I have recently joined a new company and am feeling a little out of my depth right now. I’m not sure who I can turn to for advice so asking here. What steps can I take that will boost my confidence.
I have recently joined a new company and am feeling a little out of my depth right now. I’m not sure who I can turn to for advice so asking here. What steps can I take that will boost my confidence.
Hi Aparajita,
I recently joined a new Company too. My previous stints were entry-level manager roles ( ASM roles). Here I have two Assistant Marketing Managers reporting to me. I struggled quite a bit due to the remote joining scenario and understanding their individual talents and areas of improvements.
My advice to you would be to
a) Learn as much as possible about your role and how it fits into the schema of the company’s goals,
b) Prioritize all the tasks that you cascade down to your team and make sure they understand the logic behind the prioritization ,
c) Keep them inspired – Inspired and motivated folks generate quality work , as opposed to people who are plain afraid of not meeting targets.
d) Find similar folks from other functions/verticals – make it a point to reach out to them to understand the culture and ways of working of your company, their experiences so far.
e) Its okay to take a month or two to completely settle down, and its best to keep asking questions and trying new things out for these two months – and it will help you go up that steep learning curve as we all know.
Good Luck on your new journey!
Regards
Bijoyini Ganguly
Great question, Aparajita. I would say that consider and leverage on the positives of starting in a new company – it gives you the ability to start with a clean slate – make the most of it. There would be no pre-conceived notions – so you can straightaway get to work on forming a good, strong impression. Also, the ‘fresh start’ is both ways – even you are new for the company as much as it is new for you – so you need to feel less intimidated by pre-established reputations of others – you can speak up and be completely forthcoming in the way people who may have been working there for years cannot. I always regret not asking questions or voicing an opinion when I was given a chance, and very rarely the other way round. So, in any forum or platform that you get in your new organization, move boldly ahead! That is the great thing about newness! All the Best!
Leadership is a skill that one acquires as one progresses and can’t be learnt thro ‘Leadership’ courses or videos. And takes time. And one learns thro mistakes. At one level, it’s very daunting for a new leader and at another level, it’s basic common sense with some discipline on simple practices. But common sense is sometimes uncommon 🙂
As someone who has lived thro leaders of all hues..as also as a leader of people and organisations myself ….some basics have always held true. For me.
l. Clarity about goals and metrics. At a basic level, leaders job is to bring ‘Purpose’ to whatever job is being undertaken by team member…however menial and routine that job may be. One of the most basic tenets of leadership not done by many in the rush of ‘lets get on with job that needs to be done’.
2. Communication and timely feedback. Don’t need to explain this. It’s basic hygiene but not often followed rigorously. And has huge consequences
3. Reward and Recognition… positive AND negative strokes as required. Behaviour always follows incentives. Good or Bad
4. Ability to have Courageous conversations when required and not be the the nice person all the time with employee … Empathy is required but not sympathy and some become part of problem and blame ‘senior management’ for all woes. No faster way to lose credibility.
Other leaders want to curry favor and hence agree with all senior management views at cost of team members… if convinced that employee has given their best, a good leaders job is advocacy
5. Standup for your team members if they’ve done everything they could but still didn’t meet some deadlines etc. They should know that someone has their back. Take responsibility for team failures and give team members credit for successes. Difficult for many but greatly builds confidence on leader.
6. A good leader needs to be high on EQ as much as IQ is important. Maybe more than IQ . Ability to contextualise rather than be rule bound.
7. Having a genuine interest in overall development of team member…not just about meeting goals / targets but also about their professional goals and even personal goals.
8. Ensure fairness and actively discourage politicking. Have seen leaders who progress their careers by stepping on dead bodies of their team members whom they flog. Can succeed short term but definitely will be flagged some day
9. Teams that have fun stay together. Gallup has a question in their employee engagement survey wrt ‘ Do you have a best friend at work’ ….leaders that encourage fun along with work are most likely to be successful in creating a high performance team.
These are some I could think of. There’s lots more to leadership and adequate free articles. But execution is key.
Good luck. If you want to engage in further discussion, happy to engage either here or email me at shettydb at gmail