There will be so many unknowns in the first days, well even years, and if you have friends/colleagues that were promoted just now as well, I’d say that it is likely that your questions are the same as those of your own peers!
Feeling that other’s questions were just like my own; or the common thought that I’m probably failing at something (“is there something trivial missing?”); or, that I might’ve overlooked something that ultimately lead to a constant feeling of uncertainty and even failure or inaptness - all of this triggered me to write this document, so that others won’t feel the same or feel alone in it.
I had the good fortune of having really good leaders in my life, starting from my personal life up until my professional experience.
One of those leaders was at Miniclip and it was him that helped me grow in this new position. First because he truly inspired me as a leader, making me follow him; and lastly, something that I used as my “clutch”, it was something that he would answer whenever I questioned if I was really fit for the position:
If you were promoted to be a leader its because I trust in you and that you will do a great job at it. It wasn’t mere chance.
What do I consider to be leadership?
I’m going to start with something that might be polarizing - leadership/management is not about being a psychologist; being a profiler; guess other’s inner motivations; etc
Management vs Leadership
Both management and leadership are really well defined, as one can check on wikipedia.
Although I fear this is not the case when working in a business, where both terms might be used interchangeably and you might even end up putting both hats during the year.
I like to structure both definitions in such a way that I could explain it to one of my kids, almost in a ELI5 manner - so that I could use them as a compass:
- Manager - Approves vacations; time/project allocation of individuals; etc
- Leader - Grows/Empowers individuals to be better professionals;
- IC - Individual contributor, the individuals that report to you;
- Line Manager - Your own leader/manager;
- Team - Everyone that works directly with you and, potentially, with your IC;
- HRBP - Human resource business partner, it’s the person/team that directly interacts with you or your team.
Your current role might be more managerial or more leadership focused and, on top of that, it might even be called something else completely different.
You’ve become a leader now what?
Understand your role and responsibilities
It is important to fully understand your role and the expectations towards your results. Something that its trivial to do but easy to forget is to start with questioning.
To reduce the area of uncertainty about your role, as well as the number of ways something can be perceived by someone (you included!), I would start with questions - mainly directed at either your line manager and/or your HRBP.
-
Question about your responsibilities:
- What will drive your performance evaluation?
- What are your line manager expectations?
- What are your team expectations?
- What is your job specification?
- …
-
Question about your role:
- Are you expected to be a fully dedicated leader/manager?
- Are you expected to participate as a developer?
- Do you have technical ownership over your team/project?
- What’s believed to be your sphere of influence?
- Who are your peers?
- …
-
Question about your goals:
- What should you achieve this year? (quarterly would be even better)
- What are your team’s goals for the year (quarterly)?
- What are your company’s goals for the year (quarterly)?
- What is your team’s vision?
- What is the company’s vision?
- …
-
Question about your team:
- Is there something you need to know before hand?
- What personal goals did they commit to? Where are they written?
- Are there any under-performers? over-performers?
- Who are the key individuals?
- Can you get access to their past performance reviews?
- …
-
Question your promotion:
- Why have you been promoted?
- In your manager’s perspective:
- What are your strengths?
- What are your weaknesses?
- …
Finally, it is important that you do a similar exercise with each individual of your team:
- What are their expectations towards you?
- What are their current personal goals?
- What do they believe you need to know about them?
- What is going on well?
- What needs to be changed?
- …