New leadership roles come with challenges. This document provides six rules to help ensure success: 1. Make a good first impression as you only have one chance. 2. Be a good guest by listening, being appreciative, and respecting past decisions. Do not compare the new role to previous ones. 3. Get to know the territory by researching the people, products, customers and finances. Find informal power structures. 4. Build bridges, not barriers by focusing on team success and not making promises in the first 90 days. 5. Watch out for potential opponents like those who wanted your job. Be aware of informal power centers. 6. Recognize your role

1. New Leadership Role?
Six Rules to Ensure Your Success
Jean Erickson Walker, Ed.D.,
CMF
www.jeanericksonwalker.com
jean@jeanericksonwalker.com
503-816-5956

2. Rule 1:
Remember, You Have Only One
Chance to Make a Good First
Impression
“What we call the beginning is often the end.”
Thomas Stearns Elliot

3. Why Leaders Fail
“When achieving results becomes more
important than the means to their
achievement – that is the moment when
a leader steps onto the slippery slope
of failure.
Often such leaders see their followers as
pawns, a mere means to an end, thus
confusing manipulation with leadership.”
Why Leaders Fail, Mark Sanborn

4. Critical Questions
“What’s In it For Me?”
“Do you mean me any harm?”
Everyone is listening to radio station “WIFM”
How do you take people from where they are now…
To where they need to be?
 Create climate of trust
 Role model behavior you want to see in others
 Ask questions rather than make pronouncements
 Communicate vision of positive growth & learning

5. Rule 2: Be a Good Guest
1. Be visible
2. Listen well, be respectful
3. Be appreciative
4. Honor the traditions and decisions
of the past
5. Don’t compare to your last company:
People, Culture, Company, or Processes

6. It’s All in the Perspective…
Are You There for the Long Run?
Long Distance
Sprinter
Runner
Collaborator Lone Ranger
Coach Star
Your Job is to Create Stars…NOT be One
There’s only room for one star…
if you insist on it being you, no one else will be.

7. Rule 3: Get to Know the Territory
 Do your research!
 Read the resumes of your direct reports; check out
colleagues on LinkedIn, know their backgrounds
 Learn the products
 Meet the customers
 Delve deeply into the financials
 Become a student of the organization
 Find out who holds the informal power
 Recruit mentors
 Assume the best

8. Identify the Challenge
 Steady as she goes?
 Refine, smooth out the rough edges
and polish?
 Take it to the next level?
 Turnaround?
Are you Solving the Right Issues?
Or Swimming Against the Current?

9. Rule 4:
Build Bridges, Not Barriers
 Leave your donks home
 Focus on the whole 360 team
 Lead the way across the barriers
 Make no major decisions in the
first 90 days; make no promises
 Take care of your people
Applaud More; Bow Less.

10. Balance of Power
Customers
Team
Your Role is
Mission to Ensure the
Balance
Organization

11. Releasing the Power
“One cannot speak of leaders who cause organizations
to achieve superlative performance, for no one can
cause it to happen.
Leaders can only recognize and modify conditions
which prevent it; perceive and articulate a sense of
community, a vision of the future, a body of principle
to which people can become passionately
committed, then encourage and enable them to
discover and bring forth the extraordinary
capabilities that lie trapped in everyone struggling to
get out.”
The Art of Chaodic Leadership, Dee Hock

12. Rule 5:
Watch Out for the Sharks
 Wounded Tigers:
Wanted your job and still licking their wounds
 Confidants:
Alliance builders who want you on their side
 Informal Power Centers:
Where the real decisions are made
 Buried Bones:
Ready to rise up, ghosts at the party
 Thought Leaders:
Influencers others follow: Up the mountain or over the cliff
 Hidden Values:
Cultural expectations everyone knows but no one talks about

13. Rule 6:
Recognize Your Role as Change Agent
 Honor the Past, Respect the Present &
Visualize the Future
 Direct the Communication
 Demonstrate Commitment to Organization
 Create Small Group Discussion Opportunities
 No Altar Sacrifices!
 Recognize Individual Differences
 Get Out of the Clouds
LISTEN!!

14. Reactions to Change
 Inevitable pain or opportunity?
 Natural result of evolution?
 Disrupts the status quo?
 Requires time for acceptance?
 Get it over with so we can get back to normal?
 Can and should be managed?
 Must be controlled and suppressed?
 Provides opportunity for individual advancement?
 Creates problems; displaces experienced people?

15. Bringing It All Together
1. Willingness to Lead
2. Positive Belief in People
3. Skill to Communicate Vision and Purpose
4. Decision-Making Technique that
Builds Commitment
5. Leadership Profile that Builds
Trust and Confidence
You Are The Catalyst !

16. “The specific context a leader faces is hard to grasp
because it’s like stepping into a river – you can
never step into the same place twice because its
flow is constantly changing.
Leaders who find comfort and security in stability
will have difficulty surviving.”
The Leadership Challenge, Gretchen M. Spreitzer, Thomas G. Cummings

17. The impressions
and the decisions
you make in the
first 90 days will
determine
whether you are
there 18 months
from now.
Build your
support by
thinking first
of others.
The Road Ahead is Up to You…