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Chapter
3
Skills for Developing
Yourself as a Leader
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Introduction
• Your First 90 Days as a Leader
• Learning From Experience
• Building Technical Competence
• Building Effective Relationships with Superiors
• Building Effective Relationships with Peers
• Development Planning
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Your First 90 Days as a Leader
Figure 3.1: New Leader Onboarding Road Map
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Before You Start: Do Your
Homework
• Candidates should gather as much information
about their potential company as they can.
• Some good sources of information include Web
sites, annual reports, press releases, and
marketing literature.
• Use Facebook, LinkedIn, Plaxo, and other social
networking sites to set up informational interviews
with people inside the organization.
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The First Day: You Get Only One
Chance to Make a First Impression
• New leaders have two critical tasks to accomplish
the first day on the job: meeting their new boss
and meeting their new team.
• The first meeting with the boss should happen in
the boss’s office and be about an hour long. Key
topics to discuss include:
– Identifying the team’s key objectives, metrics, and
important projects
– Understanding the boss’s view of team strengths and
weaknesses
– Working through meeting schedules and communication
styles
– Sharing plans for the day and the next several weeks
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The First Two Weeks: Lay the
Foundation
• The first two weeks should be filled with meeting
with many people both inside and outside the
team.
• The key objectives for these meetings are:
– Learning as much as possible
– Developing relationships
– Determining future allies
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The First Two Weeks: Lay the
Foundation (continued)
• One-on-one meetings with key team members
should provide the leader with answers to critical
questions.
– What is the team member working on?
– What are the team member’s objectives?
– Who are the “stars” a level or two down in the
organization?
– What are the people issues on the team?
– What can the team do better?
– What advice do team members have for the new leader,
and what can the new leader do to help team members?
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The First Two Weeks: Lay the
Foundation (continued)
• New leaders should schedule one-on-one
meetings with all their peers to build rapport.
• During these meetings, the new leader should
discuss the following:
– Their peers’ objectives, challenges, team structure, etc.
– Their perspectives on what the new leader’s team does
well and could do better
– Their perspectives on the new leader’s team members
– How to best communicate with the boss
– How issues get raised and decisions made on their
boss’s team
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The First Two Months: Strategy,
Structure, and Staffing
• During this time period, the leader is gathering
more information, determining the direction, and
finalizing the appropriate structure and staffing
for the team. Tasks to be performed include:
– Gathering benchmarking information from other
organizations
– Meeting with key external customers and suppliers
– Meeting with the former team leader, if appropriate
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The Third Month: Communicate and
Drive Change
• The new leader should have developed a vision of
the future. Things to do now include:
– Articulating how the team will win
– Identifying the what, why, and how of any needed
changes
– Defining a clear set of expectations for team members
• The two major events for the third month are to:
– Meet with the entire team
– Meet off-site with direct reports (if the team is large).
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Learning From Experience
• Leadership practitioners can enhance the learning
value of experiences by:
– Creating opportunities to get feedback
– Taking a “10 percent stretch”
– Learning from others
– Keeping a journal of daily leadership events
– Having a developmental plan
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Building Technical Competence
• Technical competence concerns the knowledge
and repertoire of behaviors one can utilize to
complete a task successfully.
• Followers with technical competence earn greater
rewards, exert influence in their groups, and have
greater say in decisions.
• For leaders, technical competence is related to
improved managerial promotion rates, better
training skills, lower rates of group conflict, and
higher motivation levels among followers.
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Building Technical Competence
(continued)
• Both leaders and followers can improve
technical competence by:
– Determining how the job contributes to the overall
mission and success of the organization
– Becoming an expert in the job through education,
training, observation, and teaching
– Seeking opportunities to broaden experiences by
working on team projects and visiting other parts of
the organization
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Building Effective Relationships with
Superiors
• Building an effective relationship with superiors
involves understanding the superior’s world by:
– Learning the superior’s personal and organizational
objectives
– Realizing that superiors do not have all the answers and
have both strengths and weaknesses
– Keeping the superior informed about various activities in
the work group or new developments or opportunities in
the field
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Building Effective Relationships with
Superiors (continued)
• Building an effective relationship with superiors
requires followers to adapt to the superior’s
style by:
– Clarifying expectations about their role on the team,
committee, or work group
– Listing major responsibilities and use them to guide
discussions with the superior about other ways to
accomplish the task and relative priorities of the tasks
– Being honest and dependable
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Building Effective Relationships with
Peers
• Research suggests that a key requirement of
leadership effectiveness is the ability to build
strong alliances with others, such as peers.
• Building effective relationships with peers
involves:
– Recognizing common interests and goals
– Understanding peers’ tasks, problems, and rewards
– Practicing a Theory Y attitude
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Development Planning
• Developmental planning is the systematic process
of building knowledge and experience or changing
behavior. Peterson and Hicks claim that there are
5 interrelated phases to developmental planning:
– Identifying development needs
– Analyzing data to identify and prioritize development
needs
– Using prioritized development needs to create a focused
and achievable development plan
– Periodically reviewing the plan, reflecting on learning,
and modifying or updating the plan as appropriate
– Transferring learning to new environments
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Conducting a GAPS Analysis
• The first phase in the development planning
process is to conduct a GAPS (goals, abilities,
perceptions, standards) analysis which involves
the following steps:
– Identifying your career objectives
– Identifying your strengths and development needs
related to your career objectives
– Determining how your abilities, skills, and behaviors
are perceived by others based on 360-feedback or
performance reviews
– Determining the expectations your boss or
organization has for your career objectives
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Identifying and Prioritizing Development
Needs: Gaps of GAPS
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Bridging the Gaps: Building a
Development Plan
• There are 7 steps to developing a high impact
development plan:
– Step 1: career and development objectives
– Step 2: criteria for success
– Step 3: action steps
– Step 4: whom to involve and reassess dates
– Step 5: stretch assignments
– Step 6: resources
– Step 7: reflect with a partner
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