Having more responsibilities doesn't mean using a more powerful version of the same "professional software" you've been using until now. So how can you succeed in your new role?
Contents
What is a taking up a post with responsibility?
Taking on a position of responsibility involves different seniority profiles and career paths :
- An experienced person taking up their first management position (Managing Director, member of an Executive Committee or Board of Directors, etc.).
- A young, bright person who manages people older than him or her
- A person already working for the company who is given a wider remit (internal recruitment)
- A new recruit for a newly created position (external recruitment)
In addition to the new responsibilities you have to take on, you often have to deal with a new challenge. unstable environment These include a tense internal political climate, rapid company growth and an international context of market insecurity.
5 priority issues emerging :
- Your legitimacy in the eyes of your managerial peers or senior executives
- Taking a strategic look at your teams/departments/management
- Your ability to orchestrate with the managers in your teams, who themselves have a great deal of responsibility
- Your ability to communicate, both internally and externally
- For external recruitment, your ability to quickly integrate the codes and subtleties of the organisational culture
Even if you are an "experienced leader" who excelled in your previous position, the possibility of failure when you take up your new post is still significantEspecially when the transition involves a change of scope, geographical area, sector or company size. In this uncertain context, you're probably going to be struggling with varying degrees of lucidity or anxiety, cobbling together day by day what you need to fit in and do what you need to do. Hence, frequently, a feeling of strangeness and loneliness due to the disruption of reference points. Despite your professional experience, you may feel at a loss when faced with this new and demanding area of responsibility and the company's high expectations of you, without knowing who to talk to about these issues.
This is where support in taking on positions of responsibility is useful. This is all the more useful if you feel out of step with management approaches that overemphasise rapid decision-making and underestimate the importance of constructive doubt. Speeding up and producing immediate results are pressures that are very present in many companies, with a priority on rapid action. Get coaching support allows time for reflection.
How long does it (really) take to take up a position of responsibility?
This type of appointment takes place over approximately 9 to 12 months to fully settle in and master the new perimeter and its rules of the game, particularly in a new company.
The first 3 months are crucial to ensuring that you adapt quickly and successfully to your new position, to the new teams and to the cultural codes of the company / this level of responsibility. The Hundred Days are therefore key steps in optimising integration.
How is coaching for taking up a position of responsibility useful?
As a newly elected employee, you are plunging into an organisational and human environment that is relatively unknown. The desire to use your past experience will come up against the history of the system in place, which contains its strengths and weaknesses, often unknown at the outset. Whether in the same company or a different one, moving to a different level of responsibility is often difficult because your habits, customs and attitudes are going to have to change. And changing the way you work is never easy!
Observing yourself "from the outside" and being honest with yourself about the difficulties you have encountered are not easy things to do - and even less so if you are alone in front of the mirror. This is precisely the role of the professional coach. Adopting the right attitudes and rituals from the very first weeks, adapting your management style to assert your DNA without upsetting team cohesion too much, will help you gain legitimacy.
What's more, Coaching will help you to avoid missing out on important issues that need to be addressed when you take up a position of responsibility.such as :
- Transfer your expertise from one "house" to another without tacking it on: it's easy to over-value your experience and apply the experience you've gained elsewhere to your new situation, as if all things were equal. This is a mistake.
- Positioning your management within the company's strategy
- Gauging the expectations of your superiors and teams
- Managing former colleagues skilfully
- Recognise the impact of your management style on your teams
- Feel really ready to take the reins, and not just benefit from the title and advantages of the business card
A coaching session to help you take up your new role, means speeding up the integration process and increasing your chances of success in the medium term.
What are the pitfalls to avoid when taking up a position of responsibility?
Rushing to act and achieve your objectives without taking the time to observe
Without observation, it is impossible to develop an organisational vision of what needs to be done. in the medium and long term, nor what needs to be done in the short term.
The first thing you do is observe. Starting with those who work internally, with individual or group meetings, whatever the level of seniority, with site visits, etc. And then externally, with meetings with customers, service providers, institutional partners and so on.
This observation phase has three main objectives :
- Make yourself known, of course.
- Gather information and impressions, and cross-reference them to build up an initial picture of networks of influence, supporters and opponents, opportunities and risks... Time and events will enable you to distinguish which information will be most useful to you.
- Take account of the organisation's objectives as defined when you took up your post, while being able to modify them according to your personal assessment of the situation you are facing and your interpretation of your job description.
Coaching for positions of responsibility will help you to develop and sharpen this capacity for observation and reduce the credence often given to rumours. It will also make it possible to free yourself from too rapid a reliance on the diagnosis presented by your superiorswhich would precociously imbue your action.
Imagine that you will know and understand everything straight away
But this vision is necessarily partial: your contacts won't tell you everything at once. It's normal; it takes time for trust to develop and to learn how to decipher the blanks and the things that are left unsaid.
So in this transitional phase, you never have all the information you need to make an informed analysis. You have to accept that you don't know which can play tricks on your narcissism. Conversely, respecting the knowledge of the people around you is a strong sign of a cooperative attitude which can have significant effects in the medium and long term, and which can limit the risk of incompetence lawsuits of the "you don't know the shop" type.
And don't forget that when you take on a position of responsibility, you have to learn the company culture, the operating rules and/or codes of this new hierarchical level, get to know the teams, AND make (the right) decisions on the most urgent issues that you don't necessarily master. You will be expected to take responsibility for operational responsibility while familiarising yourself with the workings and atmosphere of the teams, the Codir, etc.
Coaching when you take up a position of responsibility will help you to take a step back from your expectations and those of the company, to maintain a genuine sense of objectivity and to be able to make informed decisions.identify your acculturation and action priorities.
Wanting to finalise your long-term strategy now
Another way of naming this trap might be to want to break up what's there and rebuild it your way.
As a new manager, you will undoubtedly be faced with a number of challenges. the tension between what you need to preserve and what you need to change. But while the need to make your mark and leave your mark is legitimate, by trying to erase the past and your predecessor, you are exposing yourself to the risk of teams rejecting you because of a lack of respect for their work and past commitments.
With this in mind, it is premature to immediately lay the foundations for yet another innovation programme, launch a recruitment plan or touch on remuneration policies in a roadmap. An effective long-term strategy takes time to build. If you don't, you run the risk of going it alone, without taking enough time to explain your intentions and convince people - no more unifying project!
In your new role, it's more a case of concentrating on cash flow and customers first, and planning for adjustment phases and Plan Bs throughout the 1era year as you build your strategy and generate buy-in for the change.
Coaching can help you focus on quick wins to establish your credibilityand to find ways of keep a clear head about building your strategy in the long term.
Build your dream team, dedicated to your vision, immediately
Week by week, as you progress through your interviews and visits, you can better gauge where the teams' confidence lies. And you're getting better at mapping out your supporters, your allies, your hesitants and your opponents, their personal stakes and the network games in which everyone is caught up. From now on, you'll be tempted to rally around you and the project you're beginning to design the "in-betweens", those who are not yet either for or against you. By adding your supporters to the team, you have the dream team that will help you achieve your goals.
But that would be a mistake, it's still too early to play the managerial game of chamboule-tout.
- Have you confirmed the support of your hierarchy: shareholders, CEO...?
- Have you had time to set foot in the networks that will be useful to you: affinity networks, but also those that could hold you back if you're not careful?
- Do you know who the real opinion leaders around you are?
As the person in charge, you're bound to be caught in the crossfire, with your hierarchy on one side and your colleagues and teams on the other. You're going to have to deal with pressures that are often contradictory, with the former forcing you to get "the message", "the policy" or "the pill" across, and the latter asking you to resist the "unfeasible".
Coaching will help you to maintain a margin for manoeuvre in your relationships, to see how you can act as a team. mediating between conflicting interestsand how realign the composition of your teams as you go along.
At this level of responsibility, the scope of your responsibilities is constantly changing, requiring you to strike a new balance between firmness and flexibility. Preparing to take up a position of responsibility means first and foremost preparing for a transition of "professional software" in an unstable environment. The good news is that you don't have to go it alone!
