Page 152 - Just Promoted A 12 Month Road Map for Success in Your New Leadership Role

Beginning to Craft Your Vision and Direction 137

■ In organizations you’ve worked for, did the leader establish priorities
early? How? What was the effect? If he or she did not, what was it like to
work there? Did you and others know what was important?
■ Describe effective symbolic behaviors and signs you have seen. What are
some of the things you can do to symbolize your vision or expectations?
■ What are at least three ways that you, as a newly promoted executive,
can help influence and organize your function’s early mindset regarding
your key priorities?
■ In groups, certain people are the high influencers. During the first few
weeks in a new position, how might you influence the influencers in the
organization?
■ Are there work assignments, special projects, and task forces that you
can organize around a key issue that can further strengthen the direction
of your function?
■ How might you use your ability to recognize and reward efforts during
your first few months in a new leadership position?
■ How might you facilitate setting team, group, and individual goals in a
way that promotes perceived consistency between your intentions and
actions? How can you use recognition and reward in a similar fashion?
■ How can you ensure that you are consistent in what you say and do?
■ Over the next several months, can you pick people for special responsi-
bilities, assignments, and promotions based on their willingness and
ability to work within your platform and vision? Remember to act in
such a way that others in your organization can see the relationship
between your selection of people and your commitment to certain goals
and directions for your organization.
■ How can you make the people around you feel like winners? What can
you do to continue this feeling? If they don’t feel like winners, why not?
Together, how can you turn this feeling around?
■ As a means of building consistency, some leaders periodically update
a top-priority to-do list. For example, twice a year one director mobi-
lizes people around those key problems and opportunities that are
viewed as gateways to success. How might you apply this approach?
What are its possible uses for concentrating people’s attention on what
is really important? What methods can ensure that all individuals in
the organization are problem solvers, solution makers, and identifiers
of opportunities? (Consider the incredible power of administrative