Page 29 - Just Promoted A 12 Month Road Map for Success in Your New Leadership Role

14 Just Promoted!

6. Personally connect with your team and one-to-one with team members.
Your relationship with team members and the team as a whole begins with
your very first interactions with them. Take time with individuals to begin
building positive perceptions and chemistry. Show interest in them. Get to
know what makes them tick and what lights their motivational fire. Sugges-
tions in Chapters 2, 4, 5, and 8 can serve as valuable resources for you. Addi-
tionally, two Just Promoted Leader Tools are specifically designed to help you
connect with your team. They are the New Leader and Team Assimilation
Process (NLTAP) and Developing a Motivational Profile for Each Team Mem-
ber tools. Both of these tools can help jump start your work with your team
and build the foundation for trust as well as high individual and team engage-
ment and performance. These tools are also introduced in Chapters 2 and 4,
respectively.

7. Build strong internal and external stakeholder partnerships. Establish
key working relationships with organizational superiors, peers, colleagues, and
direct reports and, as appropriate, with boards, key customers, supply chain
partners, government officials, and regulatory bodies. All of these stakehold-
ers, and possibly others, can have an important impact on your success. You
will want to decide who the most important stakeholders are for you. Then
you will need to determine if you need to create, enhance, or repair each of
your working relationships. One of the most important, if not the most impor-
tant, of your stakeholders is your boss or bosses. These relationships are so
important that all of Chapter 3, “Entering Your Boss’s World,” is dedicated to
it. As a good rule of thumb, if you help your boss to be successful—even be a
star—you will garner enormous support in return. Again, the Confirming
Your Appointment Charter tool will be of great help to you because it will help
you to communicate and work effectively with your boss.
The third Just Promoted Leader Tool, Building Stakeholder Partnerships,
and its accompanying list of discussion questions for use in meetings with
stakeholders, can prove to be especially useful for you in your stakeholder rela-
tionships. This tool is presented in Chapter 2.

8. Mesh with the existing culture, or decide to build the type of culture that
you believe is necessary. Chapter 7, “Assessing Your Organization’s Health,”
delves into this topic as well as other primary determinants of organizational
health. Culture is extraordinarily powerful. It is so powerful that it is said that