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Evolve your team forward
Except in rare circumstances, leaders taking new roles do not get to build teams. What they get to do is inherit teams and try to figure out how to evolve them into what they need them to be. So the art of building teams in the context of taking a new role is, therefore, about moving multiple things forward and parallel.
You’re trying to think about the new vision, the new goals, the new strategy, the new specific tasks that you need people to undertake, the early win projects that you’re gonna be going after, even as you’re assessing the team, trying to figure out what their capabilities are, understand the roles they’ve played, and begin to think about how you’re going to evolve that going forward. But the key thing is really to move those things in parallel. Where am I gonna take this team? What are the set of people that I need that really are gonna help push things forward?
Reenlist people
That evolution could include changes in the membership of the team, but that’s typically pretty hard to do, right? There may, in fact, be some high priority changes that you need to make. That will happen, particularly, if you’re in a crisis situation like a turnaround. But much more commonly, you need to figure out how to get the most out of the human capital that you have. That can include training people if you find there’s deficits in their skills. It can include reassigning people and changing the roles and responsibilities.
There are, of course, team related situations that pose particular challenges to new leaders. A classic one is when you’ve been promoted to lead people who were formally your peers. There may, in fact, be some of those people who think they should have had the job. So one challenge you’re often dealing with is I describe it as dealing with the disappointed. You’ve got some people on the team who may be very capable, but for one reason or another, including the fact that you’re the better candidate, they were not the ones that got promoted, but they’re often feeling bruised by the process, your relationship with them may be fairly difficult, and at the same time, if you can get them back on board they may have really important capabilities and knowledge to move things forward. So there’s a real challenge of how do you reenlist people that are kind of the disappointed competitors.
Part of the answer typically is not to rub it in, obviously, right? To gauge very carefully how much engagement around the set of issues is warranted, and that’s gonna depend partially on the personality of the individuals involved. But also understand what they really are gonna be caring about and worried about. Their biggest worry typically is what does this mean for my career? Is it all over for me now that I’ve been passed up for promotion at this point? If you believe in the end that they have the possibility to go to the next level, one powerful way to reenlist them is gradually and judiciously to become an advocate for their development. This takes time, of course, and people don’t get over these things instantly. There’s a process of grieving that just basically is inevitable.
Restructure relationships
Another key challenge associated with this is really restructuring relationships with members of the team. They know you, or at least they know you in the context of being a peer, but now you’re the boss. That means you’ve really gotta help recalibrate those relationships. For example, you may not be able to be as close to some of the team members as you were previously now that you’re supervising them and needing to give them performance feedback. That’s gonna be an adjustment and, in some sense, a loss that has to be dealt with.
There’s also an issue of how do you judiciously begin to establish your authority in the new team? This is a tricky place as well. You don’t wanna continue to be super peer and not really take command of the situation. But on the other hand, you don’t wanna be a little Napoleon, right, and begin to, you know, say, “Okay, I am in charge. I’m gonna push everything forward.” So there’s a balancing act that you typically need to engage in. Often it’s helpful to pick some issues where the consequences are not too great and get the team used to the situation of them giving you advice and you making the call.