Challenges For First Time Leaders And How To Overcome Them: Leading The People You Used To Work With

Last week, they were co-workers, and this week they are subordinates. I have had this happen twice during my career, and it was abrupt both times. My promotion was announced, and I was running the team a few days later.

A title change does not always bring a perception change. Peers still viewed me as a peer, not a leader. People who thought they deserved the promotion viewed me as having taken their job. People on the team who I did not get along with and those I did, had expectations about how I would treat them.

I did not consider each of those from the individual team member's perspective; I was focused on myself and how I felt. The first time, I thought I needed to meet with the team and show some continuity. The last manager had left abruptly, so everyone had questions and concerns.

I set up an hour meeting to talk through the sudden departure and talk about where each one of the projects was going next. I learned something important in that meeting. No one cared why the last manager had left. They were not worried about projects and deliverables.

I talked for 20 minutes and opened the meeting up to questions. I failed to read the room while I was speaking. Read the room. Look for engagement, disengagement, concern, hope, and other emotional or body language signs. Always spend more time figuring out what the people you lead think and feel.

I was unprepared and dropped into the role without the tools I needed to be successful.

You Probably Have Not Been Prepared

Every leader should be working on a succession plan. We should mentor a replacement and a backup. When the main replacement is promoted, the backup becomes next in line or the replacement for another team's leader. The heir and the spare strategy has been practiced for centuries because it works.

If you are a new leader, start today. Look for someone interested in leadership and give them all the advantages you wish you had right now. As you learn hard lessons, share them with your backup. There is a bit of politics in this process.

Leaders cannot complain to the team or make excuses for their shortcomings. By teaching your replacement the problem and how you had to handle it, you are putting the story out there without saying it yourself. Your replacement can advocate for you from time to time.

If no one on the team wants to be a leader, look for the desire to lead in your next hire into the team. "What is your five-year career goal? Do you see yourself on a leadership or technical track?" Both are good qualifying questions.

Most new leaders are given a few books to read, a leadership seminar, and a crisp high-five. Good luck. You'll need it. I didn't even get the high-five. Tech leaders are rarely prepared to lead, even in the world's largest, most mature businesses. Your previous and new leaders probably weren't either, and they may have no blueprint for mentoring leaders.

Find someone to mentor you on leadership. There may be an internal training program or access to outside training. Some businesses pay for mentoring. Just bringing it up may spark the creation of a leadership training program or integration into another organization's program. Some technical organizations have not come to terms with leadership being more than promoting the most technical person.

If you have not been prepared, self-education is the most arduous road to effective leadership. It is usually a setup to fail. I got some training and talked people into mentoring me. I watched effective leaders and asked questions. Do whatever it takes to get help.

Change Is Part Of Leadership

In that first meeting, the team wanted to know how I would change things and improve them. The outgoing manager was not effective and was not well liked by us. The team was overworked. The few processes that existed were not enforced. There was no direction, just a task list, and deadlines.

There are two extremes when taking over from another leader. If they weren't very good or average, the team will look to the new leader for a plan to improve. If the outgoing leader was exceptional, the team will look to the new leader for signs that nothing will change.

We lead change and improvement. I took over for a leader who left me several problems to solve. Cleaning up a mess is never ideal, but I had ideas and knew what the team wanted to try. The meeting was excellent for none of the reasons I thought it would be. If you transition from peer to leader, hold a meeting on day 1.

Taking over for a bad leader feels like the worst-case scenario, but it isn't. The team has their bar set pretty low, making the first few months a lot easier. Problem-solving is difficult but living up to the standard set by an amazing leader is more complicated.

Part one of the transition is figuring out how everyone on the team felt about the outgoing leader. There are often mixed reviews. People treated well probably liked the old leader no matter how bad they were. Leaders who play favorites build loyalty through favoritism. Some will want to keep the team from changing. People who were not part of the inner circle will welcome change.

No one told me that change is the most significant part of leadership roles. We are accountable for leaving the team better than we found it. This lesson holds for every level of leadership. I am a CEO now and work as an interim C-level data leader. I am brought in to grow, mentor, build, improve, and implement new planning. Running my own business is the same, but without someone else to hold me accountable.

Taking over from a great leader is difficult because you still need to make improvements. It is critical that you do when taking over from terrible and amazing leaders. How do you think Tim Cook felt taking over Apple from Steve Jobs? Tim Cook has been successful because he has not tried to be Steve Jobs.

He leveraged his strengths to take Apple from great to better. First-time leaders should too. We cannot fix everything and will not be successful if we try. We cannot be someone else, especially if we have not been trained and mentored to be. Fix or improve what you know best. Give senior team members goals to improve areas they know best. Make improvement a team effort and not something you are entirely accountable for alone.

Change Is a Source Of Authority

First-time leaders must develop their leadership style. This is critical to making the perception change in people they used to work alongside in a non-leadership role. A source of authority answers the question, "Why should I follow you?"

A list of improvements is a powerful answer. Taking over from a poor leader means the scope of the improvements will be large, but changes will take time to work. Taking over from a fantastic leader means the scope of improvements will be small, but the necessary changes to support those improvements won't take very long.

A small number of high-impact improvements looks just as good as a high number of low-impact improvements. Teams respect leaders who are focused on continuous improvement.

Ad hoc changes will lead to a roadmap of things you want to change. Few leaders build a continuous improvement roadmap. Most first-time leaders respond to problems as they come up. It isn't easy to make significant improvements if leaders are reacting instead of anticipating. This is a critical transition milestone from peer to leader.

Great leaders see potential problems arising. They prioritize solutions by the likelihood of the issue occurring, severity of the impacts, and cost of the solution. Thinking about what could happen is how leaders start to transition from tactical to strategic.

The improvement roadmap starts with every problem the new leader sees and can anticipate. There is no central theme, and long-term success depends on long-term themes. The obvious issues are symptoms. New leaders must develop a process for finding the root cause for several problems on the roadmap. Root causes create the basis for themes on the roadmap.

For data teams, inadequate tools and automation is a common theme that surfaces several problems. A continuous improvement initiative would be to create a tools stack that supports the team's workflows to increase productivity across KPIs. Aligning projects with core business needs is another common theme. The goal is to improve value creation across KPIs.

A theme is a high-level, long-term improvement goal that leaders can define their time in the role by. Small wins make sense as the building blocks for a more significant victory, and complex changes are connected to rewards that justify the effort.

Themes are how leaders learn to build a vision that is a more potent source of authority on the path to becoming a strategic leader. Themes and roadmaps help lead individual contributors. A vision helps lead other leaders and aligns multiple teams all the way up to an entire organization.