Congratulations! You are now leading a team🎉
First steps guide to newly leaders
Hey, fellow Leader 🚀,
I am Artur and welcome to my weekly newsletter. I am focusing on topics like Project Management, Innovation, Leadership, and a bit of Entrepreneurship. I am always open to suggestions for new topics. Feel free to reach me on Substack and share my newsletter if it helps you in any way.
If this is indeed the case, congratulations! I am sure this is the result of hard work, a lot of frustrations, and wins, but mostly, someone saw in you the potential to become a leader. No worries, your inner feeling is correct. You are probably an impostor on the role. We all are impostors while venturing into a new role, and steep learning curves happen when we are on the impostor side of things. So in reality, it’s a good thing.
This article will cover some tips and tricks for someone who wants to venture and specializes in leadership positions. I will cover the following points:
Find your leadership style
Delegation. First steps
Focus on communication
Be part of the solution, not the problem
Listen more
Find your leadership style
Any leadership role might have a predefined job description, with a set of must-haves and goals well identified. In contrast, the leadership style is a very personal journey and is expected for each leader to embark on a journey, rarely is a one-size-fits-all approach. The style is directly correlated to the leader’s personality and therefore there are intrinsic differences from one person to another. This is normal and should be embraced. Meaning, that each new leader will need to find their space in the role and capitalize on what the person brings to the table.
Let’s see some examples. A person who typically makes conversation with anyone, and knows everyone on the corporate floor, will have a closer and more personal leadership style than someone who is more cold but more process-oriented. There is no style better than the other, simply one style might do better in a given context than the other. Leaders who work on teams more focused on BAU (Business As Usual) tasks, will see their value appreciated while having a close and personal relationship with the team. The tasks don’t change much during the day, and people tend to perform repetitive tasks, which is OK for some people. After a while their task is not the challenge, but the organization or a client. A moment will arrive when the staff only wants to talk about their day and frustrations and find a leader who listens.
Another example of a project-oriented organization is when the implementation finds roadblocks continuously creating frustration for the project team. A leader who helps to find solutions and leverage the team will also provide immense value, even if that leader doesn’t know the name of the spouse of every single team member. These two examples are simply to show that leadership is very much intrinsic to the personality and finding a style depends immensely on the person.
Delegation. First steps.
If someone is promoted in the team is mostly because that person has become an expert on a subject matter and now is some sort of specialist. Resulting in the fact that one of the most challenging aspects might be delegation. Is the same as asking a person who can do a task in a day or two, but if delegated to someone the same task will take three or more days. So the new leader will ask him or herself, why bother since is simpler to do the task him or herself. The problem here is the leader should become a specialist on different matters and is not allowing the team members to grow in terms of knowledge and responsibilities.
The new position will bring new tasks and responsibilities, which need some time for the leader to adjust and grow. Depending on the team, these new responsibilities can become an entirely new skill set to learn since they might be too off compared with the old tasks. The new leader will need to learn how to delegate the execution and let someone else learn, improve, and become maybe the new specialist. A leader that allows the team to grow is far more efficient than a leader that is still a technician with a different role name.
Focus on communication
Depending on each personal ambition, someone who starts to venture into leadership roles builds an idea of what kind of leader someone wants to be. While this introspection makes sense, the number one focus should improve communication skills. A great part of leading a team is about managing expectations and communicating a strategy, a guide, and a way to do things. Is all about passing an image of a project or product into someone’s mind.
The ability to do any leadership role properly is all about communicating in a tailor-made fashion any angles or information to a specific audience. If the person in charge can address the message, in the right format, tone, and content, to all stakeholders, the team will have better conditions to perform the work.
Be part of the solution, not the problem
If someone is promoted into a leadership position, in a way, already has a degree of being solution-oriented. However, this might not be the case for everyone. To identify a problem on a project, even an intern with 2 days on the job, can detect the most basic and mundane issues on a project team. The magic relies on the solution part of the equation. Finding solutions might not be easy at all, the leader should be more solution-oriented than problem-oriented.
It is concerning the number of times that I see someone with a problem who is searching for an expert or a team representative to address a specific problem, and the answer provided is “That cannot be done”, or “With the current tools, policies, rainbow colors, we cannot to that”. Again, even an intern on the job for 2 days can pass this message. Someone who tries to understand the problem, and understands the constraints, but even though, gives a set of solutions as a way of action, is invaluable. This becomes especially true if it comes to someone with responsibilities inside an organization.
Listen more
The leader has already the spotlight. The team members will rely on the leader to understand some personal matters and issues, and the challenges they are facing, and in a way the leader might become confident of a team member. Is important to listen to what the team has to say, and in conjunction with the colleague, try to find a solution to the problems that someone is facing at a professional level.
The ability to listen will also uncover potential issues that the project or the staff is facing. Some of that feedback might come timid, with fear of repercussion or colleagues’ judgment. Anticipating potential risks can go far during the project execution. These can be transmitted in the form of private conversations, or comments about a specific project item. Active listening is a must for any project leader.
That’s it. If you find this post useful please share it with your friends or colleagues who might be interested in this topic. If you would like to see a different angle, suggest in the comments or send me a message on Substack.
Cheers,
Artur
Hi Artur, this is a very good article.
My opinion is that not only team leaders lead others. Everybody who wants to achieve something together with other people needs to lead those people. I wrote about it here a year ago: https://www.leadinginproduct.com/p/all-product-managers-are-leaders