learning.

6. Identify the low-hanging fruit, but don’t pluck it. These obvious, seemingly easy-to-fix problems remain unharvested for a reason. If you spot a blatant issue, others are probably well aware of it. Let them tell you why it hasn’t been solved, whether it is important to address, what has been tried in the past, and when and how (and if) to take it on. And learn who has a vested interest in keeping things as they are, for whatever reason.

7. We like you because you worked at “Company XYZ” and we admire them – so bring their ability to drive results. Just don’t tell us what you did, or how you did it, while you worked there. Making an impact too quickly can alienate others and short-circuit New Leader change initiatives. Search for best practices first from inside the new company, and then extend broadly to other organizations. If you had a winning solution in your previous role, you could tee it up by saying, “I’m not sure if this applies here, but I am familiar with an approach that seemed to work well in other industries.” To sum it up, don’t talk about your former operation until you are well-accepted in your new role.

8. When we ask you what you think about us, we really don’t mean it, or only want to know the good things. This can be a classic trap for New Leaders, because they want to be seen as quickly “getting it,” while their colleagues want to be valued. Share the things you like and appreciate about the company and your team, and your excitement about future possibilities. To increase their comfort and trust, invite your team members to present a portfolio of their best work to you. Ask for others’ perspectives on your operation and its effectiveness – and when you are in an appropriate position to pass judgment, you’ll be seen as having done a fair and thorough search for information.

Every New Leader is likely to encounter different levels of contradictory expectations and circumstances, and the paradoxes and solutions offered above are just a starting point. The most important thing you can do to address an onboarding paradox is to identify potential expectation gaps, and seek advice from trusted colleagues. Resist the temptation to do too much too soon, and use specific strategies to ensure the success of your operation.
To learn more about onboarding best practices, follow our company page.

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New Leader Failure: A Problem or A Symptom?

Many of us in HR and leadership positions have experienced the same perplexing scenario – found a great candidate, placed them in a high-level role, held lofty expectations, and then they failed. And we almost always have said it happened because “they weren’t a good fit.”

Are we really that bad at sizing up candidates? Were they really that wrong for the role or company? Or, is there a chance that this failure was at least as much our doing as theirs? Perhaps we have a “chicken-or-the-egg” problem – where the cause of the breakdown seems to originate from an invisible anomaly.

While recovering from New Leader derailment, we must retrace our steps and pinpoint the root cause of the problem to avoid another round. Let’s consider the arc of a New Leader’s experience from selection to demise:

1. A recruiter brings in a highly-recommended candidate.
2. We tell this hopeful leader some things about the job and organization. But do we tell them the right things, or do we share the way we hope things to be someday? Does the candidate have enough accurate information to gauge their potential for success?
3. Once hired, we tout details of the New Leader’s brilliant career, and announce that this individual was brought in to drive desperately needed change – just like they did at their last company (one that had a very different culture, by the way).
4. Given how their role (and the organization) was described, the New Leader immediately sets about driving change – of processes, rules, expectations and team members – and expects the support promised during the recruitment phase.
5. Pandemonium ensues …
   
   • People resent seeing the New Leader on a pedestal, colleagues are intimidated, and skilled direct reports start job searches.
   • A saturation of change disrupts workflow, alienates internal partners, and shuts down multiple lines of communication.
   • The Hiring Manager then shrinks away from resulting conflicts, and diminishes support for New Leader efforts.
6. From there, generalized anger with the New Leader leads to subversion (and even sabotage) of their efforts and priorities from many directions.
7. By 4 – 6 months in role, the New Leader is dead in the water, and a collective organizational judgment forms about their future viability.
8. By 9 – 12 months in role, the drained and weary Leader either voluntarily exits the organization, or is fired.

This sad ending (to a common story) raises a key question: is the New Leader’s departure the problem, or is it simply a symptom of a more pervasive set of issues? An organization would do well to take an honest look inside by asking some questions.

• Didn’t the New Leader behave as they were hired to? 
• If so, how does that translate to them “not fitting?” 
• Did the Hiring Manager and HR Partner demonstrate insight into their contributions to the New Leader’s failure? 
• What can the broader organization learn from this experience? 
• And, most importantly, what will organization resolve to do differently with future hires?

When we work with clients who struggle with a New Leader’s derailment behavior, we often discover that the hire actually was not a bad one. Usually it is suggested that the root of the problem(s) may sit in the process of selecting and launching the New Leader. The story above (and so many others like it) makes a clear business case for developing a rigorous and transparent selection process, and investing in structured, thoughtful ongoing onboarding coaching and support. That way, if it is a chicken problem, we can fix it. The same goes for the egg.

 

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What Surprises Await? The 4 Dilemmas that Can Derail Newly Promoted Leaders

You’ve worked hard, paid your dues, and earned a promotion. Enjoy the moment and celebrate your success. Then take time to recognize that some barriers and surprises may await you. Never fear – these challenges can be overcome, if you can identify and properly prepare for them.

Certainly you never expected this transition to be easy, but you also hoped that your extensive knowledge of the organization, your determination and previous wins would position you for success. In fact, you were told that is why you were selected. These are important things to bring to a new role, but as you advance in the company, so do complications that can derail New Leaders.

 

The 4 Shifts that Create Dilemmas in Promotions

When organizations elevate existing employees, they need to prepare their New Leaders for higher-level roles. Unfortunately, many promoted leaders are not adequately equipped for the dilemmas they will face when entering their new positions. In our experience with clients, we have noticed the presence of 4 shifts that internally promoted New Leaders are likely to experience.

• Perspective shift: The view from the executive floor is dramatically different. The New Leader may have moved from a structured, “black and white” role into a position fraught with ambiguity and “grey areas.”
• Political shift: The political landscape for newly promoted leaders is often completely different, and it takes on elevated importance. They may feel like they’re working for an entirely new organization. Navigating this unfamiliar terrain can expose a number of pitfalls.
• Managment shift: Former Manager(s) and their colleagues become peers, and they may view the New Leader under an old lens. A New Leader’s success depends on their acceptance, which may not be easily gained.
• Peer shift: Former peers become direct reports, and some may be unhappy about this change (especially those who were also considered for the role). These team members can make or break the New Leader, and they may not be overt about their displeasure.

By following the approaches suggested above, both the New Leader and the organization can work together to create a smoother and more effective promotion. And it will remind their colleagues exactly why they won the role in the first place.

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