Impact Leadership In Your First 90 Days

There is an "unofficial" rule that says you make or break yourself in the first 90 days of a new postion. There is a great deal of truth to this, mainly because people form long lasting opinions during this time. It takes much longer to change someone's opinion than it does to initially create one.

In our first 90 days as a leader, it is critical that we have a plan. This plan needs to consist of a few elements that I would like to share with you.

Our first goal is to Learn. During our first few weeks and months, we need to demonstrate a willingness to learn about how the business operates, how people function within the organization, and what the main "issues" are as your people see them. This will do several things for you in your new role.

One benefit is it provides a very positive impression to your team members. It says you are willing to sit back and learn about things before making any changes. This gives team members the idea that they may just have a say in future changes, and that you value their opinion.

Learning first will also allow you to make better decisions moving forward. If you understand how things function and what the wants and needs of the customers and team members are, you can better align these with your decisions.

Our second goal during our first 90 days is to create Early Wins. This will build your credibility as a leader and also increase your confidence. My suggestion is that you target 3 areas for your early wins. These 3 areas are simply areas related to team members, peers, and manager.

During our "learning" phase, we want to discover several opportunites for each of these areas. Make sure that you select an area or issue that is not complex, and will not require much if any "approval" from upper management to accomplish. Bite off more than you can chew this early and you really set yourself up for a fall.

Your biggest wins will come from making your team members job easier/better, and making your manager's job easier/better. The way we discover our opportunity is to simply ask. As your team members what there biggest challenges are. Ask your manager what you can do to make his or her day easier. Again, make sure these are things that are not going to takes several months to accomplish.

A final word about finding success in your first 90 days. I suggest that you spend some time writing a description of how you will want to be remembered in your position. What accomplishment will you want others to remember? What type of leader do you want your team members to say you were? These questions will help you write out a clear summary of your time in your position.

Remember, we never get a second chance to make a first impression!!

Have you ever attended a party where you played "pin the tail on the donkey?" It's been a few years, but I remember the surprised feeling when I finally had the blind fold taken off and found that I had been far away from my intended target. Like pin the tail on the donkey, all to often I talk to people that have just had their review and are just shocked to find out that their performance was far from where their manager wanted it to be. So how can we take the blind fold off?

Let me introduce the one on one meeting!! The objective that we have with our one on one's is to provide and receive feedback. Back to our game. How much closer to the target would you be if you took 2 steps, stopped, and someone would tell you to go right, left, up, down? Make the adjustment and take another few steps. You stop, and ask for more direction. By the time you reach the wall where our picture of the donkey is, you will be pretty close. Much closer than if you just strike out on your own. It's the same with our performance as a new leader. We need to work a few days, stop, and ask for adjustments and clarification on our direction.

The frequency of our meetings with our manager will (should) start out very close together. Personally, the first week I like to meet on a daily basis just for a few minutes. Mostly for support and to clarify anything that came up since our last conversation. The second week may be every other day, and after that weekly seems to work fine. If you know that you have a dedicated time each day that first week, you worry less about getting every little thing answered, and you can make a list to go over during the meeting. You also get almost immediate feedback so you are not creating any significant "bad habits". You can get feedback on things that happend today, and are still fresh in your mind. If we begin by meeting weekly, but then move to daily, our assumption is that we are doing a poor job and our manager has concerns.

Many of you may be saying, "I never meet with my manager." My suggestion is that as a new leader, YOU take the initiative to schedule the meetings. It is very common for managers today to neglect the one on one meetings, eithe because they are busy or just do not feel they are necessary. Or even better, because their manager doesn't meet with them, so why......blah blah blah!!! Our careers are in our hands, and if you want to hit the target every time, you need to make sure you are getting the feedback and support required. If your manager is just not open to these meetings, you may not be in the right place to begin with.

They key to making these meetings effective is to be prepared and keep them short. Our one on one meetings the first week usually only lasted 10 minutes or so. When the person I was meeting with would come without anything listed, I would ask questions until we found something they had no response to. This would reinforce that they needed to be prepared by taking some time before the meeting to create a list. I always like ending these meetings by asking my manager, "what can I do to improve my performance?" When you phrase the question "is there anything", most of the time the answer is no. But when you ask for something, your manager will feel obligated to give you something. That's the reason you are meeting in the first place.

So make sure you start out having these meetings. If your manager does not schedule them, do it yourself. Keep them short, and position yourself as someone that is here to help make their life easier. At the end of a year, you will both be on the same page when it comes to your performance based on expectations and perceptions.