Four ways to help new executives be effective

This article focuses on how to help leaders succeed rather than fail, especially in their first year or two. It covers four ways to support new leaders. You can read more background about this project and who I interviewed here. Here’s the article one the first trend I discovered: why leaders fail.

Photo by ian dooley on Unsplash

When companies really begin to scale, hiring rapidly picks up the pace including more executives, brought on to become force multipliers for the CEO and the business. These leaders are expected to be plug and play, ready to help scale the business. It’s all too easy to underestimate the difficulty of making the transition from management to leadership in an executive role. Executives, especially new ones need support in order to become force multipliers for the business. Here are four ways companies can help leaders do that.

Pay attention to their first 90 days

Making leaders more effective in their first 90 days saves the company money and can increase the revenue per employee. This isn't just about lining the pockets of the founders. More revenue means the company can re-invest in employees by providing training and other opportunities. Support new executives from the very beginning. Do this for both those brought in from outside and those who come from another internal role. Don't wait until you hear rumblings from the team about an ineffective leader. Set them up for success from day one. An executive coach for new leaders is a great starting point.

To really maximize their effectiveness, develop a specific on-boarding experience for new executives. While including administrative tasks like systems is good, go beyond to include things like navigating organizational priorities, and the like. Set them up with an executive from another area of the company — they can provide context to organizational decisions, tricky situations and culture questions. This also helps them begin building relationships with other executives, an often over-looked path for success at this level.

Help your leaders develop a 90 day plan. This plan should be developed collaboratively between the CEO and the leader to provide organizational context and to set expectations. Knowing what they need to deliver in those early days will ease their stress and help them focus on what’s most important.

"Having on-boarding would have made me more effective. If someone sat me down and gave me more context on the history, systems and thinking I'd be more effective more quickly."

(Shameless plug: I'm working on a 90-day program for new executives. Get on the list to learn more.)

Help them adjust to their new role

Leaders come into their role with a backlog of experience (technical, HR, finance, marketing, product or operations, etc) giving them an understanding of how things work in their area. When they transition into their new role as an executive, their relationship with their work has to change. It takes time to recognize the need for this shift and even longer to develop. Without a clear transition plan and support, leaders often fall back onto their old role and patterns.

"The transition from manager to executive is bigger than most people think — it's even bigger than IC to manager."

"As a leader you have to figure out how not to do the stuff yourself but how it will get done through you."

Most folks have progressed through their career with their value tied to delivering the work. As a leader it’s no longer about delivering the work, it’s about business strategy and the overall well-being of the team. As an executive you rapidly get to place where you can no longer do the technical work. Even if you could, getting too deep into the execution can cause a leader to stumble. Leaders who don’t move beyond execution can slip easily into micromanagers, becoming a roadblock for team progress. Burn out also looms for these leaders as they take on too much. The transition from doer to leader can be perilous, leaders often flame out because they didn’t make the necessary adjustments.

“I had a lot of value to delivering the work. Am I valuable if I’m not directly doing the work?”

Leaders have to see themselves in new ways. While some of this is about acquiring new leadership skills, it starts with a mindset shift. They have to let go of old patterns of success and find new ones. To do this they need support. CEOs can be helpful with though often their capacity leaves little room. Executive coaching can be incredibly useful in this situation. I’d even say that all new leaders should be given access to executive coaching. It will prevent flame-outs and give them the springboard to become force multipliers much faster.

Note: Letting go of doing is true for managers too, as a leader the importance of this accelerates dramatically.

Define what it means to be an executive at the company

Typically what it means to be a "good" leader at the company is implicit, rather addressed directly. When expectations aren’t explicit, leaders don’t understand what’s expected of them. This lack of understanding is distracting and can undermine their confidence as they try to figure out it out. If you're a CEO or the head of People Operations, take time to create expectations what good leadership looks like and what it means to be an executive at the company. These expectations should be explicit and addressed directly; better yet, written down in some fashion. Be sure to include things like the goals of executives meetings, what kinds of information they can share and which is confidential, etc. Come to an agreement on what kinds of decisions they can make independently, which should be brought to the executive team and which are discussions with the CEO.

Making these expectations explicit takes the guess work out of trying to figure them out. Knowing what's expected of them saves executives valuable time and energy to focus on critical strategy work to scale the company rather than floundering about. Transitioning into a role like this is akin to learning a new language — it takes time and concerted effort. Making it easier on them lowers their stress and helps them to be more effective more quickly.

Offer specialized support

Executives rarely get specialized support or even much support at all. I've worked in career development for years so I've seen those budgets. Surprisingly little of it goes to the development of executive staff. This is a costly mistake. Most of the executives I interviewed hadn't had executive coaching or much support for that matter. When I asked if they had on-boarding for their role most chuckled and shook their head. At the same time, pretty much all longed for that kind of support, especially in their first leadership role. This made me really sad. Most became leaders to have a positive impact -- driven by doing good for people. Setting them up for success benefits everyone.

Too often the development of executives slips through the cracks. I get why, I'd just thing we need to have a new perspective on leaders. Rather than seeing them as preformed force multipliers who just give, we need to see them as well formed pieces of clay who could use a bit more tweaking.

Good choices of specialized support for leaders include leadership training and executive coaching. Executives who use these kinds of services are more introspective, discover blind spots more easily and find it easier to change their behavior. This kind of work also helps them learn to spot and address problems more quickly. If I were the founder of a scaling startup I'd offer executive coaching to every leader in the company. Offer it before they begin to struggle. I'd also add budget for a facilitator to help create an effective exec team. It's well worth the investment.

Invest in your leaders’ growth. It will allow them to become force multipliers.