Tada! Now you’re a leader! You’ve been promoted and you have a team, so you’re leading.
Right?
Maybe. (Sadly, there is no magic wand to abracadabra you into a leader overnight.)
New leaders are like trapeze artists: They stand on a platform, high above a net, gripping the bar, and step off into the void without the safety lines. This can be terrifying! But new leaders have to take that step into the void, confident that they will catch the next bar. It can be very tempting for first time leaders to fall back on their safety lines—the skills of getting tasks done that got them promotion.
Below, I identify three temptations— and their antidotes— that derail people into managing instead of leading their teams. (At its simplest, managers execute others’ visions, and leaders define the vision.)
Holding onto tasks that should be delegated
Focusing on urgent but not important things
Staying in the known
Delegating Tasks
Fear of letting go, of not being the expert, not performing a task at a high level, and fear of not knowing the answer: these fears make it hard for many managers to give up executing the tasks that got them promoted. But executing tasks eats up time leaders should spend thinking strategically.
In her HBR article “Why Aren’t You Delegating?” Amy Gallo dives into one of the challenges that many new leaders face, and she offers a solution:
You have way too much to do, you’re buried in work, and it seems there’s no way out from under it all. But there is: delegation. Yes, yes, you know it’s important to do and you know it will save you time and help others develop new skills. So why aren’t you doing it? …
Delegation is a critical skill. “Your most important task as a leader is to teach people how to think and ask the right questions so that the world doesn’t go to hell if you take a day off,” says Jeffrey Pfeffer, the Thomas D. Dee II Professor of Organizational Behavior at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business and author of What Were They Thinking?: Unconventional Wisdom About Management. Delegation benefits managers, direct reports, and organizations. Yet it remains one of the most underutilized and underdeveloped management capabilities.
She suggests some great strategies for figuring out when you’re not delegating enough and how to create circumstances where you can delegate with confidence, and it illustrates solutions through case studies. (Ann Sugar’s article, “How to Tell If You’re Delegating Too Much — and What to Do About It,” offers a helpful counterpoint in case you over correct.)
Delegating tasks to your team may be hard for you, and it will also be hard for some of your staff. Three things that will help your team are:
Publicly congratulate the team for making independent decisions.
Schedule meetings so you can be aware of ongoing issues and provide a safe space for your team to explore options.
Hold one on one meetings with your staff to allow you to provide personalized development support.
For this strategy in delegating effectively, Mathilde Collin’s article, “One-on-ones Are My Most Valuable Meetings; Here’s How I Run Them,” offers valuable suggestions on how to make your one-on-ones productive and effective. The big take-away: you have to ask questions and really listen to the answers. Mathilde offers great questions that will move your meetings into a whole new level.
Focusing on What’s Important
In your pre-leadership role, jumping in to solve an urgent problem was a good thing. But as a leader you have to break that habit (solving problems for your team) in order to lead them to find their own solutions. You need to start distinguishing between urgent and important and commit your time and energy to what’s important, resisting the temptation to get sucked in to what’s urgent. The Eisenhower Matrix is one tool that helps you assign priority— and therefore decide when to delegate.
Consider everything you do on a daily basis. Assign each activity, from checking your email to meeting with your team to creating the content of your unit, a status according to the criteria below. Be ruthless.
Urgent and Important: time sensitive and central to your role/unit/organization’s bottom line success
Urgent and Not Important: time sensitive but not central to your role/unit/organization’s bottom line success
Not Urgent and Important: not time sensitive and central to your role/unit/organization’s bottom line success
Not Urgent and Not Important: not time sensitive and not central to your role/unit/organization’s bottom line success
Important tasks, both urgent and not urgent, should get the majority of your attention, and ideally you should be able to anticipate Important tasks so effectively that they rarely become Urgent. Strategic leaders block out time to work on Not Urgent and Important tasks. Over time, especially as you build trust with your team, begin to move Not Important tasks to someone else's plate. Resist the distraction of Urgent and Not Important tasks!
Learn more about the Eisenhower Matrix here.
Cultivating Curiosity
A strategic leader focuses on future opportunities and challenges—and that requires deep curiosity. It requires curiosity about others’ perspectives and curiosity about our own deeply rooted assumptions. A strategic leader can’t stick with the tried and true forever.
In his article “To Change the Way You Think, Change the Way You See,” Adam Brandenburger shares some well known stories about innovations born when the leaders in question applied new perspectives to old situations. Leaders should strive to break through the familiar and notice from a new perspective. Influential leaders stay curious and stray into new fields to learn from others about the challenges they have faced and overcome.
Formally scheduling time to think outside the box is a wonderful way to reinforce your leadership. It conveys trust in your team and signals the responsibilities of your new role. Share what you learn and discuss how new developments may impact long term performance.
An important Note!
Leadership does not come in one shape or style or gender. Please read Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic and Cindy Gallop's article about the traits attributed to women leaders and how men should adopt them.