Transitioning to leadership
When transitioning from management into a leadership role, one of the most common challenges faced is shifting your mindset away from approaching situations as a “Manager” and instead, approaching them as a “Leader”.
A “Manager” and a “Leader” will have similar attributes. For example, both can be effective delegators, communicate well with others, have integrity, are confident and motivational.
Whilst their attributes may be similar, their roles are very different. The two can be defined as:
A Manager
Organises, plans and coordinates the completion of activities.
A manager tells people what to do and when to do it. They then provide the “Leader” with updates on how things are progressing.
A Leader
Inspires and motivates people to follow them towards a certain goal or outcome.
Their role involves visioning new ideas to the benefit of the business and encouraging their teams to ‘Buy in’ to these ideas.
What to do when transitioning into a leadership role:
Communicate Better - As a leader, you need to be able to effectively communicate the ‘vision’ to your managers and their team so they understand what they are working towards. A good investment would be to enrol on a Presentation Skills course and to practice delivering more presentations.
Delegate More - You need to step further away from managing/micromanaging your teams. Give your managers the information they need to do this for you and trust that they will do it. Your focus should be on innovation and making changes.
Entrepreneurial Thinking - As a leader, you are at the forefront when it comes to the vision of your team, department and business. Therefore, you should get comfortable with challenging the norm, challenging fixed mindsets and ideals and learning to take calculated risks for large-scale ROI. “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.”
Understanding Motivators - Do you know what your team’s primary motivators are? It may come as a surprise but not everyone is motivated by money. So talking about how much commission your team could earn when introducing a new change may motivate some, but not everyone. As a leader, you need to be engaging all of your audience through different incentives. We would suggest utilising tools such as Driving Forces or McClelland’s Motivation theory to identify motivators amongst your team.
SWOT Analysis, SMART Business Plans - If you’re going to pitch an idea to your teams, you need to identify the strengths and weaknesses, the opportunities and threats of what you are proposing and then present them in a structured way. Put yourself in the audience's shoes, what questions would you ask? What information is missing that you would want to know? With what you’re currently proposing, would you be convinced this is the right course of action? We would recommend that you learn how to complete a SWOT analysis and a SMART Business Plan (templates of which can be found online) and start to use these tools to start assessing your department, business unit, teams and suggested ideas.
