Study leadership, read about it, and focus your development on how to take care of your team to enable it to flourish.
Your success is now based on your team’s success, so make sure you have the best talent possible. Remove the blockers by investing in their development and giving constructive feedback.
Set clear goals, direction, and expectations for the team, communicate often, and share context so that everyone knows what they are doing and why.
Most of your time should be spent coaching and removing obstacles. Everyone will want a piece of you now, so protect your calendar, ruthlessly prioritize, determine your non-negotiables, and build in focus time for your Big Rocks.
Get used to saying no. Decline meetings that lack a clear agenda, make decisions with clear accountability, and say no to follow-ups that could be handled via email.
While your team will give you input, the decisions are yours. You won’t be right all the time, so it would be a mistake to strive for perfection. Moving the work forward is what matters, so aim simply to do better each day.
Create an environment that permits innovation, creativity, and risk-taking. Psychological safety is crucial, so show up consistently (by managing your emotions and trying to remain on an even keel), be transparent and reliable, reward risk-taking, and thank your team when they give feedback or input.
You are now the Chief Marketing Officer for your team. Make their impact visible to others and share the value-add they are bringing to the table.
Provide air cover for the team when others are critical without warrant.
Look for mentors with high emotional quotient (EQ) and who are talent magnets. How do they communicate with their team and others? How do they spend their time? What do they value most?
Stepping up from the ranks to lead people for the first time requires you to let go of your “worker” mindset and put yourself at the service of others. Remember: hard skills open the door; soft skills keep you in the room.
As AI reshapes business operations, your leadership development efforts must focus on enabling humans to continue to add distinctive value. Michael D. Watkins explains how to use the 75/25% rule to guide...
How people engage with you is shaped by your brand. If you are known to be reasonable, pragmatic, and strategic, they will want to work with or for you. But if you...
Many of us still equate gaming with dudes playing video games like Grand Theft Auto in a basement. In fact, as Bastian Bergmann told Stefan Michel in a recent I by IMD Book...
Beige gets a bad rap from brand consultants, but when you’re stressed, it’s hard to think clearly: you need to return to neutral first. To reset your nervous system, try going back...
Explore first person business intelligence from top minds curated for a global executive audience