How To Become "your Own" In A New Team. Chief's Guide

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

When a new leader comes to an existing company, he, sometimes, can choose two extreme leadership styles, as my observation shows: to be a directive leader, that is, to include a "bad cop", to give instructions to employees to the right and left, and also to apply a system of material anti-motivation: punishment with fines and lower wages. Or he goes to the other extreme: he becomes an overly supportive leader, that is, a "good policeman."

Most often, when a leader comes to a new team, he develops a tendency to become a directive leader, this is due to the stress of the new environment and conditions or a personal complex with "immaturity" and lack of confidence in himself and his strengths. That is, a person is not able or does not know how to harmoniously and without stress for himself, the team and the business as a whole fit into an already existing picture, then he begins to rewrite the whole picture for himself, goes ahead, refuses to take responsibility for his actions and words, is afraid when things don't go as he planned. Once I watched from the side of such a leader. He strove to show "who is the boss", began to establish his own rules and regulations and tried to bend the existing team under them. Strategically, these actions are unlikely to lead to a positive result, because employees will be afraid of him and respect such a leader only out of fear. They are unlikely to be able to work productively and with pleasure, and they will also be afraid to open up and talk about the situation at the enterprise or some professional problem that they cannot yet solve and / or they need advice or additional resources. This kind of management, in most cases, will have a bad effect on the business itself.

Another management style is when the leader chooses an overly supportive strategy: he gets in everywhere, tries to impose his point of view and help. This tendency is especially traced at the initial stage, when he really wants to be useful and show himself, to understand the business and all its depth as quickly as possible. Yes, this is good intrinsic motivation (understanding the full depth of the business and demonstrating its usefulness), but the actions are fundamentally wrong.

Another big mistake for a manager is the desire to quickly take up the maximum performance of his duties, to deploy active actions to improve / deteriorate any processes, and to introduce changes. "I would have a sword and a horse and on the line of fire" is an ideal saying in this case, which is unlikely to benefit an already existing organization and team.

How to become "your"

The ideal option for a manager who has just arrived at the enterprise is to “be below the grass and quieter than water” for at least the first month. We are talking here about the behavior in relation to business processes and personnel. This tactic is important because the new main face in the company is stress not only for this new face, but also for the staff. Why then exacerbate this stress with the above mistakes. Many managers think that when you come to an old business, you urgently need to take action, show yourself, take various measures to supposedly develop and maintain the business in order to show off or stand out in front of staff or partners, show your authority, and so on. It is also possible that some managers have a complex of “outside opinion”, they ask themselves: “What will the team think of me if I sit quietly? And they will probably get the impression that I am not doing anything”- such thoughts will entail the above-described mistakes.

An excellent tactic at the beginning of the journey: analysis, recognition, acquaintance with the enterprise, business processes, and the team. You can get a lot of useful information from employees that will greatly help your work if you are a leader.

As for the staff, it is worthwhile in the first days of the parish to get to know everyone at a general meeting. Tell us about yourself calmly and kindly. Then get to know the employees, listen to them if they want to tell you something: be it work questions or personal wishes, and also listen to what they have to say about the company, traditions in it and work processes. Tell us about your business plans and workflows. Listen to employees if they have any thoughts or ideas about what you said. It is also important to reassure them that you will not introduce any drastic changes in the team or work processes, but if it is important for you to fulfill some of your requirements or work needs, let the employees know about it and explain why it is not important for you, how much for them. For example, a new reporting system or a corporate accounting system is often perceived as sabotage by employees, because they do not understand why “do the extra work”. Your task is to "sell" them the idea of the usefulness of this innovation, to show its positive sides and advantages for each employee.

The next, after analyzed and familiarized, step would be reasonable to start pulling up the necessary resources, both human and material, gradually introduce new processes necessary for business, slowly remove unnecessary ones, and so on. At this stage, a supervisory function is just needed, when the leader controls the progress of his innovations and helps the team, gives feedback. And then, if the leader really wants to be useful, he can take over some internal work processes at the performer's level, do everything with his own hands, so to speak, since any good leader needs to understand the business processes in his area of responsibility from the inside as best as possible. …

Outcome

So, a company can raise its leader, this is growth from the bottom up, that is, a career starts from a low position and gradually turns into a managerial one, here you need to show yourself from the very beginning and be active in work processes, gain experience. And there is another option, which was discussed in the article, when a leader comes to a ready-made team, then he grows from top to bottom, that is, he starts with analysis and active listening and only then gradually descends to the level of the performer in order to understand the processes from the inside myself, and not vice versa, as it can sometimes happen, according to my observations. Such behavior will allow you to avoid many of the above mistakes, even if the manager is experienced, but came into an existing business, where of course there are many nuances of their own.