Page 20 - Just Promoted A 12 Month Road Map for Success in Your New Leadership Role

You’ve Been Promoted, Now What? 5

Once the announcement of your promotion has been made and you begin
to prepare or have actually stepped into your new role, an additional set of
dynamics typically comes into play. Members of your team or organization will
want to determine how, if at all, their personal situations will be affected. Oth-
ers will also wish to know if their business, function, or team will experience
major changes. These kinds of questions, and many others, are all very natural
and even predictable. In Chapter 2, specific communication suggestions are pro-
vided to help ease concern and help you shape the initial positive impressions
you desire to have with others. However, you should anticipate that right away,
as the new leader, you will be asked questions, many questions. Even though it
is not rational or logical, people will often have every expectation that you will
be up to speed the day you begin your new role. Of course, there is no way you
could be that ready in your role that quickly. But no one ever said that being well
received as a leader was a logical and rational process. You will be perceived
through others’ lenses and out of their needs, not your own. It is very important
to know and understand this distinction before you start in your role.
Besides questions about job status and security, expect questions about the
operational procedures and the current and future states of your business,
organization, team, or school for which you are responsible. On day 1, others
may also want to know how Problem XYZ will be solved. Right away, many
will expect you somehow to define direction, solve standing issues, and know
answers to just about everything.
You will begin to quickly appreciate the scope of the challenges and the
complexity of the problems to be solved in a way you could never have done
previously. You immediately own the role and the accountability. You have just
been promoted, and the challenges and expectations will become real and very
personal rapidly. We can remember situations in our careers when we looked
in a mirror and rhetorically asked why and how we had ever managed to put
ourselves in these circumstances.
As noted, it is very common for tempered emotions to quickly replace your
previous feelings of excitement and pride. Many report what feels to them like
a tug-of-war between their confidence and their concern about being suc-
cessful. When things pile up quickly, as they often will, many newly promoted
leaders often describe themselves as frenzied and periodically being nearly out
of control. As we recall our own reactions in these situations as well as the
many interviews and discussions we have had with newly promoted leaders,
we think that this second caricature is quite representative: