Next Level Leaders – Managing Former Peers

When many next level leaders are promoted, they find themselves managing people who were previously their peers. This can be awkward in some cases, but when you approach it proactively, it doesn’t have to be.

Just because you’ve been promoted doesn’t mean that you’re superior to your former peers. They are still the talented individuals they were when you worked side by side. Their concern is likely that you will treat them differently, and may even fear that you will no longer treat them with respect.

Next Level Leaders – Managing Time and Priorities, 2

Last time, we looked at four areas of focus as a foundation for good time management when you’ve been promoted into a new managerial role. To review, these include managing priorities, determining needs of your new director reports, managing projects, and fitting in with the pace of the environment.

Today we’ll look at a way you can plan and manage your time through determining the level of importance and urgency for your tasks. This method went into broad based use from Stephen Covey’s The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.

Next Level Leaders – Managing Time and Priorities, 1

You’re newly promoted into your new managerial role. Frankly, everything is new, from your overall responsibilities to a new boss to people reporting to you. You knew how to balance tasks in the old job, but now there are many different moving parts.

How you manage time and balance priorities is one of the biggest initial challenges. Part of this is because your time isn’t your own anymore. Your direct reports want and need your attention, and, in many situations, these are different people than your previous colleagues.

Next Level Leaders

Executives often promote their best “doers” (e.g., accountant, technician, designer, etc.) into management roles with high and eager expectations. The challenge with this is that what makes people great in their doer roles rarely make them competent for management jobs.

At a minimum, to make a promotion successful, the newly minted managers need to learn about the roles that they’re stepping into and what skills are necessary to be effective in management.

Why Do I Need To Adapt?

One of my executive clients asked me – with some exasperation – why he had to adapt his style to communicate more effectively with his employees.

I share this story because this person is intelligent, passionate, and goal driven. But he has an abrupt demeanor, and his acerbic delivery puts off many of the people who work for him. We’ve worked on this issue of effective communication for months, but he doesn’t consider this a priority.

Recognition vs. Favoritism

Leaders who overtly exercise favoritism make the “chosen” people feel good but often at the expense of diminishing others. Of course, it is appropriate to recognize people who do excellent work, but that recognition should not be at the expense of making other employees feel “less than”.

Our employees are human and are pleased or flattered to receive recognition, whether private or public. When public acknowledgement primarily focuses on favored employees, however, resentment can ensue.

Behavioral Goal Setting

To set and attain goals is an important process for nearly all high-achieving leaders. Whether you go through a formal process to set and monitor goals, or informally record your aspirations, the desired outcome is the same.

People typically identify tasks or activities as the stepping stones for goal achievement. For example, if you want to achieve a certain revenue number in your department, you can divide that number among your employees resulting in a goal of x dollars per employee.

Thoughts on Freedom and Food

As Independence Day in the United States occurs on Monday, it’s an appropriate time to reflect on freedom and food. If you hadn’t thought of pairing those two topics together, it’s a natural given the holiday.

Any time I hear people say that they’re trapped in their lives, they’re implicitly saying that they don’t feel free. But it also infers that they are holding themselves as victims to their circumstances. Victims are not free; they are captive to their conditions.

Take Steps, Not Leaps

Can you motivate an employee whose performance is lackluster? The answer is imbedded in the distinction between motivation and inspiration: we can inspire the people who work with us, but motivation needs to come from within.

Leaders can be especially frustrated when they haven’t been able to inspire employees to perform at a higher level. One client suggested that an employee’s work was about a B- level and he was trying to raise it to an A. This is a worthy goal, but is it attainable?

Laser Focus

Something that differentiates top performers from others is that they stay focused on the end result. They don’t just write a report or complete an assignment; they think about how their work can have the greatest impact on the end result or user.

The workplace is filled with busy people, and some might offer the excuse that they’re just too buried to bring project x to the next level. Although this may be true, those who break through the busy-ness barrier do it regularly.