How to SET Yourself up for Success in Your New Role
Updated: 3 days ago
You did it! For years you have been working towards your new leadership role. The excitement of the opportunity is starting to wear off, and reality is beginning to set in. You are now in a role that you have never done before, and despite all of the knowledge and experience you gained to get the role, you need to build new skills, competencies, and relationships to be effective in this new role. Call it stress, anxiety, or uncertainty, but the feelings you have right now are not uncommon in new leaders. The keys to overcoming these feelings are identifying what you need to know to be successful and developing a plan to help you grow into your new role.
In this article, I will share the SET (study, engage and teach) approach for transitioning into a new role. By identifying 1) what you need to study, 2) who you need to engage, and 3) what you need to teach, you will position yourself for success in your new role.
What do you need to study?
Knowledge is the key to success. When you start in a new role, your biggest challenge is your lack of knowledge. To address this challenge, you must study your current situation and understand what it will take to be successful. The few pieces of information you must understand are the: ยท
Expectations of the role
Resources available to you
Strengths and weaknesses of your team
Who needs to be involved in decision-making?
How is work currently being done?
How could work be improved?
Who are your customers
What are their expectations?
Who can contribute to your success?
How will success be measured?
There is a lot of information that can benefit you and a short amount of time to get up to speed, so you want to be intentional about prioritizing information gathering.
There are three primary ways that you can learn new information. You can read about it, you can hear about it, or you can experience it. As you develop your plan, it is crucial to incorporate all three into your approach.
Read- you should allocate some of your time to reading information about your new role. This includes internal information such as business plans, job descriptions, educational literature, company policies, previous employee performance reviews, and other documents that will help you understand your role's current situation and prior successes and failures. The more you know the history of the position, the less likely you will be to repeat the mistakes made by previous leaders. In addition, you should allocate time to read outside resources related to your role, company, and industry. Many times, innovation comes from ideas that exist outside of the company. By benchmarking performance and learning best practices from different companies, you will have a better idea of what changes you can make to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of your new team.
Hear-as you move into a new role, you should spend a large portion of your time meeting with people, asking questions, and listening with the intent of understanding. Customers, employees, peers, supervisors, and vendors can provide valuable information on your organization's history and role. In addition, they can provide insight into what things are going well and what could be improved. By collecting this information, you will better understand the current situation and be able to develop strategies to improve the business.
