After accepting a new position, it’s easy to assume you were hired to “fix a mess.” But perhaps the team just needs a leader and not a savior.
Over the years I watched many executives enter and quickly exit my companies. One predominant pattern was the rapid departure of leaders who assumed they were hired to “fix the mess.” Nothing before their arrival was done right. The team was riddled with ineptitude. Success could only come from their leadership. In their minds, they were hired to right the ship and they rode roughshod over anyone in the way. Except with that attitude, everyone on the team was in the way.
When a leader enters an organization with the assumption everything is wrong and he’s there to make it right, it’s almost impossible to shelter the team from the behavior that follows. I cannot think of a single instance where I saw someone conceal it from the team. Rather, they said it out loud, sometimes rudely to all and sometimes to individuals on the team, which was then shared broadly. They told those who would listen that the team had been unsuccessful, was viewed as a failure, and needed to be overhauled.
While leaders are regularly hired to guide a team in a different direction, the leader entering the organization is much better served by giving credit for the past while establishing a new vision for the future. Assume the team was doing good work in alignment with the established direction. Assume the work is hard. Assume there were tradeoffs the team had to make. Assume there were politics involved. Assume there are good skills across the team. Assume everyone needs support and to have a path cleared for them to be able to do their best. Assume the change is necessary. Most important, assume you are not a savior, but rather the next leader who will be a part of the team. These assumptions are far more realistic than assuming nothing is good and only you can fix it. There is always the next best thing to be done, taking the next step from whatever happened to have been done in the past. Pick up where those who came before happen to have left off.
Focus on where you want to go rather than where the team has been, and you will achieve greater success. After listening to the team, give credit for the work accomplished to date, for getting to where they are and the effort that required. Then speak to the future without deep reference to the past. Talk about the future from the current moment rather than from the past you were not a part of. Every team is where it happens to be, shaped by a myriad of decisions and actions that came before. Most of those decisions made sense in the context of the time. Decisions made five to ten years ago often are not relevant or needed for what happens to be going on today, even though they were correct at that time. For example, a process implemented in a call center 10 years ago requiring manager approval for an action may no longer be relevant as additional information is now available and frontline associates can make the decision. If the team continues to require manager sign-off because “that’s the way it’s always been done,” as the incoming leader you can either lead with, “that’s stupid why don’t we let the associates make the decision” or “I can see how it made sense at the time. How might we do it differently today given the broadly available data?” By acknowledging the past and giving credit for work done to date, even though it will be different in the future, as an incoming leader you will be received quite differently and have a greater opportunity to create buy-in for your strategy.
A more specific example to illustrate the point:
A new leader joined an organization I worked in and almost immediately demonstrated unbearable, “savior-complex” behavior. He was certain everything was broken and only he could fix it, otherwise why would he have been hired? He was quick to point out how prior decisions made no sense and how the work the team was focused on would not get us where we needed to go. He did this even though he spent no time learning about the prior strategy and aligned work. He wanted to go in a new direction, which was fine, but he did not care to understand the impacts of the change in direction. Therefore, he did not understand what changes in the team and the work would be necessary to achieve his direction. He did not try to bring others along. As a direct report to him, I had a front row seat to the action, watching him badmouth the team, berate his leaders, and alienate partners he relied on for success. I asked him directly, “Are you trying to make people hate you?” He looked at me completely puzzled and asked me what I meant. I explained how his negative behaviors and harsh words were driving people away from his vision, not toward it. He said he was hired to shake things up and to take the organization to the next level. His response was me, me, me. He was fired after eight months.
Share your thoughts below.
After accepting a new leadership position, what techniques or approach did you use to establish a new direction and to resolve the problems you were hired to resolve while building trust with your team?
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