You’ve just been promoted to be one of the big-shots in the company. You aren’t familiar with the new position and don’t know how to lead your staffs to achieve the common goals of your department and the company as a whole. You’re wondering what action a leader should take in his first new days?
1. Reach the consensus
Some of your staffs used to be your colleagues, friends or someone at the same level like you before. Thus it’s not easy to ask them to follow all your requirements. Don’t force them to do what you want. What you should do is to listen to your staffs, showing that their opinion is highly appreciated. This is a clever way for you to improve your leading skills.
In the new position, you’ll have to solve more conflicts. Whenever people go astray and disagreement arises, leaders have to make up the final decision to make people concentrate on the main problems and find out the best solution. “Don’t find fault. Find a remedy.” That’s the way Henry Ford managed his staffs and this is how new leaders can apply this to solve any disputes arisen with their staffs.
2. Establish leading style
It’s very difficult to change all established customs in your first new days. Thus, before changing the working way in your department, you should research carefully how your predecessors manage the staff, identify advantages and disadvantages in their leading style. Then, you can work out what you need to change. When you inform the staffs of things to be changed in the future, remember to highlight what the benefits the change will bring to the whole team.
3. Formulate clear plan
Before any meeting, plan it carefully and make sure what you want to achieve in the meeting. You also need to predict what kind of dispute may occur as well. A detailed agenda will encourage the participants to be more engaged to your leadership.
However confident you are, you should discuss openly with your staffs to show that you welcome all their constructive ideas and they play very important role in the whole company. However, you must be strong to reject any unsuitable opinions because you, as a leader, are responsible for the best decision for the whole team.
4. Allocate right people in the right position
You can do this successfully if you pay more attention to how people carry out their job. Then, you’ll assign tasks to the appropriate people based on their strengths. Role rotation works very well to help your staff develop their strengths and skills.
5. Praise openly, criticize “secretly”
Successful leaders praise their staffs openly when they perform good job and criticize them “secretly” when they commit mistakes. Hence, you should praise your staff in front of the whole team to “maximize” their pride while criticism should be only tactfully mentioned in meeting rooms among related people.
