Onboarding Advice
The commercials were right: You never get a second chance to make a first impression.
The first days, weeks, and months in a new role are crucial for leaders to connect, prioritize, and build momentum. Failing to do these things undermines your leadership. Indeed, some never recover from a poor start.
Beginning in 2024 I will be offering Onboarding Support for charity leaders as part of Lead With Catalyst’s work.
I’ll share more about this service in January, but here are a few bits that will be part of that program.
Things you need to do to succeed in your first 6 months:
Quickly understand the situation of the organization/team you are leading.
Are things going well? Are you coming in to continue good progress or to turn around some problems? How urgently does change need to happen? What is the mandate you’ve been given by the board/your boss? The sooner you can diagnose the health of the organizations the better the early results you can accomplish.
Connect with, and assess, your team.
Are they excited? Exhausted? In conflict? Are there people who need to leave for their own sake and/or the sake of the organization? Are they open to your leadership or will you need to earn their trust over time? What are the strengths and weaknesses? Time spent building rapport pays off and it’s common that you discover things aren’t quire what you were told during the interview process.
Overcome your own Insecurities.
Almost everyone who comes into a new role has some self-doubt. That’s often helpful in bringing out our best. But when insecurity takes the wheel we quickly find ourselves in trouble. I’ve seen too many capable, smart leaders flame out in new roles because they were operating out of flailing insecurity (often poorly disguised as bravado) instead of a deeply rooted and secure identity.
Choose your Advisors wisely.
Hopefully you’ve been assigned someone within the organization to help you get your bearings in the first few weeks. But you also need some outside support where you can safely share your unedited thoughts and get input. This needs to be someone who is committed to both the organization’s success and your well-being. They need to be able to say hard things with love and to help you see situations from multiple perspectives. Specific knowledge about your organization or it’s cause is a bonus.
Put together a clear plan for the first 6-12 months.
It’s important to get some quick wins. You also need to be sure that you have a sense of how you are going to progressively assume the role and make things happen. Things get busy fast and if you aren’t intentional about setting a course you’re likely to find yourself caught up in responding to urgency instead of being intentional about priorities. This is a key benefit of an outside advisor.
Starting well matters. And having a trusted advisor can help that happen. For roles as key and costly as executive roles are it just makes sense to invest in increasing the probability of success.
Contact me if I can be helpful to you and/or your organization.
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